I have always found Iran to be an interesting place. It is the only place where research papers have come from where I have felt interested in emailing the author to ask some questions (my CEO suggested I probably shouldn't given our industry, and he was probably right even though I made sure to not share any info with them).

Anyway, there seems to be a beautiful culture there that values intellectualism, in a good way -- intellectual has become an insult now with how distorted and ineffective academia is under fiat. It is really more about valuing doing things well, whether in science, engineering, or art.

Even as a Jew, generally in support of Israel, I think all the religious conflicts will disappear within a few decades as the world grows 2x in total power generation (now around 3 mwh/yr/capita with wealthy countries 3x that and poor countries 3x less). Also, I think the hatred is downstream of statism since hate toward a collective group can only even be a coherent ideology if states collectivist notions are prominent (every anti-semite, anti-white racist, etc is inherently a collectivist).

The positive cultural attributes will survive and I expect Iran will thrive. Natural resources alone is not enough in the modern world where the value-add multiplier of technology grows, which means the base resource becomes relatively worth less and less over time, even will throughput in real world units grows.

I made a poll to see how people think Tehran will stack up against Dubai in 50 years. https://twitter.com/DiracDel/status/1774492163805438253