There Is No Such Country As Iran
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Dr. Jack Wheeler
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© June 1, 2006, ToThePointNews.com

Dr. Jack Wheeler: There Is No Such Country As Iran

At a meeting of the Nonaligned Movement in the Malaysian city of Putrajaya this week, Iran's Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki announced to reporters that "there is no such country" as Israel.

Since Israel does indeed exist, Mottaki means that Iran doesn't diplomatically "recognize" Israel's existence, that Iran wants to extinguish the political existence of Israel, that Israel's current existence is accidental, an illusion that will be swept away by the total triumph of Islam in the Middle East.

Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni should now feel free to announce that there is no such country as Iran. Its existence as an intact nation-state is make-believe. Its existence is as ephemeral as the Soviet Union's or Yugoslavia's, and is soon to break apart as did they.

Last week in Iran Unraveling? you learned about the protest demonstrations by Turkish-speaking ethnic Azeris (who make up over 1/3 of Iran's population) over a cartoon in a government newspaper depicting Azeris as cockroaches. The demos grew this week and are getting violent.

Funny how you're not reading about them in the New York Times or any major US media outlet, huh? They obsess on ethnic/religious divisions in Iraq and simply ignore them in Iran. There's only blah-blah headlines about "progress towards talks" and other diversionary sideshows.

If you were in Azerbaijan right across the border from Iran, you'd sure be reading about them. Here's the front page of a newspaper in Baku. Note the cockroach cartoon in the upper right - and the size of the protest crowd.



This was a few days ago. The crowds are bigger now, in the hundreds of thousands, and have spread from Tabriz, the capital of northwest Iran to Azeri towns such as Urumieh, Ardabil, Meshkinshar, and Naghdeh, where the demonstrators have confronted the police and are staging arson attacks on cars, government offices, and banks.

The demonstrators have been steadily widening their focus, from complaining about the cartoon to demands for the resignation of local police officials for brutality, and in the last couple of days, to calls for an end to the Tehran mullahs' "Islamic Republic" altogether.

Tehran has responded with massive arrests, brutal suppression, and a press ban on the Azeri unrest. Iranian president Ahmadi-nutjob (a hat tip to Heritage Foundation's Dr. Ariel Cohen for the more appropriate spelling of Ahmadi-nejad's name) revealed how desperate the situation was when he exclaimed:

"The attempts of enemies to disintegrate the country and create divisions within it will fail because Iranians have never had ethnic differences among each other."

This statement was reported in the Iranian press, which told everyone in Iran that the country was indeed disintegrating because everyone in Iran knows full well how anciently deep and hate-filled ethnic differences are between the ruling Persians and Azeris, Shiite Arabs, Kurds, Baluchis, Turkmen, and others.

"The only way to overcome these ethnic differences and keep Iran together is for the mullah regime to be replaced by a true democratic government that gives federal autonomy to Iran's ethnic regions," says Soraya Serajeddini, head of the Kurdish-American Committee for Democracy in Iran.

She was a participant in a remarkable meeting held at the Russell Senate Office Building here in Washington day before yesterday (5/30). Attending were leaders of resistance and democracy movements in Iran, who were forming a Coalition of Iranian Nationalities to cooperate in ridding Iran of mullah tyranny.

There were leaders of the Baluchistan Peoples Party, Democratic Solidarity of Ahwaz (Shia Arabs), Organization for Defense of Turkmen People, and the Diplomatic Commission of South Azerbaijan.

I loved the term "South Azerbaijan." That's what northwest Iran is being called now, as the Azeri protestors start to agitate for secession and merging with independent Azerbaijan.

So now it's time to take a look at this map:



It gives you an idea of Iran's fracture lines. That Azeri purple area of Tabriz, Ardabil, and Zanjan in the northwest is going to split off and join Azerbaijan.

Iranian Kurdistan is the yellow area to the left of "South Azerbaijan." It's going to split off and join autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.

Khuzistan-Ahwaz - containing 80% of Iran's oil - is the green area across from southern (and Shia) Iraq. It's going to split off and join Iraq.

The orange area in the southeast of Sistan-Baluchistan is going to split off, but not join Pakistan. It will enable Pakistani Baluchistan to secede from Pakistan and form a united independent Baluchistan.

That still leaves the Persians in the light green areas with a country - but much smaller. The non-Persian peoples of Iran are rebelling against both the mullah tyranny and Persian imperialism - just like the non-Russian peoples of the USSR rebelled against Soviet tyranny and Russian imperialism.

If the Persians want to learn from history and not repeat it, they will take the lead in replacing the mullacracy with democracy and offering substantial autonomy to the disaffected non-Persian regions.

Most likely is they'll end up like the Russians, bitter about their lost glory and empire, while those they oppressed strike out on their own.

The bottom line is that the only solution to the world threat of the Iranian Mullacracy is to risk breaking Iran apart. It's a risk that Condi and GW now might be willing to take.

As they genuflect before the demand of the world's diplomats and press for "talks" with Iran, they know their condition - Tehran must stop uranium enrichment - kills the chance for such talks to take place.

They know how that Azeri cockroach cartoon got in that government paper (thanks, Porter...) They know Iran is unraveling and Ahmadinutjob is losing his grip. They know the mullacracy is teetering on the edge of an abyss.

Will they have the nerve to give it that one necessary shove over the edge? That's the trillion-dollar question.