Ethnicities in Iran

[1] The largest groups in this category include Persians, mostly referred to as Fars (who form 61% of the Iranian population) and Kurds (who form 10% of the Iranian population), with other communities including Semnanis, Khorasani Kurds, Larestanis, Khorasani Balochs, Gilakis, Laks, Mazandaranis, Lurs, Tats, Talysh and Baloch.

Other Turkic groups include the Turkmen, Afshar, Qashqai, Khorasani Turks, Shahsevan, Khalaj and Kazakhs peoples.

[5] Many of the traditional tribal groups have become urbanized and culturally assimilated during the 19th and 20th centuries, so that ethnic identity in many cases is less than clear-cut.

[17][18] They occupy Lorestan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Khuzestan, Hamadan, Markazi, Ilam, Isfahan, Fars, Bushehr and Kuh-Gilu-Boir Ahmed provinces.

"[20] In the Mu'jam Al-Buldan of Yaqut al-Hamawi mention is made of the Lurs as a Kurdish tribe living in the mountains between Khuzestan and Isfahan.

Gilaks play an important role in provincial and national economy, supplying a large portion of the region's agricultural staples, such as rice, grains,[27] tobacco[28] and tea.

They are indigenous to a region shared between Republic of Azerbaijan and Iran which spans the South Caucasus and the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea.

[clarification needed][32][33][34][35][36][37] A large part of Qazvin province and the majority of Takestan county is inhabited by Tat people.

According to an estimation presented by the anthropologist Sekandar Amanolahi in peer-reviewed journal Iran and the Caucasus, the number of Iranian Turkophones "does not exceed 9 millions".

[63] Immigrant Azerbaijani communities have been represented by people prominent not only among urban and industrial working classes but also in commercial, administrative, political, religious, and intellectual circles.

The Khorasani Turks are Turkic-speaking people inhabiting parts of north-eastern Iran, and in the neighbouring regions of Turkmenistan up to beyond the Amu Darya River.

The biblical books of Isaiah, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, and Esther contain references to the life and experiences of Jews in Iran.

In addition, there are several thousand in Iran who are, or who are the direct descendants of, Jews who have converted to Islam and the Bahá'í Faith.

Armenians used to inhabit a large portion of modern-day northern Iran, most significantly on the western shores of Lake Urmia.

The newly formed Armenian community in Isfahan played a considerable role in Iran's economic and cultural development.

Once a very large minority in Iran mainly due to mass deportations by the various early modern age and modern age Iranian empires (Safavids, Afsharids, and Qajars), of their Georgian subjects, nowadays, due to intermarrying and assimilating the number of Georgians in Iran is estimated to be over 100,000.

Like with the Georgians, once a very large minority in Iran all the way from the Safavid to the Qajar era, the vast majority of the Circassians have been assimilated into the population nowadays.

Circassians alongside the Georgians were imported en masse by the Shahs to fulfil roles in the civil administration, the military, and the royal Harem, but also as craftsmen, farmers, amongst other professions.

Their total number nowadays is unknown due to heavy assimilation and lack of censuses based on ethnicity, but are known to be significant.

However, the use of regional and tribal languages in the press and mass media, as well as for teaching of their literature in schools, is allowed in addition to PersianFurther, Article 19 of the Iranian constitution adds: All people of Iran, whatever the ethnic group or tribe to which they belong, enjoy equal rights; color, race, language, and the like, do not bestow any privilege.There is in fact, a considerable publication (book, newspaper, etc.)

[92] Regional and local radio programmes are broadcast in Arabic, Armenian, Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Bandari, Georgian, Persian, Kurdish, Mazandarani, Turkoman, and Turkish.

"[94] In a related report, Amnesty International says: Despite constitutional guarantees of equality, individuals belonging to minorities in Iran, who are believed to number about half of the population of about 70 millions, are subject to an array of discriminatory laws and practices.

These include land and property confiscations, denial of state and para-statal employment under the gozinesh criteria and restrictions on social, cultural, linguistic and religious freedoms which often result in other human rights violations such as the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience, grossly unfair trials of political prisoners before Revolutionary Courts, corporal punishment and use of the death penalty, as well as restrictions on movement and denial of other civil rights.

John Bradley is of the opinion that:[96] Iran’s ethnic minorities share a widespread sense of discrimination and deprivation toward the central Tehran government.

Fueled by these long-standing economic and cultural grievances against Tehran, unrest among the country’s large groups of ethnic minorities is increasing.'

The violence in remote regions such as Khuzestan and Baluchistan clearly has ethnic components, but the far greater causes of the poverty and unemployment that vexes members of those ethnic groups are government corruption, inefficiency, and a general sense of lawlessness, which all Iranians, including Persians, must confront.Separatist tendencies, led by some groups such as the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran and Komalah in Iranian Kurdistan, for example, had led to frequent unrest and occasional military crackdown throughout the 1990s and even to the present.

[98]One of the major internal policy challenges during the centuries up until now for most or all Iranian governments has been to find the appropriate and balanced approach to the difficulties and opportunities caused by this diversity, particularly as this ethnic or sectarian divisions have often been readily utilized by foreign powers, notably during the Iran–Iraq War.

Likewise the Baluch, Turkmen, Armenians and Kurds, although with bonds to their kinsmen on the other side of borders, are conscious of the power and richness of Persian culture and willing to participate in it.Foreign governments, both before[100][101] and after the Islamic Revolution have often been accused of attempting to de-stabilize Iran through exploiting ethnic tensions.

[103] Ahwazi Arabs dissidents in Iran have been persecuted by the Iranian authorities, with a number of activists reporting being arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and forced to give false confessions.

Professor Efraim Karsh traces out the origins of Saddam Hussein's wish to annex Khuzestan using the ethnic card:[106] Nor did Saddam's territorial plans go beyond the Shatt al-Arab and a small portion of the southern region of Khuzestan, where he hoped, the substantial Arab minority would rise against their Iranian oppressors.