ABSTRACT

Iran's rankings serve as reminders of its importance: in the region, it is second in size, second in population, second in petroleum reserves, first in natural gas reserves, first in irrigated area, first in copper output, and a major producer of other crops and minerals. Entrenched on high plateau, Iran has been a significant imperial power for more than twenty-five hundred years. The sequence of human occupancy over thousands of years is well preserved in the Iranian Plateau, and its antiquity is neither inconsequential nor academic. Iran suffered political fragmentation, cultural disruption, and physical destruction after the Abbasid collapse in 1258. Parliamentary elections have highlighted the paradoxes of contemporary Iran. In the early years of the republic, the "mullahocracy"" had evolved a genuine if quirky system of democratic elections.