Shouldn’t an editor pick this up before the article gets into print? From the NY Times:
An article on Sunday about preparations in Baghdad for a visit by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran described Iran’s ethnic makeup incorrectly. Slightly more than half of the country’s population is Persian; Iran is not “overwhelmingly Persian.” (It is overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim.) (Go to Article)
For a great summary of the actual ethnic make-up of Iran and not the best guess of the NY Times, read this Atlantic article from 2006. An excerpt:
Iran’s ethnic minorities are not at all happy with their Persian-dominated central government—not, at least, if you go by the number of riots incited, state buildings bombed, and Iranian soldiers slain over the past two years. Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election as president in 2005, Iranian Turks have rioted in the northwest, Baluchis have kidnapped and beheaded government officials in the southeast, Arabs have blown up oil pipelines in the southwest, and Kurdish guerrillas have sniped continually at Iranian soldiers in the mountains bordering Iraq and Turkey.
Persians make up only a slim majority of Iran’s population. The rest is composed of a handful of disparate minority groups, each of which has complained since the time of the shah about oppression by Tehran. Occasionally, individual groups have briefly taken up arms, only to calm down again for years or decades. But rarely have so many snapped back at the government so furiously over so short a time.