Some background on Iran

Iran is one of the world's oldest civilizations, its history going back long before the beginning of Islam.  The first Persian Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great, ruled most of the Middle East for two hundred and thirty years -- all before China first became a unified state.  It was an unusually enlightened empire for its time (though not by modern standards); I posted about it here.  A later event in Persian history, the Mazdak rebellion, was an early example of populist class war.  This revolt happened eleven centuries after Cyrus the Great, but it was still a hundred and fifty years before the beginning of Islam.

Cyrus the Great was one of the pivotal figures of human history.  By uniting the whole Middle East under a single rule for the first time, he made possible an unprecedented spread of ideas and technology, especially from the highly advanced Babylonian civilization (which became part of the Persian Empire) to other parts of the region.  The much greater ease and safety of travel under Persian rule also enabled visitors from Greece (just beyond the Empire's borders) to visit Babylon and bring Babylonian learning back to Greece, helping to trigger the later explosion of science and philosophy there.  Without Cyrus, it is possible that the rise of the great Greek civilization, and Western civilization as we know it, would not have happened.

With such an ancient history, Iran's sense of national identity is very deep-rooted, not at all comparable to the modern states to its immediate west which were thrown together by the British and French from odd bits of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

(Some modern US evangelicals are vaguely aware of Cyrus the Great because he's mentioned in the Old Testament, and some of them have even compared him to Donald Trump, one of the most grotesque misreadings of history I've ever seen.)

Iran today is almost two and a half times the size of Texas with a population of ninety-two million.  Ethnic Persians are a little less than two-thirds of the population (estimates vary), with the other third consisting of more than a dozen minorities, of which the Azeris of the northwest are by far the largest.  Kurds in the west and Arabs in the southwest are also important.

The Persian language is a member of the Indo-European family, related to the languages of Europe and northern India, not to Arabic (even though it is now written with the Arabic alphabet).  Many basic words still show the connection -- for example, the words for mother, father, brother, and sister are mādar, pedar, barādar, and khāhar.  Since the Islamic conquest in the seventh century, however, many Arabic words have entered the language, much like French words in English.  Persian is a relatively easy language for English-speakers to learn.  It has none of the hassles of arbitrary grammatical gender found in languages like French or Spanish, no case system like in German or Russian.  The sound system is not difficult once you get used to how it works.  The "i" sound is always as in "machine", never as in "bit".  There are two "a" sounds, one of them the same as the vowel of "cat" in English, which never changes -- in marg bar ("death to"), often used in chants in 1979, the "ar" in both words sounds like in "carrot", not like in "car".  The other "a" sound, sometimes distinguished by a macron over the letter (ā) has a drawled, slightly "o"-like quality -- the word pā (meaning "foot") sounds much like the English word "paw".  Shāh ("king") sounds like the name "Shaw" with a distinct "h" at the end.  The name "Iran" is roughly "ee-rawn", definitely not "eye-ran".

Over the last two decades, mass uprisings against the theocracy have increased in size and frequency, with participation in street demonstrations sometimes reaching into the millions -- probably the largest protests under an authoritarian regime in world history.

Here are some pictures to give you a sense of what Iran is like.

Tehrān, the capital city:

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

Isfahan (Esfahān), the seventeenth-century capital:

Maydan-e Shāh (Royal Square), Isfahan:

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

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

Children's play area, shopping mall, Shirāz:

Yes, a dinosaur.  Even under the theocracy, Iran teaches evolution in its schools, making it more modern in this respect than some areas of the US.

Despite its theocratic regime, Iran is not even majority-Muslim any more, and the non-religious percentage of the population is similar to that of the US:

Borj-e Āzādi ("Freedom Tower") Persian history monument, Tehrān:

Ruin of the tomb of Cyrus the Great, still revered today:

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

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 Shāh.  Most Americans have barely heard of him, but this history is well-known in Iran.  If the US can help bring democracy to Iran in 2026, it will be a form of atonement for a historic crime.

And of course one cannot forget pictures like this:

The Iranian theocracy is one of the very few governments on Earth that still carries out the death penalty for homosexuality.

A few updates on the military campaign and events in Iran:

The theocracy's thugs are threatening the Iranian people with severe punishment if they continue to revolt.

US Central Command now says it has completely eliminated the regime's navy from the Persian Gulf.

Israel is fully united in support of the campaign.

A look at the man who ruled by fear and the day of his end.

A former leader of the Tainanmen Square protests in China assesses the prospects for democracy in Iran.

Israel is easing down some of its emergency safety rules, as the theocracy's missile bombardment declines due to destruction of so many of its missiles and launchers.