How Indian Zoroastrians helped shape modern Iran
The Pahlavi kings were Shi&#x27;ite Muslims. This article is spinning a revisionist narrative that has a mild whiff of using religion to divide a people. I lived in the Pahlavi Iran, which is certainly missed, but the notion that there was &quot;neo-Zoroastrianism&quot; in the air is news to me. Zoroaster was very simply framed as one of the prophets that the Muslim scripture asserts has been sent to &quot;every nation&quot; by God. Iranians were rather fed (and many actually believe this!) an interesting fable about how Shia Islam is the Iranian version of Islam.<p>And from the 3 major classical Iranian empires and eras, it was not the very assertively Zoroastrian Sassanid empire that was memorialized and used as a vehicle to promote nationalism by Pahlavi Shahs, but rather the Hakhamaneshian (Achaemenid) dynasty. When the late Shah of Iran held his memorial to 2500 years of Iranian kings, he saluted Cyrus the Great, not some zealously Zoroastrian Sassanid Shah.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;irancollection.alborzi.com&#x2F;2500&#x2F;index.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;irancollection.alborzi.com&#x2F;2500&#x2F;index.htm</a><p>Note the missing &quot;flame&quot;. Note, instead, the Cylinder of Ku-Rosh (Cyrus the Great). And Cyrus, unlike his equally great successor Dariush, was rather cagey about his actual religious beliefs.<p>Even in what passes for native &quot;neo-classical&quot; architecture, it was again the Achaemenid era that was front and center.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Iranian_Foreign_Affaire_Ministry.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Iranian_Foreign_Affaire_M...</a>