ABSTRACT
Only a fool or a prophet can predict the future. The purpose of this chapter is therefore not to predict Iran’s future. I will offer a few propositions on the patterns of the past and present in order to conclude with three possible scenarios of the futures. The “s” in futures is intentional. We could assign probability to each possible future. But history is full of surprises and unanticipated outcomes. Each proposition could be the subject of a book. The treatment here is thus suggestive rather than exhaustive. The compression of a complex and long history into a few suggestive propositions is not without problems. It hopefully gains some breadth of understanding at the expense of detail.
