Abbas Amanat

Ethnicities were introduced to Iran, mostly coming from the northeast of Iran, from the...

lowlands of Central Asia and beyond, and continued into Iran proper.

But now, what has happened, that's my point that I wanted to make, a century of modernity or modernization

has produced a national culture of great strength, in a sense, I would say.

I ended my book, the book on Iran, Iran and Modern History, basically saying that despite everything else that has created so much trouble for today's Iran, there is a sense of a cultural identity that is very strong.

And I think I can say with some confidence that despite this regional identities that are still there and they're great and they should be celebrated, today, if you go to Kurdistan or if you go to...

Sistan, they all can speak Persian.

They all have an education in Persian.

So they all basically are becoming part of whether they like the regime in power or not.

They have a sense of belonging to a culture and an identity with the center.

And of course, the idea of a center versus periphery in Iran is very old.

goes back to ancient times because even the name of the country was the guarded domains of Iran.

This is the official name of it.

namely that it was recognized that this is not just one entity, but it's a collection of entities.

Like the United States of America.

Exactly, exactly.

But the United States of America, in a sense, you can say that it was a very successful, well, it remains to be seen how successful.

To be continued.

That was basically invented, created,

You would have this sense of it.