by Mahdi Motlagh
Yes, Iran is not a nation state in the textbook European mould. It is multiethnic, multilayered, and historically thick. But the conclusion that fragmentation is the natural sequel to complexity is a logical leap disguised as sobriety. Complexity does not automatically yield collapse. In some political systems, complexity is precisely what enables resilience, because the state does not rely on a single homogenous identity. Instead, it draws on a broader civilisational grammar that can absorb shocks, reinterpret pain, and convert external threat into internal cohesion.
The civilisational engine of power
A durable state in Iran has rarely been built only on bureaucratic competence or economic performance. Those matter, but they are not the final glue. The deeper engine is civilisational legitimacy: the ability to speak in a language that makes disparate groups feel they share a fate, a memory, and a dignity. In Iran, any government that cannot claim some version of this civilisational story struggles to become a national centre of gravity. It may rule a province. It may survive as a faction. But it rarely stabilises as a sovereign order.
This is where many external analyses misread the Islamic Republic. They describe it as a regime imposed upon a reluctant geography, sustained only by coercion. Coercion exists, undeniably. Yet the Islamic Republic also draws from an older reservoir that precedes it and will likely outlive it: the fusion of homeland and moral meaning. In the Iranian imagination, political life is not only about administration. It is also about honour, injustice, sacrifice, and endurance. This is not merely propaganda. It is cultural infrastructure. The state does not invent it from nothing. It channels it.
Civilisational statehood in Iran is not in tension with ethnic diversity. It is built upon it. Persian, Azeri, Kurd, Arab, Baluch, Lur, Turkmen, and others have never been merely demographic categories. They are historical carriers of a shared space that has repeatedly been remapped, contested, and restitched. A civilisational state functions as a narrative that says: you can be different and still belong to an enduring whole. That whole is not always benevolent, not always just, and certainly not always well governed. But it remains a frame that becomes most powerful when it is threatened from the outside.
Why fragmentation talk backfires
Arguments that casually entertain fragmentation tend to assume that they are describing reality. But in Iran, the moment fragmentation becomes an external project, it activates defensive unity across internal divides. Open discussion of partition does not merely weaken the centre. It strengthens the centre by giving it the one gift every embattled government seeks: a clean story.
The story is simple. The enemy does not want reform. The enemy wants dismemberment. Once that frame becomes credible, every local grievance can be securitised. Every protest can be portrayed as a corridor for foreign designs. Every critic can be forced to choose between the imperfect state and the spectre of national disintegration. This is how states survive under siege: not by persuading everyone, but by narrowing the moral and emotional space in which opposition can breathe.
The Islamic Republic has learned to metabolise external pressure into a unified moral framework. Sanctions are presented as collective punishment. Military threats are presented as humiliation. Media campaigns are presented as manipulation. The regime then offers a single translation: we are under siege, therefore we must endure, therefore endurance is virtue, therefore unity is duty. In this framework, hardship becomes evidence of righteousness, survival becomes proof of legitimacy, and every year of resistance becomes a victory of time.
The twelve-day war and the rally effect
The most recent empirical reminder came during the twelve day war of June 2025, when external attack coincided with a visible rise in internal cohesion. This did not mean sudden affection for the government. It meant a heightened collective defensiveness. Many citizens who were angry about corruption and economic hardship did not reinterpret those grievances as a reason to endorse foreign bombardment. The emotional centre shifted toward protecting the homeland and resisting humiliation.
In moments like this, the boundary between national defence and regime survival becomes blurred. The state benefits because it occupies the national symbol. It can claim the flag, the military response, and the rhetoric of endurance. It can also label dissent as sabotage. The result is a contraction of political space and an expansion of security legitimacy. For strategists who imagine that war or maximum pressure will accelerate collapse, the twelve day war should serve as a cautionary datapoint. The immediate effect of external violence is often consolidation, not fragmentation.
Pressure as a machine for cohesion
The deeper problem with pressure based strategies is that they are rarely neutral in how they are experienced. Pressure does not arrive as a clean instrument aimed only at institutions. It is felt as an assault on collective life. When pressure is interpreted as an existential attempt to break Iran, the state can translate it into a narrative of dignity. When pressure is interpreted as an attempt to remove Iran from the regional equation, the state can translate it into a narrative of survival.
This creates a paradox that Washington Post style fragmentation arguments tend to overlook. Policies designed to isolate the state can isolate the opposition instead. They raise the costs of dissent, amplify accusations of treason, and strengthen the emotional appeal of unity. When external voices openly entertain partition as a desirable outcome, the effect intensifies. The message received is not: we support your rights. The message received is: your country is a chessboard.
A contractual realism
If fragmentation is a fantasy and maximum pressure is a cohesion machine, what remains is contractual realism. A sober strategy must begin with an uncomfortable admission: the Islamic Republic is not an external implant that can simply be removed at will. It is also an internal political form that emerged from the country’s ideological and social landscape, including networks that cut across ethnic lines. Accepting this reality is not endorsing repression. It is refusing to confuse moral desire with strategic possibility.
The most credible path is a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) style agreement with stronger guarantees, clearer sequencing, and enforcement mechanisms that make violation costly and immediate. In the strategic environment after 7 October, with the region already combustible and Iran under severe economic strain, a robust agreement is not a concession. It is a containment tool. It reduces incentives for escalation, restores monitoring, and narrows the space for miscalculation.
A well designed agreement can also discipline Iranian behaviour because it transforms time from a weapon into a constraint. Tehran often benefits from ambiguity and delay. A contract with strict verification, snapback clarity, and phased economic relief tied to compliance can reduce the utility of stalling. It can also lower the domestic value of siege narratives by weakening the plausibility of total encirclement.
Anything else is a recipe for regional entropy
Alternative routes are not neutral. War, fragmentation talk, or endless escalation are likely to generate more insecurity, not less. They encourage Iran to harden alliances, deepen ideological military partnerships, and build stronger deterrence networks aimed directly at Israel and at projects like the Abraham Accords. They also push regional actors into a permanent crisis posture, where every flare up risks becoming a multi front event.
The Middle East is already saturated with the consequences of state collapse. The idea that the fragmentation of a large civilisational and multiethnic polity like Iran would produce stability is not realism. It is wishful thinking with catastrophic externalities. A fractured Iran would not be a neat map of new states. It would more likely be a sprawling theatre of militias, proxy corridors, interventions, and black markets. The costs would spill into the Gulf, the Caucasus, Iraq, the Levant, and beyond.
Conclusion
Iran is not a nation state in the narrow European template. But that is precisely why fragmentation is a dangerous misreading. Iran functions as a civilisational state in which external pressure tends to consolidate identity rather than dissolve it. The twelve day war of June 2025 showed that external conflict can increase internal cohesion even amid serious domestic discontent. In this context, treating partition as an acceptable outcome does not weaken the Islamic Republic. It strengthens it by activating the deepest defensive instincts of a diverse society.
The rational option is not to gamble on collapse, but to manage conflict through enforceable agreements. A stronger JCPOA style framework designed for the post 7 October region is the least destabilising tool available. Every other path moves the Middle East closer to a future of intensified insecurity and stronger ideological military blocs aligned with Iran against Israel and against regional normalisation projects.
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