The External Political Use of Arab Minorities in Iran and its Impact on IranianArab Relations

Abstract

This study sheds light on the external political employment of the Arab minorities in Iran by regional powers and their impact on the Iranian-Arab relations. These relations have witnessed over the decades tensions and conflicts for various reasons, which are lately related to religious and national issues. The Iranian politic in the region – following a number of regional and national transformations – may have forced the Arab countries – especially the Gulf countries – to build a similar strategy disproving the Iranian performance in the region and including the agitation of the Iranian internal situation through investing into the minorities – particularly the Ahwaz Movement – through political adoption, support and employment. This contributed to nurturing the Iranian-Arab gap. How these external powers have politically employed the Arab minorities in Iran? What is their impact on the Iranian-Arab relations? This study adopts a historical, comparative, descriptive and analytical approach, as well as a case study. In the first place, the most important findings of the study show that the Arab minorities represent the point of weakness of the current Iranian regime. The regime failed to contain the social explosions and to limit the protests through the adoption of structural reforms claimed by the population of the Arab areas, which later turned into separatist demands. In the second place, the states of the region played a role in nationalist agitation in Ahwaz through political and financial support and under the pretext of protecting the ethnic and tribal links between the Ahwazis and the neighboring Arab countries. In the third place, the Iranian politic in the Arab region, which calls for direct or indirect interference, forced these states to retaliate transferring the conflict from outside to inside Iran. Finally, the Arab movement, whether it is conciliatory or violent, constitutes an opportunity to Iran to interfere and export the Islamic Revolution in its various dimensions in Syria and Yemen, which contributed to the complication and the tension in the relations between Iran and the Arab countries, in particular Saudi Arabia.