Iran = "Aryan"

I think of myself as a Persian rather than an Iranian. This is not hairsplitting. Persia existed before Iran, a name for the country that dates only to 1935, when the Pahlavis chose Iran, meaning "Aryan," to impress Western powers with Persia's supposed "white" racial pedigree. To think of myself as Persian allowes me to embrace the whole of my country's history, going back to the flowering of a distinctly Persian sensibility under the early Persian emperors - Achaemenes, Cyrus, and Darius -- twenty-five hundred years ago. For the first fifteen hundred years of Persia's existence, Zoroastrian was the state religion, and so, by embracing Persia's past, I also embrace the roots of my religion..."

- Zarah Ghahramani, excerpted from "My Life as a Traitor"