Ethnic minority groups make up 50% of Iran's population
WH notified shortly before Israel began strikes against Iran, officials say
Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson reports on the latest from the Middle East.
The threat posed by Iran to the global community has been on the rise in recent years and security concerns remain heightened just days after Israel hit Tehran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested last month that a regime change in Tehran was on the horizon.
But it is not just Iran’s involvement in state-sponsored terrorism, its apparent push to develop nuclear weapons, its increased ties with major Western adversaries or its direct attacks on Israel that could prompt the fall of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Tehran’s oppressive practices within its own borders could be the key to the regime’s demise, says one analysis for the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Getty Images | Ma'ayan Toaf (GPO))
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Himdad Mustafa, researcher and expert on Iranian and Kurdish affairs for MEMRI, has argued that minority groups within Iran make up roughly 50% of the nation’s population, and though they are often the target of extreme oppression with some living in conditions he described as "open-air prisons," they are uniquely positioned to unite against Tehran.
Mustafa said ethnic minority groups like the Kurds, who make up 10%-15% of Iran’s population and who live primarily in the border regions near nations like Iraq and Turkey, as well as the Baloch people, who make up roughly 5% of the population and live on Iran’s shared border with Pakistan, could play a significant role in overturning the oppressive regime.
"If the whole country rises up, the regime will withdraw its forces from border regions like Kurdistan to central Iran and Tehran," he wrote in a report this month. "That is the time when the West should support the Kurds, Balochs, and other ethnic groups to topple the regime."
The expert told Fox News Digital that these groups sit in resource-rich areas that are not only important to Iran but to the U.S.’s other chief adversaries: Russia and China.
(Encyclopaedia Britannica/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
"If there is prolonged war and instability inside Iran, countries like Turkey, Russia, and China would intervene, either directly or through proxies, to seize territories in Iran they consider important for their national interests," Mustafa said.
The expert explained that Beijing has long viewed Balochistan, which extends into Pakistan and Afghanistan, as an important strategic region for its Belt and Road Initiative.
"In the case of a regime change in Iran it’s highly likely that Pakistan and China would intervene in Iranian Balochistan to prevent the establishment of a Baloch state and to secure the region for their interests," Mustafa said. "Therefore, the U.S. should support these minorities both militarily and politically to secure their regions, which would, in turn, protect the interest of the West.
"If Balochistan remains under the control of U.S.-backed Baloch forces, they could safeguard the interests of the U.S. and its mega project the India-Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor," he said.
Mustafa said there is a rising concern among political elites in the Islamic Republic that the groundwork for a "hybrid war" may be being laid, a scenario in which internal dissidence could collide with external military threats.
Protesters chant slogans during a protest in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 21, 2022. (AP Photo)
Though the 2022 mass protests were brutally brought to a stop by the regime, they revealed the level of discontent across Iran.
The death of Jina Amini, a Kurdish woman, who in September 2022 was arrested by Iran's morality police and later died in a hospital due to her injuries, sparked not only outrage over the institutional discrimination against women across Iran, it also reportedly drove a unified response from oppressed minority groups.
Just days after the initial demonstrations broke out, one of the bloodiest events of the months-long protest occurred in Iranian-Balochestan in which the Baloch people took to the streets in the city of Zahedan to further protest the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl by police commander Col. Ebrahim Khouchakzai.
A protester holds a photo of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa (or Jina) Amini as another waves Iran's former flag during a demonstration against the Iranian regime in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2022. (BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images)
But the event, which has been dubbed "Bloody Friday" or the "Zahedan Massacre," turned violent after the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps showed up to stop the demonstrations and more than 100 people, including 17 children, were killed.
Despite the immense danger that standing against the regime poses, Mustafa said there remains a desire to unite to overturn the regime.
"They have a common enemy that persecutes, imprisons, and executes them, and even denies minority students the right to education in their mother tongues," he said. "This has led them to view their fight for self-determination as a common struggle for national liberation against this common enemy, and this shared struggle is what unites these minority groups."
Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.
