A young Kurdish Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab incorrectly. Protests have rocked the country ever since. Initially centered on demands to abolish the compulsory hijab and disband the morality police, the popular movement has in recent months broadened its scope to seek minority rights and, in some cases, independent states for Kurdish, Baloch, Azeri, and Arab groups in Iran. Amini’s death gave a common platform to these minorities’ long-festering grievances and led some Iranian opposition groups to call for regime change that could give way to a post-Islamic Republic Iran.
In heavily Kurdish regions of Iran, there have been armed confrontations between Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Kurdish separatist groups. Tehran has targeted Kurdish separatist bases in neighboring Iraq and accused these groups of seeking to secede from Iran. The Iranian regime has also accused the Saudi government of influencing, funding, and masterminding separatist activity within Iran.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have been archrivals since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled Iran’s monarchy. At the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for exporting the revolution, sending shivers down the Saudi royal family’s spine. Since then, a series of direct and indirect confrontations between Tehran and Riyadh have shaped the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East—and the Gulf in particular. Each power today has numerous proxies that form regional spheres of influence. Most (but not all) Iran-affiliated groups are Shiite,
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