Untimely ripped from an op-ed piece in the Khaleej Times:

It is ironic that Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian who chronicled Alexander the Great's rampage across the Persian Empire, declared Iranians to be the most open of people to foreign customs. Yet the Islamic republic, after all, was born amid xenophobia and extreme nationalism, the world's first theocratic state rejected the bulldozer Westernisation of the Pahlavi regime.


No comment necessary, of course, for the learned readers of rogueclassicism ...