Iran: A Balkanization Example

 I spent two hours yesterday going over Iran demographics.  If you wanted a perfect example relating to old Yugoslavia....Iran is it.

The chief group making up about 60-percent of the population....'true-Persians'....making up most of the population in the center and western portion of the country.  This is the Islamic Shia group, and makes the national identity of their religion....the central theme.

The Kurds?  They make up around 7-to-9 percent of the population, and relate to the Sunni-religion.  This group highly divided?  Oh yeah.

There's the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI/KDPI)....been around since 1946.  There's the Komala (Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan)....who lean a bit to the left.  There's the PJAK (Kurdistan Free Life Party).  And there's the PAK (Kurdistan Freedom Party).

Then you have the Baloch tribal folks....mostly around 2-to-3 percent of the population....who are Sunni.  They exist on the far SE of Iran, and relate more to a poverty 'class' than anything else.

Then you have the ethnic Arabs (making up around 3-percent of the  population....mostly concentrated in Khuzestan)....in the SW of Iran....cut out of the local oil profits.

Finally, you have the Azerbaijani (Azeri) Separatism (NW of Iran)....the big minority (figure between 16-to-20 percent of the country.

There's no doubt that as the leadership authority had oil profits rolling in....it benefited the Persian community more than any other group.  But these other groups could never find a connection to bridge gaps and unify.

It is a country that needs to fragment like Yugoslavia did.  If I were Trump....I'd connect to the SW and SE corners of the country....with the higher ethnic groups, and let them have the weapons to fragment the Persian landscape.