I dont wonder why kurds say armenians are our brothers.. and I do not wonder why Iran thinks the same way.. they can do taqiyya but only monkeys would belive them
the connection between armenia and iran must be cut foreever..
I am also for independance of turkish azeris in Iran its time for changes turkic people need to unite there are no friends of turks except turks
Sobhi Tufayli is a traitor to Lebanon's Hezbollah who was kicked out of the Party decades ago and ever since, has been spending his time issuing outlandish propagandistic claims against the Islamic Resistance and against Iran. Few are those who take his rants seriously, for he is not considered a reliable source by most observers. Just ponder for a minute: why would Iran's Foreign Minister even talk to someone known to be an enemy of the Islamic Republic, let alone share purported state secrets with such a person? That's just completely devoid of credibility.
Regarding your advocacy of an ethno-separatist dismantling of Iran, that's actually a long standing zio-American project. Anyone who really believes these same zio-American nation-wreckers won't turn their attention to Turkey (and to Saudi Arabia, and then to Pakistan) once Islamic Iran is out of their way, are heavily fooling themselves. Do not assist them in their sinister endeavour.
Other than that, if Turkey tries anything funny in Iran's Āzarbādegān provinces (whose very name is of Iranian-Aryan origin), then Tehran might feel compelled - against its will, to throw its weight behind Kurdish separatists fighting Turkey, in particular the PKK. Which would be likely to increase violence against the Turkish state to its worse levels since the 1980's. Then there is Iran's connection to Turkey's Alevi community (both Turkish- and Zazaki-speakers), which might equally be put to use in the event that Ankara directed Iranian-based pan-Turkist elements to trespass red lines. But that is not what Iran wants, hence Tehran hopes it will never be forced to resort to such retaliatory action.
In conclusion, it would be both in Turkey's and in Iran's best mutual interests not to attempt to destabilize each other using "ethno"-separatist or confessional cards.
Iran also fears its 40% Azeri population.
Azari Iranians are far from constituting "40%" of the local population. The figure is truly offbeat to say the least, and close to a two-fold exaggeration.
Below is a listing of Azari-speaking provinces of Iran, as well as their population figures. All figures are taken from the official 2016 population census. They are reproduced here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Iran#Current_provinces
* East Azarbaijan : 3.9 million inhabitants.
* West Azarbaijan : 3.26 million inhabitants - about half of which (the entire southern part of the province plus a large proportion of the provincial capital Orumieh) are Kurmanji-speakers, which brings the number of Azari-speakers there to around 1.63 million.
* Ardabil : 1.27 million inhabitants - among natives of this province, some to the east are Taleshi-speakers (an idiom belonging to the Iranian family of languages), but let's not count them.
* Zanjan : 1.05 million.
* Qazvin : 1.27 million - that figure includes a non-negligible portion of non-Azari speakers, since the eastern part of the province is an extension of the Greater Tehran metropolis, where people of all linguistic groups reside, mingle and intermarry. But let's not count these, in order to make up for the (not that numerous) Azari-speakers in Hamadan and Markazi provinces.
Which gives us an estimated total of around 9.12 million Azari-speakers in this linguistic group's native areas of settlement. Iran's population back then was of 79.92 million (versus some 82 to 83 million today). In other terms, around 11.41% of Iran's total population.
Now, there exist more or less ancient zones of Azari migration outside the mentioned provinces, in particular Tehran and its suburbs, as well as places such as the holy cities of Mashhad and Qom (in way smaller numbers).
But likewise there are numbers of non-Azari speakers residing in the Azari provinces listed above: economic migrants, civil servants, ulema, partners in mixed couples, and so on. We shall consider the number of Azari-speakers who settled outside the listed provinces as considerably superior to the amount of non-Azari speakers residing in said provinces.
For good measure, we shall thus add another 5 million Azari-speakers to the 9.12 million obtained above (and I am being generous). Which would mean that for every 2 Azari-speakers living in the traditional areas of Azari settlement, we consider that there is more than 1 living outside (a reasonable and far from conservative evaluation).
Our new grand total therefore will reach some
14.12 million citizens amongst a total of 79.92 million, or 17.66%. Let's round this figure to
18%.
Yet, this figure does not account for the
enormous proportion of Iranians who have, in fact,
mixed lingistic origins. It is safe to consider that over 50%, possibly even 60% or more, have at least two grand-parents hailing from different linguistic groups.
This is so because Iranian society never practiced segregation along so-called "ethnic" lines, because intermarriage between members of different sub-national linguistic groups has always been considered normal, because areas of settlement often overlap, because internal migrations over the past centuries have been frequent enough - hence why one will encounter so many Iranians whose surnames correspond to cities, towns or villages located way beyond their place of birth and residence (e. g. Behbahānis living in Esfahān, Lārijānis from Mashhad etc).
In recent decades, this phenomenon experienced a considerable acceleration, due to a rapid increase in urbanization: more than
70% of Iranians are living in cities and other urban areas nowadays. Urban life encourages intermarriage between citizens originating from various corners of a country, especially when discrimination along so-called "ethnic" lines is low - and in effect, there are no marked "ethnic" neighborhoods in Iranian cities (this is less so when it comes to the small, non-Muslim religious minorities, but members of various linguistic groups are spread and mixed all over Iran's major cities).
Therefore, our figure of 18% of Azari Iranians is a relative one, since many of these are in fact
only partially Azari, and then partly Persian or Lori or Kurdish or Gilaki or Bakhtiyari or... As said before, Iranians cannot be easily crammed into strict "ethnic" categories. Any Iranian, as well as any person who has been in extensive contact with large numbers of Iranians, will be perfectly aware of this.
What this also means, is that the "40%" claim is equivalent to considering that twice as many Azaris speakers in Iran are living outside their traditional zones of settlement than within these zones...! A decidedly unrealistic supposition.
This is in addition to the fact that Azari speakers are extremely well integrated into all walks of Iranian society (even Iran's Supreme Leader has Azari backgrounds), that they've historically been of flawless patriotism (many national heroes of Iran all along the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Sattar Khan or Baqer Khan, have been of (partly) Azari descent, as well as numerous martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war), and that a great majority among them are loyal to Iran and Islam first.
When faced with a political choice, they will not primarily go by "ethnicity", nor will they let "ethnic" sensitivities get in the way of Iran pursuing her national interests.
Only those attracted to pan-Turkist ideology - in fact a minority of Iran's 14-15 million or so Azaris, might place allegiance to their linguistic community or so-called "ethnicity" above the national interests.
That said, Iran isn't supporting the Armenian side in the current Caucasus conflict anyway. Had she determined that doing so would be in her best interest however, she would have been assured of the support of a decisive majority of her population, including of Azari Iranians. To most Iranians regardless of their linguistic backgrounds, when it comes to geopolitics Islam and Iran come first, everything else comes afterwards.
Like many Azeris, he has kinship and love for Azerbaycan, which the Iranian deep-state (IRG, clerics) does not have.
Obviously this reveals serious divisions internally in Iran about the support to Armenia. With a 40% Azeri population, Iran is playing with fire here.
Quite an interesting find.
I'm afraid here you've improvised random conjectures on the go.
No Iranian "deep state" would disobey the Supreme Leader.
Seyyed Khamenei's views are assuredly not motivated by "ethnic" kinship, but by what he considers to be right from an Islamic, from a revolutionary and from a national interest perspective.
Plus, both the IRGC and the clergy have as many Azari-speakers in their ranks as the rest of Iranian society. The Supreme Leader being the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the IRGC remains completely loyal to him. So does most of the politically active clergy. In fact, of all Iranian institutions the IRGC is considered one of the most attentive and enthusiastic in following the Leader's guidelines.
There are no serious divisions about the policy to have with regards to the war between the country's two northern neighbours and former provinces. If anything, democratic debate and constructive exchange of views might be conducted about what the right course of action would be
from the lense of Islamic principles and national interest, but certainly not from the point of view of "ethnicity", which plays no role in the minds of high level Iranian decision makers, nor in those of the vast majority of Iranians.
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