Among many other characteristics, Kurdish nationalism and the Kurdish question carry strong crossborder features. Crossborder interaction between the Kurds of different parts of Kurdistan has a long history, in which crossborder solidarity has worked as an invaluable source of movement mobilisation. In this chapter, light is shed on the KDPI leadership’s attempt to re-establish the Iranian Kurdish movement in the 1960s through reliance on crossborder interactions with the Iraqi Kurdish movement, under the leadership of the KDI and Mostafa Barzani. Through this chapter the Iranian Kurdish movement’s interaction with the Kurdish movement in Iraq, and the impact of this interaction on the content and direction of the Iranian Kurdish movement, are highlighted. In addition, in order to reflect on critical aspects of this interaction, minor and major events and episodes that contribute to understanding this crossborder Kurdish interaction are included in this chapter.

This chapter investigates the socio-political and ideological aspects of an event named in the lexicon of the Iranian Kurdish movement as the Kurdish Peasant Uprising of 1952-3 (Rapêr̄ini Werzeran u Cûtyarani Kurdistan 1331-2). This event took place in a period when kurdayêti was the only ideological force behind mobilising the Kurdish people to conduct collective political action. However, throughout this chapter I argue that this uprising highlighted the issue of class conflict in the rural areas of Kurdistan, and challenged the authority of the Kurdish feudal class. In addition, the KDPI’s role, as the only and major ethnonationalist political organisation is assessed and discussed. Due to the way this uprising was conducted, it has been argued to be the first collective class-inspired rebellion in Iranian Kurdistan.

Chapter 10 examines some of the most important ways the Iran-Iraq War and its history impact the IRGC and the Islamic Republic today. These include efforts to derive political and strategic lessons from the conflict and how Iran’s experience in the war gave rise to a security doctrine that seeks above all to establish effective deterrence and ensure Iran’s independence, in part by integrating Iran into the wider region and utilizing asymmetric and soft power. Running through these and many other aspects of the war’s ongoing significance is the conception that the conflict has not ended, and therefore that the Holy Defense continues. Additionally, the chapter puts the IRGC’s published histories in the broader context of the IRGC, of Iran’s ruling establishment, and of how the war’s legacies and lessons shape Iranian policy.

This chapter discusses the regional conditions that have shaped the framework, direction and content of different forms of mobilisation and conduct of the Iranian Kurdish movement from the 1990s to 2015. This analytical focus includes the activities of the political parties of Iranian Kurds based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). This chapter explains why, during this period, the exiled (KRI-based) Iranian Kurdish movement experienced massive decline in its military and political activities. Taking the early 1990s as the starting point for the latest stage of the Iranian Kurdish movement, it is claimed that this phase was a product of comprehensive regional shifts with impacts on Iran’s domestic and regional policy. In addition it is highlighted that movement decline, misconducted crossborder interaction, thickening and diversification within the movement are among some features and hallmarks of this era’s Iranian Kurdish movement.

Chapter 4 continues the examination of how the IRGC analyzes the war’s early stages, and turns to Iran’s response to the Iraqi invasion. That response, according to the Guards, was characterized by a combination of willingness and inability. Just as Iran’s Islamic Revolution provided the underlying catalyst and opportunity for the Iran-Iraq War, it also had a definitive impact on the war’s early stages. Though many Iranians scrambled to repulse the attack on their territory, their nation, and their Islamic Revolution, they generally proved unable to do so. That dynamic exposes another of the connections between the Iran-Iraq War and the Iranian Revolution. One of the central arguments the IRGC authors make in their publications is that Iran’s ability to prosecute the war depended in large part on whether the revolutionary conditions in the country helped or hindered that effort. In this initial stage of the fighting, the disorder left in the revolution’s wake debilitated the Islamic Republic, rendering it unable to prevent Iraq’s occupation of parts of its territory.

The main focus and argument of this chapter is that the Kurdish movement in this period experienced the emergence of several new tendencies that distinguish this era from the previous period (the 1960s). The trends and tendencies which occurred through this era allow us to classify this period as an era of diversification and thickening of the numbers and the spectrum of ideologies of the actors and organisations that participated in this period’s movement. The most eye-catching trend is related to Komala’s announcement of its official activity and its focus on the class problematic in Kurdistan. In line with Komala’s emergence as a new actor within the Kurdish movement, different examples of challenge and difficulties occurred in the relation between this organisation and the KDPI, which resulted in half a decade of war between these major organisations of the Iranian Kurdish movement. These factors and their impact on the post-revolutionary Kurdish movement are discussed in this chapter.

As discussed in Chapter 8, while the exiled section of the Iranian Kurdish movement experienced massive decline in its activity and was forced to passivity (kampnshini), the Kurdish civil society has in the 1990s and more recent decades innovated and experienced a new trend, known as the era of flourishing NGOs and civil society associations. Though emergence of this trend has been argued to be a development that emerged as result of the reform era under Mohammad Khatami’s presidency (1997-2005), the evolution, politicisation and discourse of Kurdish civil society has been unique to this region and has cherished Kurdish nationalism, culture and language. However, as this chapter highlights, another aspect of this development is that through the latest two decades Kurdistan has entered into a new phase of securitisation, expressed through mass arrests, persecutions and executions of Kurdish journalists, civil society and human rights activists, etc. Securitisation of the Kurdish region has been a development intensified through Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s (2005-13) and Hasan Rouhani’s presidencies (2013-).

Chapter 6 examines the Iran-Iraq War’s second critical reversal, Iran’s shift from defense to offense following the liberation of Khorramshahr. Decades later, the Islamic Republic’s decision to continue the war and invade Iraq following the liberation of most of its territory remains a point of contention and misunderstanding. While for most outside analysts the decision exemplifies the aggression, irrationality, and ideological zeal that make the Islamic Republic so dangerous, for the IRGC the invasion was an act not of aggression but of defense. According to the IRGC authors, Iran’s decision to pursue the war’s original aggressors into their own territory was made carefully and rationally and only after the invasion was deemed necessary to restoring Iran’s national security. Dreams of marching straight through Iraq and onward to Jerusalem, though useful rhetorically to rally the troops, played no role in the decision-making process. For too long, however, such rhetoric has been taken literally. Instead of relying on the hyperbole of slogans and battle cries, this chapter utilizes the internal accounts included in the IRGC sources to rewrite the story of how and why Iran decided to invade Iraq.

Chapter 11 examines the ongoing processes of how the war has continued to shape the IRGC and how the IRGC has continued to shape the history of the war. The former is discussed in the first half of the chapter, which assesses how the war transformed the IRGC into a more complete and professional military and how the organization has used its contributions to the war effort to justify its growing power in the years since; and the latter is discussed in the chapter’s second half, which examines how the Holy Defense Research and Documentation Center has expanded and promoted its projects.

Through this chapter light is shed on the different aspects of the Iranian Kurdish movement during the turbulence of the period from 1979 to the 1980s. The Islamic regime’s hostile attitude towards the non-Persian and non-Shiite people and communities’ claim of autonomy and decentralisation of power in Iran is dealt with as an explanation for violent clashes between regime forces and forces of nationalist groups in Iran’s peripheral regions. It is highlighted that the changing regimes in Tehran have, throughout the modern history of the country, failed to provide the non-Persian national communities with their political and cultural rights. In addition, the chapter concentrates on the relations in the twentieth century between Iran’s changing regimes and the non-Persian communities, showing that this relation contains several examples of the regime’s brutal attacks on the country’s Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Turkemens and Arabs. In this chapter I argue that a mutually mistrusting relationship between the sovereign and these mentioned non-Persian national groups has shaped Iran’s modern history of citizenship.