Early warnings

Watch the Western media for claims that Iran plans "ethnic cleansing"
on the scale of Kosovo or Darfur, in propaganda designed to manipulate
naïve liberals or human rights groups

Unquote

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KHUZESTAN: THE FIRST FRONT IN THE WAR ON IRAN?
by Zoltan Grossman

November 07, 2005

As their forces are increasingly bogged down in Iraq, George W. Bush
and Tony Blair are laying the groundwork for their next military
expansion, next door in Syria or Iran.

Their confrontation with Iran, in particular, has long been in the
cards. Three years before the invasion of Iraq, the Project for the New
American Century asserted that Iran "may well prove as large a threat
to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has."

When the U.S. media reports on the growing confrontation with Iran, it
invariably focuses on Tehran's nuclear program, Iranian leaders' verbal
sparring with Israel, and how both outside challenges are strengthening
the hand of Iranian "conservative" hardliners against "moderate"
reformers.

Yet little attention has been paid to the potential role of ethnic
minorities in the Iran crisis, particularly of the Iranian Arab
minority, centered in the southwestern province of Khuzestan. Events in
the oil-rich province bordering Iraq could serve as a harbinger of
U.S.-British intentions in Iran, and expose Khuzestan as Iran's
Achilles Heel. Recently, a series of bombings and ethnic clashes has
begun to show that something is rotten in Khuzestan, which could be an
early warning of a coming war.

Last June, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter warned that the
U.S. is building up military capabilities in Azerbaijan, on Iran's
northern border, and sponsoring rebel bombings inside Iran. The
obstacles to a full-scale invasion of Iran would at first glance appear
to be formidable. As Ivan Eland has observed, "invading Iran would
likely make the bloody quagmire in Iraq look like a picnic. Iran has
nearly four times the territory and three times the population of Iraq.
Also, Iran's terrain is much more mountainous than Iraq's and even more
ideal for guerrilla warfare."

Yet if ethnic tensions in Khuzestan province can be effectively
exploited by the U.S. and Britain, they may feel that a more limited
destabilization or invasion will put Iran's main oil province under
Western control. In other words, the prospects of an invasion may loom
larger, simply because Bush thinks it can be a "mission accomplished"
with less effort than an all-out conquest of Iran. Bush and Blair use
the prospects of civil war to justify their continuing occupation of
Iraq (though their actions instead appear to be stimulating an Iraqi
civil war). They are also not above stimulating a little ethnic strife
to get their way next door in Iran.

Think of Khuzestan as a "Kuwait-Inside," with most of Iran's crude oil
deposits contained within the small province. Like in Iraq, Nigeria or
Colombia, much of the oil is under the lands of a historically
aggrieved ethnic minority. The Arab Shi'ites living on the plains of
western Khuzestan share both their ethnicity and faith with the
majority Arab Shi'ites across the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway in
Iraq. Arabs make up only 3% of Iran's population, but a majority (or at
least a plurality) of about 3 million in Khuzestan (which some Arabs
call "Ahwaz" or "Arabistan"). Iranian-speaking Luri and Bakhtiari
tribes inhabit the Zagros mountain range to the east. Persians also
live in the large provincial cities, such as Abadan, Khorramshahr,
Ahvaz, Dezful, and Bandar-e Khomeini.

A Key Pivot

For centuries, Khuzestan has been a key pivot of Iran's history and
economy. Khuzestan was the seat of the ancient civilization of Elam,
with its capital at Susa. It was overrun by numerous civilizations and
tribes, including the Persian Empire in 539 BC, and often functioned as
a frontier zone between empires. Arabs from Basra colonized the
province in 642 AD, though it usually has been formally controlled by
Persia.

In 1897, the British Empire backed Khuzestani Arab rulers to secede
from Persia and become the de facto British protectorate of "Arabistan"
(much as the British did in neighboring Kuwait). The entire southern
zone of Persia was declared a British "sphere of influence" in 1907,
and the following year a British adventurer discovered oil in
"Arabistan," at Masjed Soleyman. The discovery created the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later renamed British Petroleum (BP). In
1925, Reza Shah's forces retook "Arabistan," and renamed it Khuzestan,
as he renamed "Persia" as Iran a decade later.

British troops occupied Khuzestan during World War II, but after the
war Iranians grew more concerned that Westerners had a stranglehold on
their oil wealth. In 1951, the Iranian nationalist leader Mohammed
Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry based mainly in Khuzestan
(including Anglo-Iranian's holdings), drawing the wrath of Western
powers. Two years later, a CIA-engineered coup ousted Mossadegh, and
installed the new Shah Reza Pahlevi, who opened Khuzestan to a
U.S.-British oil concession.

In 1978, Arab oil workers in Khuzestan went on strike against the Shah,
and played a central role in the Iranian Revolution that toppled him
the following year. They openly supported the revolution in its early
months, when it included leftist and other secular parties (that were
later crushed by the Islamic Republic). Encouraged by Western powers
that were threatened by the revolution, Saddam Hussein launched a
brutal invasion of Khuzestan in 1980, and occupied its western Arab oil
region. He tried to engineer the secession of the province from Iran,
and backed an Arab separatist rebel group (which also briefly seized
the Iranian Embassy in London).

Yet in the Iran-Iraq War, most Iranian Arab Shi'ites fought on the side
of Persian-ruled Iran, just as Iraqi Arab Shi'ites fought on the side
of Saddam's Sunni-ruled Iraq. State territoriality trumped both ethnic
and religious territoriality, in a massive slaughter complete with
trench warfare and "human wave" attacks, aerial bombing and missile
strikes, and the use of chemical weapons on both sides. Iranian forces
pushed the Iraqis out of Khuzestan in 1982, but the province's cities
and oil refineries were the most heavily damaged in the war, that
finally ended in 1988. (The U.S. had cynically had supplied aid to
bleed both sides, including a naval intervention to escort vessels
carrying Iraqi oil, and the sale of missiles to the Iranians.)

COLOR MAP of  Iran's ethnic groups and oil fields:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/KHUZESTAN.gif

Iran remained neutral during the 1991 Gulf War, which was waged within
earshot of Khuzestan. After the war, the U.S. allowed Saddam to crush
an Iraqi Shi'ite rebellion next to Khuzestan, in fear that a
Shi'ite-majority ruled Iraq would become a satellite of Tehran. Yet
although Iraqi Ayatollah Sistani was born in Iran--and the holiest
Shi'ite cities of Karbala and Najaf are within Iraq--the Iraqi Shi'ite
clerics do not generally favor an Iranian-style theocratic state that
might alienate their youth from the religion.

Tehran opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, even if it was glad to
see Saddam's capture. The contrast in U.S. and Iranian policy stands as
a textbook case of the advantages of a political strategy over a
military strategy. Washington invaded Iraq, lost at least 2,000 troops,
was bogged down by a growing insurgency, and saw its influence (and its
favored exile candidates) rejected by Iraqis. In contrast, Tehran
watched as its second-greatest enemy eliminated its greatest enemy,
advised its Iraqi allies to play along with the occupation so their
candidates could run in elections, then saw the Shi'ite parties come to
power--all without firing a shot.

New Rumblings

In 2005, the conflict between Iraqi Shi'ites and the occupation forces
has grown more intense, particularly in the oil-rich British occupation
zone around Basra. A violent series of events has oddly pointed toward
neighboring Khuzestan as (once again) the best barometer of conflict
along the Iran-Iraq border.

In Basra on September 19, British troops clashed with Iraqi police and
Shi'ite militia, who had ironically welcomed the toppling of Saddam two
years ago. The police had arrested two British undercover commandos who
possessed suspicious bomb-making materials. British troops launched an
armored raid on the jail to free their agents, fighting the same Iraqi
police they had earlier trained. Iraqis had thought it strange that
British agents would be caught with the types of bombs associated with
insurgents attacking "Coalition" troops, and some assumed that the
agents were trying to pit Iraqi religious groups against each other.

Yet at the same time, bombs were going off across the border in
Khuzestan. In June, a series of car bombings in Ahvaz (75 miles from
Basra) killed 6 people. In August, Iran arrested a group of Arab
separatist rebels, and accused them of links to British intelligence in
Basra. In September, explosions hit Khuzestani cities, halting crude
oil transfers from onshore wells. On October 15, two major bomb
explosions in an Ahvaz market killed 4 and injured 95. A November 3
analysis in Asia Times blames Iraqi Sunni insurgents for the bombings.

Iranian officials accused Britain of backing the attacks, and tied the
rebel bombs to the British commando incident in Basra. The Daily Star
of Beirut reported on October 17 that Iranian officials "point to
Western collusion in the sudden spike this year in ethnic unrest in the
strategic, oil-producing province of Khuzestan and describe it as proof
of a shadowy war that is receiving far less coverage in the
international press than events in Iraq. Since the beginning of 2005,
riots and a bombing campaign timed to coincide with the June
presidential elections rocked Khuzestan's major cities."