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My research had reminded me of the custom of ta'arof, or never saying exactly what you mean, and three-part refusals. But I'd barely guessed, when reading of Iran, how hard it might be in life to tell where custom ends and conviction begins.
Pico Iyer • The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise

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While the official Iranian media and the speeches of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei try to present regional developments as a summer cloud that Tehran will disperse, we as researchers monitoring the political, military and security movements internally, regionally and internationally notice the state of anticipation... See more
Iran’s political stability and orientation proved to be temporary, however, and in 1979 a revolution overthrew the Shah. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a senior religious figure, led this revolution and instituted a unique theocratic system that fused religious and political authority and insisted on building a society that conformed to a strict
... See moreRichard Haass • The World
To answer some questions I see asked frequently…
Persian is an ethnicity; Iranian is a nationality.
Persian is also the official language of Iran, but when you're speaking Persian, you call it Farsi. This is like a German person referring to the German language as Deutsch when they're... See more
Yashar Ali 🐘x.com