Most discussions of Iran revolve around oil, escalation, and regime change. Yet Iran today feels easier to understand as part of a much older pattern. For more than 2,500 years, states on the Iranian ...

OXFORD–“We don’t wish for war, but if it’s imposed on us, we won’t [shirk],” Iran’s last Shah (King of Kings) said in an interview at the height. “[This is] our jugular vein; we live by that … nobody ...