In October 1979,
Ministry of Interior
An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs.
Lists of current ministries of internal affairs
Named "ministry"
* Ministr ...
held elections for
local councils in 150 cities
along with elections coordinated and overseen for councils in thousands of villages and nomadic communities.
It was a move to address the importance of the local councils raised by
the revolutionaries
The Revolutionaries (sometimes known as "Revolutionaires") was a Jamaican reggae band.
Career
Set up in 1975 as the house band of the Channel One Studios owned by Joseph Hoo Kim, The Revolutionaries with Sly Dunbar on drums and Bertram "R ...
and to replace the councils with those existing since the
Pahlavi dynasty
The Pahlavi dynasty ( fa, دودمان پهلوی) was the last Iranian royal dynasty, ruling for almost 54 years between 1925 and 1979. The dynasty was founded by Reza Shah Pahlavi, a non-aristocratic Mazanderani soldier in modern times, who ...
.
argues that the councils were put on hold on fears of separatist aspirations, mainly because of
eruptions of armed conflict in the provinces amidst
Iran–Iraq War
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Counci ...
.
According to Wilfried Buchta, in
Kurdish and
Turkmen regions the councils were "dominated by secular
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in so ...
groups, wielded considerable influence both at the municipal and at the village level".
In
Zahedan
Zahedan (Balochi and fa, , ' ) is a city and capital of Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Iran. At the 2016 census, its population was 587,730.
The city was the site of a deadly crackdown in October 2022, with dozens citizens killed by pro-g ...
, the
clerical and
regionalist Muslim Union Party (''hezb-e ettehad al-Moslemin'') led by
Abdulaziz Mullazadeh that advocated more representation of
Baluch people in the central government, played an active role in the campaigns and fueled the tensions between
Sunni and
Shia
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the ...
communities despite boycotting the election. The majority of the seats were won by non-Baluch candidates and on 12 October 1979 ethnic unrest occurred in the city, before the result was
annulled
Annulment is a legal procedure within secular and religious legal systems for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost ...
.
References
{{Iranian elections
1979
Events
January
* January 1
** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the ''International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the ''Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the song ...
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkm ...
Annulled elections
October 1979 events in Asia