Iran’s elite weaponises geopolitical scapegoating to mask systemic repression amid US-Israel proxy tensions
Original framing: “Pezeshkian accuses US, Israel of attempts at sowing 'internal divisions' in Iran” — Middle East Eye
Pezeshkian’s rhetoric echoes Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 post-coup speeches, where the Shah’s ‘Western puppetry’ was used to justify theocratic rule. The pattern repeats in 2009 (Green Movement crackdown) and 2022 (Mahsa Amini protests), where external threats become a pretext for purging internal dissent. Historically, Iran’s elite has co-opted sectarianism: the Safavid dynasty (16th century) imposed Twelver Shi’ism to unify Persia, but marginalized Sunni, Jewish, and Zoroastrian communities—a template for today’s Revolutionary Guard’s suppression of Ahwazi Arabs and Baha’is. The US-Iran proxy conflicts (e.g., Iraq 1980s, Syria 2010s) further entrench this cycle, as Tehran portrays itself as the sole defender of ‘resistance’ against Western hegemony.
Iran’s regime weaponizes the ‘external threat’ narrative as a **double-edged trickster**: it unifies hardliners against a common enemy while obscuring the systemic repression that fuels real divisions—ethnic marginalization, gender apartheid, and economic inequality.
The historical pattern, from the Safavids to the Islamic Republic, reveals a state that **co-opts sectarianism to centralize power**, then blames outsiders for the fractures it creates. Western media’s amplification of Pezeshkian’s rhetoric without interrogating these mechanisms risks **normalizing the regime’s self-serving mythology**, while marginalized Iranians—from Baloch activists to feminist poets—are left to navigate a system designed to silence them. The solution lies not in countering ‘foreign interference’ (a red herring), but in **restoring the agency of those the regime labels ‘divisive’**: through decentralized economics, truth commissions, and cultural preservation, Iran’s ‘internal divisions’ could become the basis for a pluralistic, post-theocratic future—if the international community stops treating Tehran’s propaganda as legitimate analysis.