Continuity and Change

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to provide a background to the debates surrounding national identity in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since 1979, the Islamic regime has adopted a quintessentially Islamic discourse and has rejected the previously Persianist identity adhered to by the Pahlavi shahs. This chapter therefore traces the three decades of events and practices through which the Islamic regime has reshaped Iran’s national identity. The chapter focuses on two crucial factors in Iran’s identity discourse—nationalism and Islamism—and explores the ways in which this discourse has had an impact on the state’s societal security dilemma. These two ideologies have been linked by the state in an attempt to create a cohesive and theological national Iranian identity. Conflicts between the two identities, however, have had a great impact on the construction of Iran’s domestic, regional, and international policy. In studying such complexities in the interplay between identity and policy, this chapter looks at Iran’s security discourse by analyzing the regime’s political and ideological perceptions of its ethnic and religious minorities. The status of ethnic and religious minorities will be viewed in relation to the constitution and polity. This chapter explores the linkage between ethnoreligious political identity and national security as well as the impact of this relationship on the state’s territorial fragility.