24 February 2006
The intelligence wing of the US marines has launched an investigation into Iran's ethnic minorities at a time of heightened tensions along the border with Iraq and friction between capitals.
Iranian activists involved in a classified research project for the marines told the FT the Pentagon was examining the depth and nature of grievances against the central Islamic government, and appeared to be studying whether Iran would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq.
US intelligence experts suggested the marines' effort could represent the early stages of contingency plans for a ground assault on Iran. Alternatively, it could be an attempt to evaluate the implications of the unrest in Iranian border regions for marines stationed in Iraq, as well as Iranian infiltration. Others suggest it simply highlights competition between the various US intelligence organisations.
Whatever the motive, the survey will add to Iranian anxieties about Washington's intentions.
The research effort comes at a critical moment between Iran and the US. Last week the Bush administration asked Congress for Dollars 75m (Pounds 43m) to promote democratic change within Iran, having already mustered diplomatic support at the UN to counter Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme.
At the same time, Iran demanded that the UK withdraw its troops from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, which lies close to its border. Iran has repeatedly accused both the US and UK of inciting explosions and sabotage in oil-rich frontier regions where Arab and Kurdish minorities predominate. The US and UK accuse Iran of meddling in Iraq and supplying weapons to insurgents.
A marines spokesman confirmed that the Marines Corps Intelligence Activity Production and Analysis Company had commissioned Hicks and Associates, a defence contractor, to conduct two research projects into Iraqi and Iranian ethnic groups.
The purpose was "so that we and our troops would have a better understanding of and respect for the various aspects of culture in those countries", he said.
The first study, on Iraq, was completed in late 2003, more than six months after the US invasion. The Iran study was finished late last year.
While most analysts would agree that Iran has a far stronger sense of national identity than Iraq, its ethnic mix is even more complex than its neighbour.
Different in language and divided between followers of Sunni and Shia Islam, the ethnic minorities have little coherence. At times, tensions among the minorities are greater than with Tehran.
Iran's strongly centralised government does not release statistics on the ethnic groups that mainly inhabit sensitive border regions with Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Farsi-speaking Persians who dominate the central government are believed to make up a slim majority, followed by Azeris and Kurds in the north and west, Arabs in the oil-rich south-west and Baluch in the south-east.
Diplomats in Washington expressed shock at the possible implications of the marine research.
The FT interviewed several Iranians in the US who were invited to help. Some refused, seeing it as part of an effort to break up Iran. But several exiled politicians representing minority groups opposed to the Islamic regime did take part, although they said they wanted a peaceful transition to a democratic, federal Iran and were opposed to any US military action.
Mauri Esfandiari, US representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, which ended its armed struggle in 1997 and is based mostly in northern Iraq, said he believed the Pentagon was acting on its long-standing distrust of CIA and State Department analysis. He thought the Pentagon was looking to counter the prevailing administration view that US support for Iran's minorities would create a disastrous backlash.
"They want to study and see if the State Department's chaos theory is a valid hypothesis," he said. The US could not look to the Kurds to support an invasion as they did in Iraq, he said.
"Iran will become democratic only if it is built by the Iranians. The democracy movement is strong enough to find its way without military struggle."
Karim Abdian, head of the Ahvaz Human Rights Organisation, which campaigns on behalf of Iranian Arabs in the south-west, said he was told the report would be made public.
Mr Abdian said he did not know the motives behind the survey but the questions put to him were wide ranging.
Exiled Iranians from various ethnic groups held a "Congress" of nationalities in London a year ago.
They issued a "manifesto" for a federal, democratic Iran with separation of mosque and state.
Iran has recently experienced some of the worst unrest and violence among its Kurdish and Arab populations in recent years.
Although the root causes of the unrest economic and cultural grievances are long standing, analysts in the US believe that events in Iraq are serving as a catalyst.
Last month two bombs exploded in Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan province close to Iraq. Eight people were killed on the same day that President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad had been due to visit.
Six were killed in bombings in October. Iran has repeatedly accused the UK and US of being behind the violence, using separatist Arab groups in southern Iraq to foment instability. London and Washington have strongly denied the allegations.
US State Department officials recently met representatives of the London "Congress" in the first such talks between the Bush administration and a coalition claiming to represent Iran's minorities, participants told the FT.
Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA specialist on the Middle East, says the State Department under Condoleezza Rice, and not the Pentagon, is running Iran policy.
He said the department was "several steps removed" from discussing covert action and "nowhere near the point" of trying to use separatist tendencies among minorities as traction against the Tehran regime. No one knew whether that would work, he added.
By Guy Dinmore
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