Iranian nationalities have played an integral part in the country’s century-long anti-authoritarian, anti-imperialist, and pro-democracy movements. The Kurds of Iran have certainly been an integral part of this struggle, and they have largely framed their demands for recognition of their sociopolitical and cultural rights within the broader context of a democratic and decentralized Iran. The purpose of this paper is to examine factors that have inhibited the realization of Kurdish demands since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. In particular, the paper seeks to analyze the role played by the securitization of the Kurdish demands in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and how the nexus between securitization and coercion redounds to the detriment of the broader democratization in the country. The Kurdish predicament in Iran, as elsewhere in the Middle East, has not been so much the product of Kurdish identity formation but the result of securitization of ethnic issues in the country. States that frame the presence of nationalities and ethnic demands in terms of security tend to adopt repressive policies towards these groups as they increasingly view the recognition of ethnic rights or autonomy as tantamount to secession. The so-called “Kurdish problem” in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been first and foremost the product of the state’s policies that have consistently securitized ethnic issues and have failed to institute a de-securitized approach to nationality issues since the Islamic revolution. Using both secondary and primary sources in Persian and Kurdish, the paper places the Kurdish predicament in Iran in the context of broader issues affecting the Kurdish regional role.