As a result of the capture of Damascus by the militant group led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, 24 years of Bashar al-Assad and 61 years of Baathist rule are history .Of course, the impact of this event on Iran cannot be ignored. Since 2011, from the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria until the fall of the Assad regime, Iran has always acted in partnership with the Syrian regime. During this period, Iran has provided fuel and weapons as well as nearly 2000 of its soldiers and generals have lost their lives in the conflicts in the region. Between 30 billion and 50 billion dollars have been spent by Iran in Syria as long as they supported the regime ¹ .Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown University’s campus in Qatar, said that this entitlement will cause significant change in the Middle East and may even spill out of the region ². This raises the question: Will the Iranian government, which supports the civil war in Syria, share the same fate with Damascus? It is a reality that cannot be ignored that there are sufficient reasons to believe that the two states are likely to become partners in destiny. Human rights and the harsh attitude towards other ethnic nationalities are two of them.
Human Rights Violations in Iran
On February 11, 1979, the monarchy in Iran was replaced by the Islamic Republic. This revolution was led by Ruhollah Khomeini, who lived in exile in France. After the revolution, serious human rights violations took place in the country ³ . The most prominent of these was against Mahsa Amini, who was detained on the pretext of not wearing her headscarf correctly and later died in hospital⁴. The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini led to a popular uprising against the theocracy and the mandatory headscarf law in the country.
According to reliable figures, some 551 protesters, including at least 49 women and 68 children, were killed by security forces during the popular uprisings and most of the deaths were caused by firearms⁵ . As if this were not enough, many sources have reported that during the suppression of the protests, people who “only danced” or honked their horns were arrested and hundreds of children, some as young as 10 years old, were detained.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran (March 8, 2024) reported that the state had used disproportionate force against civilians and women and that serious human rights violations had occurred⁶.
Ethnic Groups in Iran
Iran is a multi-ethnic country where people speak more than one language. The most dense ethnic group in the country consists of Azerbaijani Turks and Persians. The Azerbaijani Turks, who were divided into two after the Iran-Russia war with the Gulistan Treaty of 1813 and the Turkmenchay Treaty of 1828, with the condition that the South was given to Iran and the North to Russia, were liberated from the Russian occupation in 1991, but the Azerbaijani Turks who remained in the borders of the Iranian state in the South are living their lives under very harsh conditions. Although this group, whose mother tongue is Azerbaijani Turkish, has a population of more than 40 million, there is still not a single school in the region where they can receive education in their mother tongue.
As if the restriction of their fundamental rights and freedoms is not enough, hatred against Azerbaijani Turks is deliberately instilled in the country. On May 12, 2006, the pro-regime Iran-e-jomee newspaper published a cartoon that instills open hatred against Azerbaijani Turks. The publication about Azerbaijani Turks, who were compared to cockroaches in the cartoon, caused people to take to the streets in Zanjan, Tabriz, Urmia and Ardabil. In some sources, this uprising has taken its place in history as ‘National Day of Mutiny⁷.
Nuclear allegations against Iran.
As is well known, the West’s first goal in this power struggle is to eliminate the outposts that Iran has established to ensure its security. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, which it supported on this basis, are gradually siding with Iran after the failure of its plans against the Bahas regime in Syria.
In terms of international law, in order to attack a state or to exert a similar influence, there must be specific reasons or these reasons must be artificially created. Just as there is a nuclear weapon in Iraq.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington-based think tank, published a report in 2019 stating that Iran has launched an initiative known as the “Field Project” to build underground nuclear test sites.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry approved the think tank for five years for “fabricating and disseminating, promoting, advising, consulting, lobbying and conducting a negative propaganda campaign against the Islamic Republic in order to play an active role in the implementation and intensification of economic sanctions.
As part of the development of seismic methods to assess the yield of underground nuclear explosives, the researchers “identified the likely location (in an area southeast of Semnan) where non-nuclear underground explosive tests were conducted in 2003,” according to the 2019 study.
This suggests that Tehran’s first nuclear test may have been connected to the Simnan earthquake.
Iran has already admitted that the “Imam Khomeini” space facility and missile headquarters are located more than 100 kilometers from the earthquake’s epicenter, southeast of Simnan.
But instead of conducting tests at a renowned facility like Natanz, some social media users continue to conjecture that Iran could have an unreported subterranean nuclear plant in Simnan province .
Naturally, Iran is prone to earthquakes, and this particular one is neither unusual or uncommon, but before any official news was issued, such conjecture was sparked by the Middle East’s political and military circumstances as well as the extraordinary escalation of tensions between Iran and Israel 8.
Conclusion
Discrimination against ethnic groups and the increase in human rights abuses in Iran are creating a resentment within the country that cannot be ignored, making it increasingly difficult for the main forces holding the state together against external interference.
Deliberate discrimination against certain groups that have a significant influence on the country’s population jeopardizes the concept of the nation state. Attempts to discriminate against the Azeri, Baluch and Arab populations and human rights violations have not only undermined social peace but also increased pressure from international organizations against Iran.
Iran’s continued existence as a state depends on both domestic reforms and changes in international relations. The Middle East is like a powder keg, and it is often the innocent citizens, whose rights have been violated and oppressed by their own countries, who throw the first spark into this powder keg, as in Syria and other Middle Eastern states.
Finally, the increase in geographical tension is an indication that the Turkish and Persian states, which have not fought for hundreds of years, are being provoked against each other. Turkey should never comply with this game of foreign powers, but it should support the indivisible integrity of the Iranian state. Otherwise, Turkey may be the next address of American-style democracy.
Sources
1. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c05pmmzp63zo
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/10/iran-syria-nuclear-weapons-israel-assad/
3. https://www.britannica.com/event/Iranian-Revolution
