It's never been an ethnic Persian dictatorship

Submitted by David Reid Ross (United States), Jan 25, 2018 at 18:38

GauchoNYC : the Azeris were originally speakers of Iranian dialects (back when it was Adharbadagan / Atropatene: possibly dialects of Median) but they shifted to speaking Turkic during the Middle Ages. An Iranian nationalist would consider most Azeris as brother Iranians speaking the wrong language.

But anyway Iran hasn't been a Persian empire for many centuries. Today it proclaims itself an Islamic Republic, not even Iranian. Under the Shah, who as a "Pahlevi" professed to be a Parthian, it was pan-Iranian. Before that the Safavids were the Turkic sort of Azeris.

All that said, I agree that it is strange to shift the minorities of the Tabarestan into the Persian camp. Personally I would have counted the Lur as Persian because IIRC their homelands and their languages are both descendants of the Achaemenid heartland.

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