Arabs and Kurds in Iran live not only on the margins of national narrative but also at a geographical border that keeps their Iranian identities in and other discordant considerations out. During the Iran-Iraq war, their liminal status came to the fore, and the hyphen connecting Kurdish-Iranian and Arab-Iranian became a vexed bridge requiring refortification. With the added tension over the Kurdish struggle for independence and Saddam Husayn’s pan-Arabism campaign, the indeterminate identity of these ethnic minorities in Iran needed to be re-articulated in terms of Islamic filiations and against ethnicity-based ideologies. For the Islamic Republic, the Persian nationalist rhetoric of the Pahlavi dynasty was no longer a unifying narrative. In my presentation, I will look closely at two popular Iranian war films that expose the interpellation of Iranian Arabs and Kurds, who have to recognize themselves as subjects of a re-articulated Iranian ideology. Ashke Sarma (2005) directed by war veteran Azizollah Hamidnezhad, and Ruz-e Sevom (2007), directed by Mohammad Hossein Latifi and winner of the best film at the Iranian Fajr Film Festival, present the Arab and Kurdish ties to Iranians in tragic tales of forbidden love. In Ruz-e Sevom, Fouad, an Iraqi-Arab teacher in Iran turned an officer in Iraqi army, is a suitor for the Iranian Samina, whom he hopes to possess with the same violent conviction he wants to take back the Iranian province of Khuzestan. Iraqi Arabs are portrayed as either good (Muslim brothers who were conscripted against their will) or bad (evil Ba’ath infidels). Iranians can have no affection for a bad Arab but welcome any good Arab who wants to be a member of their family. In the end, Samina has to kill Fouad to free herself. The more complicated political condition of Kurdish Iranians is highlighted in Ashke Sarma’s doomed love story between Kiyani, an Iranian empathic minesweeper, and Ronak, who is conscripted as a Kurdish rebel. The film suggests Iranian Kurds should join the community of the Islamic Republic because they need each other. Furthermore, while pinning blame on Kurdish separatists, it also emphasizes the problems of mistrust and the lack of amicable relationships between Iranians and Kurds. The army commander punishes Kiyani while also describing all Kurdish natives as potential enemies and the Kurdish terrain as contaminated and different from the Khuzestan province.