Who Are the Persians, Part V

This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Who Are the Persian

Ardishir Rashidi Kalhur | Exclusive to iKurd.net

Iran, in the Age of Mourning…

This article could have been written at the end of the series “Who Are the Persians”. Due to current uncertainty about the future of Iran as it faces conflict and negotiations over its nuclear program, this article reviews the conundrum facing Iran today.

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the streets of Tehran have been the scene of huge funeral processions, mourning the loss of one personality, or group, after another. For some Iranians, the age of mourning began with the fall and exile of the Shah and his family out of Iran. Later, his death brought pity and sorrow among the Persian community for the fallen despot.

Needless to say, the Persian part of Iran, in addition to its other regions and inhabitants have been ruled by successive cruel and authoritarian Tyrants throughout history. The rulers in power in Iran today are no exception. Since the time of the Greco-Persian wars, there have been many appointed Tyrants in the Aegean region against the Greeks as the Cardel of Democracy.

Ruling by tyranny has been a profession honed well by many Iranian rulers (1). A break came when retribution was paid by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. at the battle of Ga-weh-Ga-Meleh (2), (Kurdish word for the Battle of the Bull-Necks) to end Persian rule over Iran.

With the rise to power of the Islamic regime this culture of mass-mourning has grown in scope and frequency. The mass assassination of over seventy Islamic Republic leaders in June of 1981 was the onset of a new culture of death in Iran. Then came the assassination of the second elected President of the Islamic Republic, Ali Rajai in August of that year, followed by the endless funerals held for hundreds of thousands of victims of war who died in the eight yearlong Iran-Iraq war.

A war in which the Kurdish population alone lost between 50,000-100,000 as the result of the Anfal, a war declared on Kurds by Saddam’s regime for not being true Muslims. The town of Halabja paid the heaviest price in the chemical attacks by the Iraqi regime which killed over 5000 people of all genders and ages (3). In 1989 came the death of Ayatollah Khomeini , who was the founder of political Islam in Iran in 1979 by installing a form of kakistocracy. He ruled by waving hands and issuing religious Fatwas, and calling for jihadism, and martyrdom.

Issuing a Fatwa, he considered himself to have Executive Powers granted to him by his god, as the Supreme religious leader. A Faqih, who is the chief jurist who decides Islamic laws among the Shiite Sect; which is similar to a Caliph with the same authorities issuing substitutive decrees for the Suni Sect.

Often these Fatwas are vindictive, contemporaneous, and political in nature regardless to their moral, ethical, or legal legitimacies as regards human needs and rights. The Fatwas are executed by paramilitary forces such as the Basijis, plain-clothes hitmen who are not under the control of Islamic Republic administrative branches in blindfold. Reports of people’s disappearance, street attacks on women and men who are considered not in compliance with the Islamic Sharia laws have been reported by many reputable Human Rights groups.

Fast forward, Tehran was again the scene of a huge funeral for the killing of Qassim Sulaimani, and just last year, an equally massive funeral was held for the death of President Raisi who died in a helicopter crash. Massive funerals occur annually for the death of Shiite martyrs as illustrated by Persian Mud Mourning practiced in Iran (4). Latest but not the last was the funeral following the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh the leader of Hamas while he was visiting Tehran, in July of 2024.

Soon Iran will be facing the departure of its current leader Ali Khamenei (age 86) a despot in his own right. Perhaps he could be the last tyrant to bring Iran’s citizens to the street for this massive show of mourning. Is Iran yet tired of tyranny and this culture of mourning? Iran may “hopefully” emerge as a new democratic place for all its inhabitants to live in peaceful coexistence, evolved and removed from its culture of tyranny in the past.

The contingent word mentioned above is “hopefully”. Unfortunately, given the history and culture of the people in power or those who are vying to gain power in Iran, makes it next to impossible for hope, freedom, and democracy to be a part of the future of Iran.

As everything in life will one day come to an end, so has come the time for the life of a country such as Iran, a country by many civil standards to be like a condemned property where life is no longer safe for its inhabitants both physically and ideologically.

Despite all this, the people of Iran have been stoically patient and resilient to rid themselves of both the religious tyranny of the current regime and the tyrannical monarchy with its conspicuously flaunty old Persian showy culture during the shah’s regime. This situation has put the Iranian people in a conundrum of being deeply unhappy with the present regime on one hand, and not wanting to go back to live under the tried and truly false pretenses of the past regimes.

Considering this state of unhappiness being true and real for the people of Iran today, one can then ask what remedy could help to break this vicious circle that can keep hope alive for a better future in that country. Not claiming to be a historian, but it can be said, “wherever the milk spills, the historians describe the course of its flow.” Iran’s milk pail is about to crack so the spill will flow! As an observer of history, I can see three possible approaches to manage Iran in a “hopeful” and healthy direction.

First, through soft change by holding circular sessions among the various Iranian nationalities questioning themselves of the past mis-treatments and grievances against the current and the former regimes, and yet, envisioning a promising future for all Iranians as geographically framed.

Second, The United States and other nations with their concerned national interest and security in mind, provide help to the main ethnic groups to defend themselves against the constant harassment by the central government in Iran, and in particular, by the group of Turkified Azeris who have lost their own compass of identity and taken the political direction they have in supporting Erdogan and the Neo-Ottoman Turks.

This coarse and gross old-cultured government behavior with heavy handed treatment of women and minorities, specifically the Kurds who are putting up a fight against the Turk-o-Persian Nationalism and their primitive and regressive Islamic kakistocracy, deserves support

from all insightful humans. It has been said that “the desert grows mighty thorns, but the soft rain makes them bloom”

Finally, if the proposed approaches fail, change could come through hard and punitive military measures by outside forces. Upon the UN declaring that Iran has concretely reached to build or has acquired by purchase from other countries, nuclear weapon(s) it will then open the door for preventive measures to be taken by the United States.

Given the inexperience of the Persian scientists with atomic technology, personal safety and safeguarding of disposable nuclear waste, this experimentation in Persian hegemony in the region threatening neighbors with nuclear weapon is a Dead-End Effort. It could lead to an implosion inside Iran, rather than Iran’s capability to launch and deliver a bomb to drop on a specific target on a specific foreign country.

We are indeed at a “Which way Iran” moment in history, and the events will soon unmask fast and hard to uproot the culture of death and tyranny in Iran. The first option requires the courage by ethnic minorities, including Kurds, Persians, Azeris, Lurs, Balouch, Gilak & Mazandarani, Arabs, Qashqais, and other minorities to hold a conference to be facilitated by the United Nations and supported by the United States. This can start with the leaders of each group to accept a new map of Iran showing existence of different groups of people who have lived in their own homeland for millennia, from the ancient past to the present time (see maps I & II).

Map: provided by Ardishir Rashidi Kalhur

But unfortunately, history has proven that the relationship between these groups has been like a mini-version of European ethic rivalry during the dark ages with ensuing religious and ethnic strives and civil wars. No need to prove this point about Iran, as the central governments past and present, in the name of negotiation have used their agents and assassins to kill leaders of Kurdistan and other oppositions groups right at the negotiation table, and repeatedly.

Iranian Kurdish women Mahsa (Jina) Amini died after being detained by morality police enforcing strict Islamic hijab rules, September 16, 2022. Photo: SM

This reality has brought the level of trust among these groups to zero and worst yet, below that when it comes to trusting any future government in Tehran. This untrustworthiness of the regime, has been seen in the recent deadly clashes between the Kurdish people and the government forces during the uprising following the death of the Kurdish woman Jina Amini. This internal weakness in Iran, stemming from disrespect for the people of Iran, is well known to be Iran’s Achille’s heel, which can be exploited by its

neighbors. Given the historical Suni-Shiite rivalries between the Persians and the Ottoman Turks and their proxies vis-à-vis the Turkified Azeri Community living in Tehran and throughout Iran can accelerate the demise and disintegration of Iran. However, people of Iran are smart and are patiently waiting for the Death and demise of Iran’s leaders who are now ethnic Azari under Iran’s old enemy the neo-Ottomans under Erdogan and his Suni brotherhood AK party.

This begs the question, what if the Nuclear Negotiation does not go well for Iran, and there comes an order to demolish Tehran’s nuclear sites in the image of Gaza, and make a plan to rebuild a future Iran anew? A new Iran where different ethnic groups will have the right to a claim on their own region’s wealth and cultures.

Given the current situation, the Iranian government has no choice but to make a soft Surrender to the United States, in order not to necessarily save Iran or the Iranians, but themselves from being ousted by the wrath of the people who no longer want them to be in power.

As for the defunct “Persian monarchists”, no matter how much the nostalgic and geriatric generation of Persians living in diaspora try to make use of their ill-gotten money when they were in power in order to bring back the “good-old-days under the shah” as an inept figure head, it will not work, and they will not be welcomed by the current generation of Iranians living in Iran, now wiser by experience.

This is in spite of the Hollywood based TV and social media personalities and propagandists trying to prep the Iranians people to accept them back to power. Given the new generation risen among various Iranian groups, it will be truly a dim and regressive idea, against progress and forward thinking, to go along with bringing back the dark days of the past under the Shah with no better human rights record than under the Islamic Republic today.

This article is written to let the people of Iran know to prepare themselves for a ground swelling change coming to Iran soft or hard, and to the region’s map correcting the mistakes of the past. Preventing the breakout of a civil war should be the responsibility and priority of every ethnic group in Iran, while they all stand adamant about claiming and owning their legitimate historical homeland with full rights to its wealth, cultural and political administration.

For history of Persian rule by Tyranny, see the following reference (part 7) Greek Tyrants and the Persians, 546–479 B.C. | The Classical Quarterly | Cambridge Core
Note: See how Wikipedia describes the meaning of “Gaugamela” as “Camel’s House” where at the time the region was considered the house of Persians under Darius III. This in the writer’s opinion, is nothing more than simple ignorance and prejudicious by Wikipedia contributors writing on this subject at the following link. Battle of Gaugamela – Wikipedia