Iran in pictures

If the Trump regime drags us into another war, it's quite likely that Iran will be the target, given that country's status as Bolton's current bogeyman and the major object of Trump's belligerent rhetoric and recent aggressive moves.  As the Middle East is the region I know best, I hope this post will give you some impression of the country they'd be taking us to war against (click images for bigger versions).

Tehran, the capital city:

Tehran's metro-area population is 16 million, larger than any US metro area except New York.

Isfahan:

Maydan-e Shâh (Royal Square), Isfahan:

Traditional dresses (this is a Persian New Year celebration):

Protester helping injured police officer during the 2009 anti-regime demonstrations:

Satellite dishes (to access foreign TV) are a common sight in Iran:

Children's play area, shopping mall, Shiraz:

Yes, a dinosaur.  Iran teaches evolution in its schools without equivocation, making it more modern in this respect than some areas of the US.  (As I noted last Sunday, Iran's abortion law is also much more liberal than what Republicans are pushing in the US.)

Borj-e Âzâdî (Persian history monument), Tehran:

Ruins of Persepolis (Takht-e Jamshîd), the imperial capital founded by King Darius I around 515 BC (the columns in the background are over 60 feet tall):

The Iranian sense of national identity is very deep-rooted, reaching back to the coronation of Cyrus the Great in 559 BC, more than 300 years before China first became a unified state.

This is Mohammed Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953:

Mosaddegh led the first serious attempt to bring real democracy to Iran and expel foreign domination, only to be overthrown by the US/British-backed coup of 1953 which restored the rule of the Shah.  Most Americans have barely heard of him, but this history is well-known in Iran.

Iraq-Iran geographical size comparison:

Much of Iran's terrain is far more rugged and mountainous than most of Iraq is.  Iraq at the time of the 2003 US invasion had a population of about 18 million.  Iran's current population is 83 million, about equal to Germany, or one-fourth the population of the US.  Per-capita income at purchasing-power parity is about $20,000, similar to Mexico or Romania and about one-third that of the US.

Cruise missile based on Russian model:

Iran has been preparing for a possible US attack for years, focusing mostly not on high-tech but on asymmetric warfare designed to overwhelm US ships' defenses by swarm attacks of small boats and rockets.

And of course one cannot ignore pictures like this:

The struggle against the brutal theocratic regime is an ongoing one.  The 2009 demonstrations were the largest protest marches in the history of the world, drawing crowds in the millions.  The current President, Hassan Rouhani, is a reformist who has made some substantial changes, but Islamist hard-liners control much of the government, and recent US belligerence has strengthened their position.  It is very unlikely that an attack by a foreign power, especially one still resented for the 1953 coup, would improve the situation.

[Re-posted with some modifications from February 2017 -- there are a lot of new readers since then, and this seems newly topical given the recent escalation of tensions.]