A critical study of the ethnic policy of the first and second Pahlavi governments (1304-1357)

The purpose of this article is to critically examine the ethnic policy of the first and second Pahlavi governments. The main question of the research is what was the approach of the first and second Pahlavi governments towards the tribes and what policies did they follow in this regard? The main hypothesis of the research is that Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Shah, by appealing to the view of national unity, adopted different authoritarian, discriminatory, restrictive and repressive approaches towards ethnic groups. The results of the research show that these two considered national unity as a prelude to the political integration of the country and a solution to reduce ethnic conflicts and local riots. Therefore, to realize it, they turned to the policy of assimilation and tried to eliminate the differences in the way of life, language, clothing, etc. But this ethnic policy and the imposed methods of its implementation produced opposite results and finally provided the ground for the increase of ethnic tendencies. The research method in this article is based on collecting documents and sources in a library manner and then analyzing the obtained data and information.