::Well, whether Ethnologue considers Azeri as one language or five doesn't make any difference for our purposes. Nor does their classification, since no one disputes that Azeri is Oghuz Turkic. Their population figures are often wrong, but so are everyone else's. You keep returning to the CIA as "reliable", but any 'factbook' that lists the United States as an older country than Great Britain does not inspire confidence. Their ideas as to what constitutes a language and how they're related are often worse than Ethnologue's.  

 ::That's interesting about the role of Azeris in the Iranian govt. I had no idea. Of course, if they're assimilated (native Persian speaking, I mean), then there may well be some pressure to downplay the number of Azeri speakers, to show that the nation is well integrated. Just because someone in the USA is Chicano doesn't mean they support Spanish bilingual education, for example. And often the strongest resistance to restoring Native American languages often comes from Native Americans who are monolingual in English. I'm not claiming that's the case with Azeri, just that it's something to consider.  

 ::Can you provide a link to the results of the latest Iranian census?