This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

Iran is more than Persia, a new book from Professor Brenda Schaefer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Ethnic politics in Iran.

Iran is a bad actor, part of the axis that is now attacking Ukraine.

However, Iran is a state that emerges from the 20th century, here in the 21st century,

with much paradox. And Professor Schaefer's book introduces us to some

aspects of those paradoxes uh brenda a very good evening to thank you for this persianness

and the farsi language are presumed this far away from ir Iran to be the language of the whole country

and the culture of the whole country. Your book makes it very quickly obvious that that is not the

case, that the Persianness is perhaps 50 percent, but the languages are as United Nations as we could ask. The ethnic minorities, each of them

have distinct profiles. They come from far away. Some have different religions than Shia.

Some have the religions of the area. All of this is in play all the time in Iran. So I want to begin

with the largest of the ethnic minorities, the Azerbaijani's, the Azaris. They are associated with

the northwest of Iran. Who are the Azerbaijani Iranians today? And how do they think of themselves?

Good evening to you.

Good evening, John.

You know, we use the terms Iran and Persia interchangeably for, you know, for a couple hundred years.

But actually, as you said, you said correctly, you know, Iran is something very different than just the Persian group. That would be like

calling the British English or calling all the, you know, the Soviets, and, you know, when the Soviet

Union broke up, we discovered it was a whole mosaic of peoples and peoples with different

aspirations. But actually, you know, you started asking about the Azerbaijani Turks in Iran.

Up until the 20th century, Iran was always a Turk-O-Iranian empire with the political leadership

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