The history of Iran has been happening within a theme of an ethnocentric and totalitarian autocracy in which all other nationalities are supposed to be fused into the Persian culture. Within this fused Persian culture, nostalgia for the Persian Empire, Shi`ism, and xenophobia play the most effective role in mobilizing forces.
Studying the main turning points in Iranian history shows that the same factors that have insulated the political structure of Iran against the demand of pluralism are always the driving forces to produce Iran`s chaotic, anti-stable behaviors.
It is not surprising that all major endeavors to bring change to Iran have, so far, resulted in the dual tendencies to both forcefully and violently assimilate all nations into the Persian culture on the one side and also promote negative sentiments against the historical “others” of the Persian Empire, against Arabs, and against the West on the other side. Whether it be the Shi’ism of the Islamic Republic or the archaic monarchism of the Pahlavi, or even some combination of both, Iranian nationalism has two main pillars: Persian supremacism and Persian expansionism. The state in Iran, therefore, is set to fulfill these two promises of Iranian nationalism. That is why the history of Iran is replete with a recurring pattern in which governments, with different ideological appearances, come to power and begin carrying out the mission of Iranian nationalism, thus eventually taking on the character of all other former governments and regimes.
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