The current Persian empire will die as its predecessor did. The Nazi-inspired name Iran, adopted in 1941 to resemble Aryan, will hopefully join Darius in the dustbin of history, along with the genocidal jihadi theocracy currently in power. This brittle empire is, like Russia, a prison of nations: Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, Baluchistanis, Armenians, Turkmen....

The Shah ran a nasty crony capitalist kleptocratic police state. But at least he was a secularizing modernizer. In history's eternally tragic choice between bad and worse, he was bad, though I didn't think so in 1979. Persian history would have been better if the French hadn't let Khomeini on the plane in Paris.

The benefit of 45 years of mullahs' rule is that the urban population of Persia is the least religious in the Muslim world.