An Iranian Civil War?

The Iranian people will surely have a better future if the country’s Islamist regime falls, right? Well, don’t be so sure. Inasmuch as Iranians deserve to be free of their Islamist oppressors, the fall of the Islamic Republic wouldn’t necessarily usher in a new era of freedom and democracy. In fact, the end of the mullahs’ brutal regime will probably be followed by a period of bloody civil war.

One reason for this scenario is the lack of an alternative leadership. There is simply no leader or group of leaders with enough popular support to govern Iran and hold it together. Many point to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, as a potential leader for the country if the Islamic Republic falls. While it’s true that he does command some popular support in Iran and among Iranian expatriates, he likely doesn’t have enough support to command leadership of the entire country if the mullahs’ regime is toppled. He would face stiff opposition from certain sectors of Iranian society, particularly Iran’s non-Persian ethnic communities, who have historically suffered unrelenting oppression at the hands of both the current Islamist regime and the Shahs that ruled prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

With no alternative leadership having enough popular support to hold Iran together after the fall of the Islamist regime, it is almost certain that the country will descend into civil war—one that may be much bloodier and destabilizing for the Middle East and beyond than the recent civil war in Syria. There will likely be multiple factions fighting for power in the country, including supporters of the pre-1979 monarchy, remnants of the Islamist regime, and militias belonging to Iran’s various ethnic communities—Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, etc.

Some of these factions may garner the support of neighboring countries or other foreign powers, in the same way certain factions in Syria’s civil war were supported by different countries. Recall that Iran and Russia supported the Assad regime, the U.S. backed the Kurds fighting Islamic State in the northeast, and Turkey supported the Sunni Islamists that ultimately deposed Assad and are now Syria’s rulers.

In the event of a civil war in Iran, Turkey will probably support anyone fighting the Kurds in Iran’s northwest, in order to prevent Kurdish separatism from spreading to its own Kurdish population, while Pakistan will support forces opposing Baluchi rebels in Iran’s southeast as an extension of its fight against Baluchi separatists within its own borders. The U.S. and Russia will likely support opposing factions. Needless to say, foreign countries engaging in proxy wars during an Iranian civil war will cause much more carnage, just as they did in Syria.

An Iranian civil war could also drive hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring countries, who wouldn’t necessarily welcome them with open arms. It’s hard to imagine, for example, mainly Sunni states like Turkey and Pakistan welcoming an influx of hundreds of thousands of Shiite refugees. In any event, a mass refugee exodus from Iran would almost certainly have a destabilizing effect on other countries in the region.

Furthermore, a refugee crisis precipitated by a civil war in Iran would not be limited to the Middle East. Europe could be looking at another migration crisis, similar to and perhaps larger than the one caused by the civil war in Syria. This will surely have an effect on politics and civil society in Europe, and will likely lead to the further rise of far-right parties and politicians, who have recently gained support as the result of many European citizens’ anger towards non-European immigrants entering their countries. Indeed, the rapid growth of Europe’s Muslim population has led to a sharp rise in Islamic fundamentalism on the continent. A major influx of Muslims from Iran will almost certainly fuel more Islamic extremism.

One possible way to lessen the possibility of civil war would be for Iran’s new leaders to allow the country’s non-Persian ethnic communities to separate and form their own independent states if they so choose. Doing this would prevent armed insurrection by these communities, and make it much easier to unite what remains of Iran.

It is very unlikely, however, that Iran’s new leaders would allow this. After all, who among Iran’s post-Islamic Republic leaders would want to preside over the end of the Persian Empire? Other countries will also not welcome the rise of new, independent states as a result of Iran’s breakup. For example, Turkey will do anything to prevent the rise of an independent Kurdish state, and Pakistan certainly won’t want a new Baluchi state on its border. Western powers also normally frown upon endorsing the breakup of a country, even if that country’s borders don’t make sense. Thus, Iraq was kept together following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and the current U.S. Trump Administration has worked tirelessly to keep Syria together, despite the new Islamist regime’s massacres of the country’s Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish minority populations.

In short, the fall of the Islamist regime in Iran would be a blessing for the Iranian people, the Middle East and the entire freedom-loving world, but it will likely be followed by the curse of civil war the likes of which the region has never seen.