In the more than thirty years since the Iranian Revolution, Western analysts have routinely depicted the Islamic Republic as an ideologically driven, illegitimate, and deeply unstable state. From their perspective, Iran displayed its fanatical character early on, first in the hostage crisis of 1979–81, and shortly afterward with the deployment of teenage soldiers in “human wave” attacks against Iraqi forces during the 1980s. Supposedly the same Shia “cult of martyrdom” and indifference to casualties persist in a deep attachment to suicide terrorism that would, if Iran acquired nuclear weapons, end in catastrophe. Allegations of the Iranian government’s “irrationality” are…