Historical Interventions of Iran

Today in class, we did a fun activity revolving around a reading that we did in Iran:  Through the Looking Glass.  The activity was to write as many "overtakings" of Iran as we could using only the reading from the previous night.  We had to have the date of the new rule, the foreign powers involved, the type of intervention (military, religious, etc.), the incentive for the foreign power to overtake Iran, the role of the Iranian government in the overtaking, and the reactions of the Iranian people for each one.  Zoë and I found six different instances in which this happened.  We then discussed in class some of the major ones that we all should have had.  As a homework question / blog prompt, Mr. Moran asked us this question.

What is the cumulative effect of all of these events and how does it affect the people of Iran.  Why does this lead to a constitutional revolt?

Which got me thinking for the rest of the day about what the right answer should be.  What I've finally worked it down to is that because the people of Iran have had so many leaders with so many different cultural inputs and separate rules, nobody really knows what to think anymore.  So they revolt.  This is natural human nature even within a single person.  If the brain receives conflicting messages from different parts of the body, it doesn't know what to do so it reverts to PAIN.  If you dunk one hand in ice water and one hand in hot water, your hands both HURT REALLY BADLY.  Same thing is happening with the people of Iran.  If their constitution is so messed up from so many different people's inputs, then nobody can know what is OK and not OK.  It'd be like if every year growing up, children got a new set of parents with different rules and punishments.  The child would eventually flip out. 

     Those examples may seem a bit extreme, but in reality the people who controlled Iran were such a wide range of rulers from Native Tribes to the British and the Russians at the same time.  That'd just be crazy to try to deal with.  Hopefully, we'll continue on this subject tomorrow (today, technically)