To Peter Smith - not your real name. I'm sure it's something closer to your Muslim roots. Good to see you keeping up the tradition of peace in your anti-semetic inane rant. Hope you appreciate the freedom of speech afforded everyone here in America. Something truly oppressed people of most middle Eastern countries will never know.

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That's interesting that this stupid comment is allowed and mine got censored....but we know who runs half of these jewish news websites anyone so no surprise here. I'll bet you can't even find "muslim" on a map let alone identify one as a muslim. I am an Aryan and Proud...and so are more than 60% of Iranians actually. And that is why you people are so angry and bitter at them. You are jealous of their proud history and their stance against evil. Go eat your Haman's ears...it'll keep your mouth from flapping

I'm sorry Peter about your feelings of Iranian inadequacy and backwardness.

Article by Reza Zia-Ebrahimi teaches history and politics at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics. This article is a condensed version of his study "Self-Orientalisation and Dislocation: The Uses and Abuses of the Aryan Discourse in Iran,"
"Many Iranians, always prompt to portray themselves as "Aryans".
"Why is Aryanism in Iran so resilient? Why has it never been questioned, criticized, or reevaluated? In my view, late-nineteenth-century Iran was a receptive environment for Aryanism, which came to play a crucial role in the definition of modern Iranian identity. In the nineteenth century, Qajar Iran had come into contact with Europe. This was no smooth encounter, as it first came through the defeats of the Russo-Persian wars. The Qajar elites were profoundly traumatized by the discovery of Europe's advances and Iran's backwardness. Iranian intellectuals spent decades attempting to make sense of the nation's decay."

"Not only is Aryanism a relic of nineteenth-century European thought with an ignominious legacy, but its Iranian variety is a symptom of an entrenched complex of inferiority, a desperate attempt to be something other than a "mere Iranian." This complex is rooted in a traumatic encounter with Europe that took place two centuries ago. It thus alarms me that to this very day, serious Iranian intellectuals tell a wide audience that "Iranians are Aryans."

"A related myth is the one according to which "Iran" means the "land of Aryans." This myth was propagated by Max Müller, who claimed in 1862 that the term airyanem vaejah found in the Avesta is the ancestor of "Iran" and means the "Aryan expanse." This myth became so widespread that serious scholars propagate it even to this day. Suffice it to look at a dictionary.
By contrast, Gnoli contends that airyanem vaejah is not a historical land, but a legendary, cosmogonic concept in Zoroastrianism. Additionally, the "land of Aryans" would suppose that the inhabitants of the Achaemenid or Sasanian empires were racially conscious in a manner similar to nineteenth-century Europeans. This is of course highly unlikely, particularly given that the Iranian plateau already -- as it has ever since -- featured a complex mix of populations. Out of 30,000 tablets excavated in Persepolis, not one was written in Persian (most are in Elamite, and a few are in Aramean). In fact, the empire was a melting pot. To imagine that its inhabitants believed that a territory must belong to one people is an anachronistic projection of modern ideas onto the distant past. The presence of Arabs on the Iranian plateau and Iranians in the Arabian Peninsula is also attested, but somehow ignored by the prophets of Aryanism.
"This only highlights the urgent need for Iranians to question their identity myths and get rid of the distortional, racialist, bigoted view of their identity they inherited from Old Europe."