I'm John Bachelor. It is December 1979, a constitution underway for the Islamic Republic of Iran Iran led by the Ayatollah

homini who's returned from exile in Paris but there are other Ayatollahs

we need to speak of and Brenda Schaefer's new book Iran is more than

Persia ethnic politics in Iran.

There is the Ayatollah Shariat Madari who speaks for the Azerbaijani at the time. Eventually he'll be persecuted, a house arrested, and die in

1986. But he objected right away to what he perceived to be a Persian-centric Tehran-dominated decision-making

by the Constitution.

And he was a brave man to speak up.

Did others from the other ethnic groups also speak up, Brenda?

The story of the Islamic Republic was that after Fomeni returned to Iran, his emissaries, you know, basically they reached out to all the major ethnic groups and they offered them language rights, cultural rights, schools.

And so if you think about it, they offered this because they knew that this was attractive

to the minority.

So it tells you something about, you know, those who claim that, oh, they don't care about their

languages anymore and it's not, you know, it's not important to them. They try to

seduce them to support the regime with language

and school rights to educate their children and their native languages.

But the minute they gained power,

they crystallize their power they take away this offer of these rights and this

created a huge rebellion among you know most of the ethnic minorities when you read the

history books of the revolution, the Islamic

Revolution in 79, you hardly hear these stories like the uprising of the

Huazi Arabs, the uprising of the Turkmen, you know, very fierce, you know, hundreds killed.

...