Iran: Religion as a shield
"Religious fanatics" Iran has an incredibly long and rich history, it's arguably one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations and summarising all of that would take forever. Unfortunately, you wouldn't get that impression from modern media coverage which mostly just focuses on highlighting that Iran is a country run by religious fanatics who're trying to develop nuclear weapons to use against the United States. This view is unfortunately just a caricature that undermines any proper explanation for why Iran is the way it is today. Throughout this region's long history, Iran has been influenced by the wide variety of cultures they've interacted with in the past, such as Greeks and Arabs. But in spite of this, Persians have always retained a very strong connection to their cultural identity. For clarification here, "Iran" is the name of the country today, whereas Persian is the name of the dominant ethnic group in Iran, which has historic...
