By Xavier Villar
MADRID - In certain foreign policy circles in Washington and Tel Aviv, the fragmentation of Iran periodically re-emerges as an ostensibly elegant solution to a persistent problem: how to contain the Islamic Republic without bearing the costs of direct confrontation.
Within this framework, balkanization is framed not as an act of aggression, but as an almost natural outcome of Iran’s internal tensions, and even as a desirable end state for regional stability. Recent editorials in influential outlets have once again lent oxygen to this thesis, portraying Iran’s ethnic diversity less as a historical feature than as a structural flaw waiting to be exploited.
Yet this reading reveals more about the strategic anxieties of those who advance it than about Iran’s sociopolitical reality. The notion that Iran stands on the brink of imminent ethnic disintegration finds little support in either empirical evidence or historical experience. Rather than rigorous analysis, it reflects an ideological projection that turns geopolitical desire into political diagnosis. Iranian diversity is cast as pathology, not as what it has been for centuries: a constitutive condition of a civilization-state that has learned to govern difference without dissolving into it.
For Israel, security has never been a purely defensive concept. Since its founding, it has functioned as a comprehensive grammar of foreign policy, a lens through which every regional relationship is interpreted as a potential threat equation. Shaped by geopolitical isolation and a narrative of permanent exceptionalism, this logic tends to expand until it justifies strategies aimed less at stability than at the preventive neutralization of adversaries. When security becomes an absolute principle, complexity itself becomes suspect, and the diversity of others can be reimagined as an opportunity for intervention.
Security as strategy, fragmentation as tool
In this context, Iran’s ethnic and linguistic plurality appears as a tempting target. The promotion of separatist narratives, indirect support for peripheral groups, or the media amplification of local tensions are not isolated tactics, but elements of a broader strategic vision aimed at weakening the internal cohesion of a regional actor perceived as irreducible. This logic is not new. It belongs to a longer geopolitical tradition that treats the fragmentation of the other as a form of self-preservation.
Such an approach, however, is neither neutral nor benign. By reducing complex communities to mere instruments of pressure, it strips them of genuine political agency. Legitimate demands for social justice, cultural recognition, or economic development are subordinated to external agendas that have little to do with self-determination. Security, in this framing, ceases to be a shared good and becomes a technology of power, one that legitimizes identity manipulation and social engineering from the outside.
Influential institutions in Washington have played a systematic role in consolidating this perspective. Neoconservative think tanks have repeatedly presented Iran’s multi-ethnic composition as its primary strategic vulnerability. Analysts associated with these spaces have depicted Iranian minorities as populations naturally inclined towards secession, provided they receive sufficient external backing. This narrative has found resonance in parts of the Israeli media, where proposals have surfaced advocating the formation of regional coalitions to promote Iran’s partition, coupled with security guarantees for regions allegedly willing to break away.
These proposals should not be dismissed as marginal rhetorical provocations. They reflect a conception of regional order in which the territorial integrity of rival states is viewed as a legitimate obstacle to be removed. Balkanization, in this sense, is not an accident but a tool. The language of minority rights is invoked, yet the ultimate objective is not emancipation but instrumentalization within a strategy of structural weakening.
Historically, this way of thinking is rooted in the legacy of late twentieth-century ethnonationalism. Following the collapse of large imperial and federal structures, ethnic identity was elevated to an almost exclusive organizing principle of politics. Borders came to be seen as historical errors in need of correction, and cultural differences as evidence of state illegitimacy. In this context, many powers learned to read the internal tensions of other countries not as problems to be resolved, but as levers for intervention.
Israel developed this logic early through its well-known periphery doctrine. Formulated in the 1950s, it sought to break the Arab encirclement by forging alliances with non-Arab states and with minorities perceived as oppressed by Arab nationalism. Born of a mix of genuine vulnerability and ideological exceptionalism, this strategy normalized a foreign policy that treats the fragmentation of others as a natural extension of its own security.
Diversity and integration in a civilization-state
Iran, by virtue of its history, size, and regional weight, occupies a central place in this strategic imagination. Yet the reading of its diversity is profoundly reductive. Iran is not a state artificially constructed along recent ethnic lines. It is a political entity with historical continuity, where plurality has been managed through long processes of cultural, religious, and administrative integration. Most of its population shares not only a common citizenship, but also historical reference points, collective experiences, and a shared political horizon.
The case of the Azeri population is particularly instructive. Frequently portrayed as a natural candidate for secession, this community in fact constitutes one of the pillars of Iran’s political system. With a strong presence in religious, intellectual, and administrative elites, Azeris do not occupy a marginal or peripheral position. Their integration into national life is deep, and their identity is not perceived as incompatible with belonging to the Iranian state. The idea of an independent “South Azerbaijan” lacks social traction precisely because it does not correspond to the lived experience of most Iranian Azeris.
This pattern is not unique to one community. Across the country, multiple identities coexist in non-hierarchical ways. Sociological studies have shown that many Iranians do not define themselves through a single ethnic affiliation, but through flexible combinations of language, religion, region, and citizenship. This complexity challenges the rigid categories often employed from outside to diagnose vulnerabilities that do not, in practice, exist.
Recent history offers clear examples of how this cohesion is activated in the face of external threats. During the war with Iraq, the invasion of predominantly Arab regions did not produce the separatist uprising Baghdad anticipated. Instead, the aggression reinforced a sense of shared fate that transcended internal differences. Decades later, episodes of military escalation with Israel have revealed a similar pattern. Attacks affecting culturally emblematic cities in the north-west did not generate internal fractures, but rather expressions of national solidarity.
These responses cannot be explained solely by state action. They reflect a shared historical memory shaped by external interventions, attempted dispossession, and experiences of collective resistance. The perception of siege, far from being an empty propagandistic construct, draws on concrete episodes that have left a mark across generations. This historical consciousness functions as a cohesive element that largely neutralizes attempts at induced fragmentation.
Acknowledging the robustness of Iran’s national framework does not mean denying the existence of internal challenges that require sustained attention. In several provinces, including those with greater cultural and linguistic diversity, imbalances persist in development, resource management, and administrative coordination. Debates over water access, infrastructure investment, or institutional efficiency reflect legitimate public policy concerns and demands for improvement within the existing state framework.
It is essential to distinguish between these claims, which seek more equitable and effective integration, and the notion of political projects aimed at territorial fragmentation, which lack broad social support and do not represent dominant aspirations. In practice, most of these dynamics are embedded in a shared sense of national belonging and in expectations of gradual internal policy evolution, not in the rejection of the Iranian state itself.
The risks of turning fantasy into policy
The tendency to interpret every protest as a prelude to secession reveals a profound misunderstanding of Iranian politics. It also betrays a colonial gaze that assumes non-Persian identities are, by definition, oppressed and waiting to be liberated from outside. Such a premise ignores the local forms of negotiation, belonging, and resistance that structure Iran’s political life.
Moreover, balkanization as a strategy entails risks that its proponents rarely acknowledge. The fragmentation of Iran would not produce a more stable regional order, but a landscape of overlapping conflicts, resource disputes, and power vacuums readily exploitable by extremist actors. Experience elsewhere suggests that state disintegration tends to unleash dynamics beyond the control of those who initiate it.
Even regional actors that compete with Tehran have reason to view such a scenario with caution. A fractured Iran would export instability across all its borders, unsettling fragile balances in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf. Major powers with economic and security interests in the region would likewise see their long-term calculations undermined.
Ultimately, the balkanization of Iran is not a realistic policy but a strategic fantasy that confuses desire with possibility. The country’s challenges are real and profound, and they require complex internal transformations that can only emerge from endogenous political processes. Reducing Iran to an ethnic puzzle ready to be dismantled from outside is not only analytically shallow, but potentially disastrous.
History suggests that Iranian cohesion, far from being fragile, has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for adaptation and resilience. It has survived invasions, revolutions, and prolonged wars. There is little reason to believe it will not also survive the latest attempts to imagine its disappearance from afar.
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