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. Th...
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