Dr. Mordechai Kedar doubts the ability of the Revolutionary Guards to maintain full control over a country made up of such a wide variety of ethnic minorities

By Hezy Laing

Two months after Israel and the USA began their bombing campaign of the Iranian Islamic regime – some have begun to question whether it will ever fall.

But Dr. Mordechai Kedar a senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic Studies at Bar‑Ilan University, says that a multinational country under great pressure has difficulty maintaining internal cohesion over time.

According to Kedar, history teaches that multi-ethnic empires do not survive over time, and cites many examples from superpowers that have collapsed, from the Roman and Ottoman Empires to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Iran, he says, is no exception. The country is made up of a wide variety of ethnic groups, including Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Turkmens and other groups, each of which has its own identity, interests and sometimes even national aspirations.

Kedar emphasizes that already today, separatist tendencies can be identified among some groups, especially among the Kurds and Baluchis, as well as among other populations in the south and north of the country.

In this context, he doubts the ability of the Revolutionary Guards to maintain full control over such a large and diverse country over time, especially after the military and political echelons have been damaged.

According to him, even if the regime manages to hold on to the system now, ethnic and internal pressures could lead to disintegration processes in the future.

Analysts such as Dr. Afshin Shahi of the University of Bradford have made similar observations, stating that “the regime’s coercive capacity is significant, but its reach is uneven across Iran’s ethnic periphery.”

Likewise, Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute has argued that “Tehran’s authority is strongest in the Persian core but far more fragile in minority regions where grievances run deep.”

However, Kedar emphasizes that it is impossible to predict when or how such a disintegration will occur, but in his opinion it is an almost inevitable process in the long term.