Thread by @DrAlakbarov

Thread. Iran's Achilles' heel - Azerbaijanis in Iran.

Tehran tends to stimulate the Armenian-Iranian-Russian partnership against Azerbaijan.

This plan was working efficiently until the II Karabakh war.

During the II Karabakh war, Russia, Iran and their satellites are backed Armenia, whereas much of the West as well as Turkey and Israel are supported Azerbaijan.

In September 2021, Baku decided to impose a road tax on Iranian trucks using roadways that were now under Azerbaijan's control.

When Yerevan controlled those roads, vehicles could pass freely without having to pay any tax.

Furthermore, Tehran often accuses Baku "of stirring up resentment among Iran’s Turkic-speaking Azeri population."

Why?

Northern Iran populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis, who make up the largest non-Persian minority in Iran. Azerbaijanis make up an estimated 18-20% of Iran’s population of 85 million.

Azerbaijanis in Iran often claim a population share close to 40% (very bloated figure), but it's a significant number that includes ethnic brethren such as the Turkmen, Qashgais, and other Turkic-speaking groups.

When the beef started?

Divided from their kin in Azerbaijan by the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchai, which gave northern Azerbaijan to Russia and southern Azerbaijan to Iran.

"Northern" Azerbaijan later gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Azerbaijanis' role in the Persian government was significantly weakened when the Pahlavi dynasty came into power in 1925.

Contact between the Azerbaijani areas of Iran and the Soviet Union were limited until Soviet forces occupied northern Iran during World War II.

In 1945, at Soviet instigation, a People's Republic of Azerbaijan was proclaimed in Iranian Azerbaijan.

It lasted only until Soviet forces withdrew a year later; in the aftermath, some thousands of Iranian Azerbaijanis were killed.

Like imperial Iran, the Islamic regime has often downplayed the ethnic differences between Persians and Azerbaijanis.

Despite the fact that influential figures in the establishment, such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are of partly of Azerbaijani descent, the mullah regime did not hesitate to crack down hard on Azerbaijani nationalism.

https://twitter.com/miqazi/status/1549451667820740610

Iran's religious regime during the 1981 uprising in Tabriz, executed hundreds of Azerbaijanis.

After Soviet Union's fall, there was a boom in nationalist publications for Iranian Azerbaijanis and growing interest in both Turkey and the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.

A significant number of Iranian Azerbaijanis watch Turkish television broadcasts now available via satellite; this has boosted their knowledge of Turkey as well as the Anatolian dialect of Turkish.

This revival led to the creation of a new organization, the South Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement (GAMOH), by literature professor Mahmudali Chohraganli.

After winning election to the Iranian parliament in 1995, Chohraganli, whose own father was once tortured by the Shah’s secret police for Turkic nationalism, was not allowed to take his seat.

GAMOH advocates more cultural rights for Azerbaijanis, and a future Iranian government with a federal structure resembling the US in which Azerbaijanis can have their own flag and parliament.

GAMOH's proclaimed support for self-determination, secular government and a pro-Western orientation does not bode well with Tehran's religious regime.

Before 2020, Baku was walking a fine line between sympathy for the Iranian Azerbaijanis and its economic and political interests with the Islamic regime.

As anti-government protests continue to spread like a wildfire across Iran, "freedom, justice and national government" has become a popular slogan on the streets of Tabriz, Urmia and Ardabil, the three largest Azerbaijani population centres in northwestern Iran.

Iranian regime and the state-run media present those who were detained in recent protests in northwestern Iran as separatists and backers of "pan-Turkism" – labels usually applied to Turkish-language rights activists in Iran.

Ironically, the government of Iran has never published official statistics on the population of the country's ethnic and linguistic groups.

However, during his official visit to Turkey in January 2011, then-Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi stated that 40% of Iranians speak Turkish/Azerbaijani.

Most Azerbaijanis in Iran are Shia Muslims, which is the official state religion of Iran, but they have long been barred from education in their native tongue 👇🏼

rferl.org/a/Restricting_…

Racist rhetoric towards Azerbaijanis in Iran also not doing any favours for Tehran.

The arguably the turning point for the racist imperial mindset was the publication of a children’s cartoon titled “What should we do so that the cockroaches don’t turn us into cockroaches?” in 2006.

Published in Iran newspaper Jomeh edition in May 2006, the cartoon depicted a conversation between a boy and a cockroach.

While the boy asked questions in Persian, the cockroach replied in Azerbaijani.

One line from the cartoon read:

"...the cockroaches do not understand human language, and the grammar of their own language is so difficult that 80% of them prefer to speak the language of others".

After the newspaper failed to apologise for the cartoon, thousands of Azerbaijanis took it to the streets in Iran.

Following the protests, the newspaper was shut down and an apology was released.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid…

In 2015, Azerbaijanis also took to the streets after IRIB-2, a state-run TV channel, aired an episode of a children's show, Fitilehha (Candle Wicks), in which an Azerbaijani boy was shown brushing his teeth with a toilet brush and Azerbaijanis were portrayed as "dirty" people.

Video footage from the protests shows large numbers of people marching through streets, chanting "stop racism against Azerbaijanis." Riot police were deployed on the streets.

rferl.org/a/azeris-hold-…

The Azerbaijani community had also staged protests in August 2011 after Lake Urmia, located in an area with a high concentration of Azerbaijanis, dried up, dealing a blow to local farmers.

eurasianet.org/azerbaijanis-d…

Nevertheless, divided by a barbwire along the Araz River, Azerbaijanis continue to share the same language, religion, and ethnic identity but have been forced to use two different scripts and assimilate into ‘superior’ cultures of Iran and Russia. #culturalgenocide

Only through liberating their minds from the Persian and Russian imperialism, Azerbaijanis can realize the great power they hold in their shared identity.

https://twitter.com/AzerbaijanRetro/status/1545816550166478848

Since the summer of 2022, Azerbaijan's pro-government media have been more vocal about calls for succession and Azerbaijan stepping up its support for a “national-liberation movement” in Southern Azerbaijan.

https://twitter.com/zamanisabershab/status/1591176847781662721

At the 9th Summit of the Leaders of the Organization of Turkic Countries in Samarkand, Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev also raised the issue of lack of education in the mother tongue of Azerbaijanis in Iran.

https://twitter.com/bemer_bahar/status/1591003973947101184

Tehran's agressive stance towards Azerbaijan, also bolstered Azerbaijani-Israeli relations.

Ironically, the last thing Iran wants is to see an Azerbaijan-Armenia peace deal pave the way for Israel’s expanded presence.

https://twitter.com/eurasianet/status/1585890106891812865

Azerbaijan is also pushing for the Zangezur corridor, which would connect mainland Azerbaijan not only with its Nakhchivan exclave but also with its ally, Turkey, Iran’s regional rival.

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1453045000300908546

The Zangezur corridor will give Turkey a new land route to the South Caucasus, which Ankara keen to use to bolster its presence in the energy-rich region.

Turkey would even gain a faster route to Central Asian markets, giving it a transportation springboard to implement some of its ambitious pan-Turkic goals.

dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/…

Russian political commentator Andrey Piontkovsky also predicts grim scenario for Iran:

"I will say this in a somewhat cryptic way – very serious events around Iran are being prepared. Tehran is now facing insurmountable problems." 👇🏼

odessa-journal.com/andrei-piontko…