Iran is Only Half-Persian

The ancient Greeks adopted the word "Persian" to describe the people whose empire at one time threatened their fragile city-states, and who hailed from a mountainous plateau region east of the Mediterranean, known today known as Iran. The name Iran (literally "Land of the Aryans") was adopted in the 1930's as an assertion of ethnic pride and to curry favor with the Nazi regime which was seen as a rising power at the time. Today, the official name of this nation is "The Islamic Republic of Iran," and any citizen of that country may be referred to as an "Iranian".

Meanwhile in the modern Western world, Iran has been negatively associated with Islamic fanaticism and terrorism since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Terrorist attacks in the 1980's in Lebanon and the 1990's in Saudi Arabia only enforced this negative image, and the current nuclear dispute with the United States and United Nations makes "Iran" a dirty word in much of the West. Thus, the hundreds of thousands of Iranian immigrants in the US (often opponents of the current Islamic regime themselves) prefer to use the term "Persian" or "Persian American" to describe themselves. In the American mind, "Persian" and "Iranian" are often synonymous. In light of this, most Americans would probably be surprised to hear that only 51% of the Iranian population is ethnically Persian.

The largest minority are the Azeris, who have more in common with their ethnic brethren in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan than they do with Persians. They live mainly in the Northwest of Iran and make up a full 24% of the population. As a point of comparison the two largest racial minorities in the United States, blacks and Hispanics, account for about 26% of the total American population combined. The strange fact is that more Azeris live in Iran (approximately 18 million) than live in the independent nation of Azerbaijan itself (approximately 7 million). The Azeris who lived under Soviet domination are more influenced by secular Eastern European culture, while those living in Iran still practice a more fundamentalist Islam.

Another minority, the Kurds who make up 7% of the population, are probably more familiar to Americans. They are a continuation of the same Kurdish region of settlement that covers the north of Iraq. The mountainous region where Kurds live, sometimes referred to as Kurdistan, is divided between Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. This creates separatist tensions in all four countries, and affects unity and contiguity for the Kurds themselves. The Kurds in Iran have so far failed to carve out autonomous rights, while the Kurds of Iraq have been largely independent of central Baghdad control since the 1991 Gulf War. Other minorities in Iran include the Gilaki and Mazandarani (8%), Arab (3%), Lur (2%), Baloch (2%) and Turkmen (2%). All have their own narratives and their own perspectives on Iranian identity

With the nature of the Iranian people and the intentions of the Iranian government at the forefront of the American political mind, it is important to recognize that ethnic and regional differences abound. Whether we are thinking about ways to positively interact in business or cultural exchange, or planning for a coming conflict, we must all be more inquisitive about the nature of Iran.