Iran

Iran stamps available at Io Collezionista. Iran is the name the state adopted from 1935 at the wish of Shah Reza Pahlavi. Protests from some scholars later led him to authorise the use of the old term Persia once again, though it never regained its place in common international usage. Persia comes from the Greek Persis, a term that itself derives from Pars, the clan to which Cyrus II, known as the Great (590-530 BC), belonged. From 2003 relations between Iran and the West grew more tense because of the many experiments in nuclear energy production pressed for by the conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in office from 2003 to 2013. The subsequent election of Hassan Rouhani improved the country's international standing, above all with the nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed in Vienna in July 2015. Three years later, however, in response to Iran's foreign policy in Syria, the USA decided to withdraw from the agreement and reimpose economic sanctions on the country.