No, the Iranian Shah Didn’t Rename His Country to Please Hitler

In a recent book, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy claims that Reza Shah Pahlavi, the founder of Iran’s last dynasty, changed his country’s official name from Persia to Iran to make a good impression on Nazi Germany. The latter name is related to the word “Aryan,” which was used by the ancient people of the area stretching from Iraq to India to describe themselves, as well as by such Western writers as Herodotus. In the late-19th century, it began to be used by European historians and was eventually adopted by German race theorists. But, writes Amir Taheri, Lévy not only gets the story wrong but also unwittingly repeats a piece of propaganda that originated with Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers: