التوظيف السياسي الخارجي للأقليات العربية في إيران وأثره على العلاقات الإيرانية العربية

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.