Terrorism in Iran??

This past Sunday a series of bomb blasts rocked Ahvaz, a city in the Khuzestan province of Iran. The attacks were followed up by an additional explosion in the center of Tehran. All told, the bombings killed at least nine people. Iranian officials say that the attacks were meant to derail the upcoming election. These attacks once again draw international attention to Khuzestan, which suffered from large scale riots two months ago.

The Khuzestan province of Iran lies in the southwest corner of the country and borders Iraq. Khuzestan is home to the majority of Arabs that live in Iran. The region suffered heavily during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and now Arabs complain that they are discriminated against by the country’s Persian majority.

Khuzestan has a history of secessionist attempts. The most recent was in 1897 when Sheikh Khaz’al tried to form the independent Emirate of Arabistan. Reza Shah ended the short-lived kingdom when he arrested the Sheikh in 1925.

Some speculate that burgeoning Pan-Arabism is at work within Khuzestan, creating a hostile climate of potential ethnic conflict. Will the emergence of a new Shia friendly Iraq heighten this tension? Would the Shia Arabs of Khuzestan wish to secede and join that Iraq? The issue is further complicated by the fact that up to half of the Iranian Arabs living in Khuzestan are Sunni…at least that’s what Al Jazeera says.