Amid fears of a renewed Israel-Iran conflict, another danger is quietly looming: the risk of Iran sliding into civil war. Such wars rarely erupt suddenly; they emerge when rival social orders challenge the state’s authority. Iran has stood at this threshold before, and the shadow hangs once more over the country. Rethinking the rights of ethnic minorities and the right to self-determination is now more urgent than ever.
Social Orders and the Roots of Civil War
Civil war is not defined only by violence or armed revolt. Uprisings and scattered clashes, however bloody, do not in themselves mark the entry into civil war. What sets civil war apart is the rise of alternative social orders: powers that can—however imperfectly—impose their own rules, regulate violence, and create political or administrative structures. When such orders take root within the national territory and the central state no longer holds a monopoly on authority, a country has effectively entered civil war.
Global examples abound. In Afghanistan, the Taliban acted not only as an armed force but as the carrier of an alternative order, enforcing laws, creating administrations, and collecting taxes. In Turkey, Kurdish uprisings moved from local protest to creating parallel political and military institutions. In Ukraine, the Donbas independence movement tipped the scales toward civil war once it built an alternative social order, before the conflict shifted into Russian war.
Iran too has faced such moments. After the 1979 revolution, local self-rule in Kurdistan and the brief rise of quasi-state institutions emerged alongside central authority, while a proliferation of political parties also sought to create rival social orders. In Khuzestan, Arab cultural and linguistic demands have remained a constant source of tension. In the 1940s, during World War II, the Azerbaijani Democratic Party and the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad both established alternative orders. These episodes show that Iran has repeatedly stood on the edge of civil war.
Yet civil war never fully materialized. The central state relied on hard repression, ideological mobilization, and the use of external wars to consolidate unity at home. In the 1980s, the Islamic Republic used the eight-year war with Iraq to crush domestic dissidents and forces capable of building rival social orders, while also suppressing demands for justice, women’s rights, and above all the rights of ethnic minorities. But this did not resolve the question of self-determination. Instead, it left an open, festering wound in Iran’s modern history.
International Dimensions and Iran’s Modern Contradictions
Modern civil wars always unfold in connection with international dynamics. Local uprisings and crises only become sustained wars when they gain outside support—financial, military, transnational networks, or political legitimacy. This is why civil wars cannot be seen as purely domestic. In Syria, protests remained an uprising until regional and global powers—from Iran and Turkey to Russia—turned it into full-scale war. The slide began when Bashar al-Assad, backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, met peaceful protests with brutal violence. In Daraa, security forces tortured teenagers for graffiti, sparking the crisis. Later, Tehran deepened the conflict by fueling sectarian divides between Shia and Sunni.
Iran’s own history shows how quickly domestic crises gain international dimensions. The Jangal movement in Gilan was shaped by the Russian Revolution. The Azerbaijani Democratic Party and the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad were tied to the post-World War II presence of Soviet troops. Even uprisings in Khuzestan, because of the region’s oil geopolitics, have always drawn foreign attention.
Today, the situation is similar. While all eyes are on the possibility of an Israeli attack and a repeat of the 12-day war, Iran is more vulnerable than ever to the erosion of state monopoly and the rise of rival social orders. National divisions, deepening social inequalities, political illegitimacy, and the blockage of peaceful paths to reform all create fertile ground.
Signs of crisis are visible. According to Reuters, after the 12-day war the Iranian government turned inward with harsh repression, arresting hundreds and executing several Kurdish political prisoners. The New York Post wrote of the regime borrowing from a “North Korean model” of social control. Meanwhile, Israeli analysts in the Jerusalem Post warn that a potential collapse of the Iranian regime could push the country into civil war.
Inside the country, reformist newspapers openly call for “courageous reworking of governance” and warn against continued political deadlock. The killing of two young men in Hamedan by Basij forces and the subsequent protests of thousands chanting “Iranians may die but will not accept humiliation,” show how everyday violence can ignite collective resistance. The rolling blackouts and water shortages in Tehran—reported domestically under headlines like “Life in Darkness and Without Water”—signal the erosion of state capacity in managing daily life.
The Threshold of Civil War
Civil war does not always begin with large-scale battles. Violence may remain limited, but if social groups succeed in building parallel political, administrative, or legal institutions, the country has effectively crossed into civil war. Ivory Coast and Moldova make this clear: even without constant fighting, the existence of competing social orders meant war in progress. In Iran, if local councils, ethnic organizations, or social networks establish even basic forms of alternative authority, the country will be at that threshold.
At this point, the question of ethnic minorities and their right to self-determination becomes crucial. If these rights are denied, if cultural and linguistic demands are repressed, and if ethnic minorities remain excluded from political structures, the slide toward civil war will only accelerate. Iran’s history shows that repression, even if temporarily effective, never resolves these conflicts; it only drives them deeper.
A Decisive Moment
As a multi-national country, Iran now stands at a decisive crossroads. On one side looms the threat of war, with the possibility of a direct conflict between Israel and the Islamic Republic. On the other is the prospect of civil war. Together, these dangers could produce a bloody future.
The only way to avoid it is to rethink governance now, in the spirit of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement: opening space for political freedoms and elections, recognizing sexual, cultural, and linguistic diversity, and making the right to self-determination part of the official political order. Otherwise, as both history and contemporary experience show, Iran will sooner or later face collapse—not from outside, but from within.
