Persia was a country that conquered other countries, but was also one of the more glorious civilizations of antiquity. Tehran, Iran’s capitol is an exciting, pollution-choked city beneath the Elburz Mountains. Guests in Iran are treated like royalty; they are given the best of everything. They do this while hiding their true feelings, and it is considered an enormous social asset. Iran is right in the middle of a main trading, culture changing area; between West Asia and East Asia and Africa and Europe.

You have to go through Iran to get to these places, because it is smack dab in the middle. Iran was right in the way of one of the most dramatic expansions of any people in history, the spreading of Islam. When countries invaded Persia, old Iran, they did not change the culture of the Persians but the opposite happened, the invaders became like Persians. The Persians got along with other people so well that others became like them, adopting their culture. This even happened to Alexander the Great; he married a Persian woman and wanted his troops to do the same.

The beginning of Iran dates back some 10,000 years. Persia was most likely the world’s first super power. Iran wants to become a superpower again, doing it by acquiring nuclear weapons. The U.S. government says that the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is sending weapons and munitions to extremist militias that are using these to attack Iraqis and U.S. forces. The Iranians mostly speak Farsi, one of the oldest languages in the world. The Iranians hold high esteem for their poets, who sometimes risked their lives writing the poems.

The Iranian New Year is a 13-day celebration focused around the spring equinox. Persians were probably the first people to worship one God. Iran claims to be sitting on 135 billion barrels of proven conventional oil reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia. Iranians are not very good with getting along with new things like western culture or religion. Many Iranians thought the movie 300 portrayed the Persians in a bad way, and one man, Yas, rapped about it. Many Iranians still have a little bit of Persians in them and they are not going to give it up.