َThe Iranian people are 'wired' differently than their Mullah rulers  

Sheda Vasseghi

The following was written as a letter to the editor of WorldTribune.com.

“What made them so special?” I had never been asked such a question about the Achaemenids, the founders of the Persian Empire in sixth century B.C.E.

I was visiting the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco looking at a map of the ancient Near East when a woman approached me and asked whether I knew anything about the map since it seemed as if I did.

I told her that I had a Masters in Ancient History and had devoted much of time in studying ancient Persians and specifically the Achaemenids, the founders of the first world empire. That’s when she asked, “What made them so special?” When I looked at her in surprise not because I couldn’t answer her, but because I had never been asked such a question, she elaborated, “How were they able to create the first world empire and maintain control? There must have been something special about them to achieve that rather impossible task.”

I answered the lady’s simple question in one sentence. She seemed satisfied and we parted ways. But later as I thought more about her unusual question, it dawned on me that it was not such a simple question after all — her question wrapped up many years of my wanting to learn about the Achaemenids and what it meant to be Iranian into ONE sentence. I crammed volumes of read and unread sources into a sentence. Her inquiry filled me with the desire to define Iranianism.