Azerbaijan.US
The potential fragmentation of Iran would not serve the interests of Azerbaijan and should be viewed only as a last-resort scenario, Azerbaijani political analyst Heydar Oguz said during a broadcast on Musavat TV.
According to Oguz, despite growing instability inside Iran, the country’s territorial disintegration would create serious regional risks, including prolonged chaos, border insecurity, and unpredictable geopolitical consequences. For Azerbaijan, he argued, such an outcome would bring more uncertainty than strategic advantage.
At the same time, the analyst stressed that the current Iranian political system is facing a deep crisis of legitimacy. He pointed to the scale of violence used against protesters in recent weeks, citing public acknowledgements by Iranian officials and medical sources that suggest thousands of people have been killed during the crackdown.
“A regime that kills its own citizens on such a scale inevitably loses the trust of society,” Oguz said. “And a government that has lost public trust cannot survive in the long term.”
Oguz argued that state power cannot be sustained by force alone. In his view, political legitimacy is not defined solely by laws or institutions, but by moral acceptance from the population. Once that moral legitimacy collapses, fear and repression become the only remaining tools – and those tools, he said, have historically failed to preserve regimes.
The analyst also drew historical parallels, noting that authoritarian systems often attempt to compensate for declining public support by appealing to ideology, nationalism, or so-called “sacred values.” Such strategies, he argued, may delay political collapse but cannot prevent it.
“Iran’s rulers are trying to preserve control through coercion and ideological narratives,” Oguz said. “But history shows that when a government turns violence against its own people, it accelerates its own downfall.”
Summing up, Oguz said that while Azerbaijan has no interest in seeing Iran break apart, the current trajectory makes the survival of the existing regime increasingly unlikely unless it undergoes profound political change.
