Iran

What explains the Iranian state’s remarkable soft power? The answer lies in its rich – and often romanticised – history.

Iranian women have always been present in national uprisings and protests, but this time female activists are leading them.

In March 1722 rebellious Afghan forces laid siege to the Safavid capital. Was the great Iranian empire on the brink of collapse?

Surveying the world of Late Antiquity from its Persian centre.

If tensions between the US and Iran in the Persian Gulf lead to war, it will not be the first time. In 1987 and 1988, the US intervened to protect shipping from Iranian attacks.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became a lightning rod for the mass protests which overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979, but the causes of the Iranian Revolution lay elsewhere.

Relations between Iran and Britain have often been strained. Yet the relationship is an old one, marked by mutual admiration.

Why the British government can’t reveal more about an ‘open secret’.

During the Second World War, Britain and the Soviet Union worked together in oil-rich Iran. Cooperation was to degenerate into suspicion at the dawn of the Cold War. 

Iran, despite its conquest by the armies of Islam, retained its own Persian language and much of its culture. Khodadad Rezakhani examines the process by which a Zoroastrian empire became part of the Islamic world.