Iran's Ancient History

In the 1500's BC, Aryans began migrating to Iran and split into two groups: the Medes and the Persians. For much of history, Iran was named Persia. The term Aryan refers to Proto-Indo-Europeans [PIE]. The parts of the word "Aryan" mean 'properly joined'. We know Vikings as well traveled as far south as Baghdad during 700-1000AD.

The Medes are credited with the unification of Iran.

In 550BC, the Persian king Cyrus the Great defeated the Medes and founded the Achaemenid - Persian Emprie.

In 331 BC Alexander the Great from Macedonia, or present day Albania in Southeastern Europe by Greece, conquered the Persian Empire.

In 250 BC Parthians gained control of Iran. In 224 AD the Persians retook the region and the Sassanid Dynasty began.

In the mid 600's AD, the Muslim Empire formed in Mecca and Medina and its control spread through Iran, ultimately peaking from Morocco and Spain through Egypt and Turkey to the edge of India, collapsing into the three major muslim empires in the 1500's as the Ottomans centralized in Asia Minor, the Mughal Empire covering the great majority of the Indian subcontinent by 1700 AD, and the Safavid Empire, in Iranian Azerbaijan governed which lasted from 1501-1722.

In 1220 AD the Mongols invaded Iran.

In 1794, the Turkoman Qajars ruled in Iran to 1925. Qajar Shah Muzaffar al-Din of Iran signed it's first Constitution in 1906. In 1925, Reza Khan became the shah. In 1941 amid World War 2, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi took the Iranian throne. 1951 saw Iran nationalize its oil industry. In 1953 Kermit Roosevelt of the USA CIA overthrew the new democratically elected government in Iran to install the Ayatollah Shah to influence modern decisions in favor of the West and away from Soviet Communism, as Iran bordered the Soviet Union and was a left-leaning democracy with growing and buoyant oil profits to dispense to their people.

This lasted until 1979 when Islamic Revolutionaries overthrew Iran's government and began the modern Islamic Revolution. Almost immediately Reagan traded weapons for hostages to aid in his election, and war was fomented, funded, and armed between Iran and neighbor Iraq starting in 1980, lasting until 1988. America sold weapons to both Iran and Iraq during this war, and sold chemical weapons to Iraq at this time.

In modern eras Iran has been in hot controversy about nuclear power. It is said that the future will be powered by either proliferation of nuclear plants, which would surely warp the DNA of humanity and all life on earth and we would not survive, or water engines, or massive solar and wind and tide power. Water engines seem to be the key here, but enormous energy companies and global control would be destroyed by the advent of this technology. The advent of massive solar power would be a similar decentralizing measure and very expensive, arguably too expensive to work, and unable to be produced quickly enough to meet any meaningful gap of energy production in the near future. The future lies in Iran. Control of their oil is being contested for the forthcoming years of world energy.