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)

Today in our History class, we had a long discussion about why the country of Iran is so different from the other countries surrounding it.  I made a list of ways that it was different along with my other notes, all of which are at school - unusable.  So I'll do my best to recall things from memory.  (I understand why you wanted us to use paper and pencils instead of computers, but I'm not very good at holding onto papers - especially when I don't have a binder for that class.  Anyway, I found some of the differences very interesting - things that I never knew or at least didn't remember.  Iranians are NOT ARAB.  Iran is NOT AN ARAB COUNTRY.  This is a really important fact, since there seems to be a certain negative connotation with the word Arab, at least in our part of the world.  Arabs came from Arabia, now known as Saudi Arabia (Arabia run by the Sauds).  We talked a lot about the differences in religion and how 90% of the country is Shia Muslim as opposed to Sunni Muslim (90% everywhere else in the world).  I don't know if we discussed this or not, but I really wonder WHY this country's religion is so skewed from the rest of the Middle East.  Also, we're not supposed to group the "Middle East" into one clump because it is comprised of so many different religions and countries and beliefs.  I understand that, I guess.  It'd be like if people said "The Americas" as a generalization since there are so many different cultures represented even within North America, let alone South America.  We also talked about the difference in who they think should follow up as the next Khalif - somebody chosen from a specific group of people or somebody related to the current Khalif.  Again, I don't know WHY these opinions differ, but they do. There was one more thing that I would like to look farther into the history of, and that is the origin of the word "Aryan".  Because apparently, before World War II, Aryan meant something completely different.  Maybe I'll bring it up in class again this week.