My Iranian friends take great pride in the enormous global influence of their cultural heritage. From the Taj Mahal in India to American greeting cards with quotations from Rumi, the markers of Persian civilization are ancient and modern, sublime and ridiculous — but above all, ubiquitous.
For the most part, this spread occurred organically: No state-sponsored advertising campaign was required to convince gourmands everywhere that fasenjan, a stew of duck or chicken in walnut paste and pomegranate molasses, tastes divine. But some cultural elements — the Shia faith, most of all — have for centuries been promoted by Iran’s rulers.
The current theocratic dispensation in Tehran regards much of Persian culture with undisguised disgust, proscribing as impure any expression of Iran’s pre-Islamic history and condemning as sinful anything that doesn’t conform to the regime’s dour worldview. Instead, it has patronized murder and mayhem as its instruments of influence, at home and abroad.
