Before the 1979 Revolution, Iran under the Pahlavi dynasty was undergoing a rapid process of modernization. On the one hand, this process rested on the revival of Iran’s heritage, identity, and civilization; on the other, it drew on the models of modern European and Western culture. It was accompanied by the expansion of modern education and universities, economic and urban development, greater rights and social participation for women, the secularization of state institutions, and the spread of modern and democratic ways of life. Together, these developments were placing Iran on a path toward becoming a modern state and a more open society, increasingly connected to the contemporary world.

Perhaps no other nation in the Middle East, and possibly in the world, has experienced both political Islam and communism in such a combined form and watched the two consume a country at the same time. What seems almost absurd from a distance is that much of the world is still selling an updated “Mamdani–al-Sayed” version of the same ideology, while Iranians themselves have already moved beyond it.

They have seen these two destructive forces hollow out a country that was once among the ten largest economies of its era and reduce it to a state in which the national currency, in recent weeks, has been losing roughly half a percent of its value almost every day. The fall of the........

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