Mr. Rafieh’s Tehran Pencil Shop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hlGqj3ImQI

> It's a double standard where nobody sees a problem with England even though there's a state religion and the religious head and government head are the same person...and unlike Iran, those roles are hereditary.

I don’t think that anyone familiar with both countries would consider that the rôle of the two is remotely comparable. The Queen’s influence, except when acting on the advice of the PM (i.e., doing precisely what the PM says), on the vast majority of policymaking is negligible. The Supreme Leader’s influence is much broader. The Supreme Leader chooses all sorts of important ministers (e.g., the interior and defence ministers). The IRGC directly reports to Khamanei and he does not direct it on the advice of the President.

As for the established church, it has barely any effect: at most, a few votes in the Lords (which under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 can be overriden by the Commons.) Government policy and the wishes of the C of E are pretty clearly in tension, which is why e.g. Thatcher spent rather a lot of time criticising bishops for effectively calling her heartless. Meanwhile in Iran, all sorts of policies are dictated by the religious establishment, e.g., Qisas.

> Iran today looks like what throwing off the yoke of foreign influence looks like.

There are many ways to ‘throw off the yoke of foreign influence’ (and hopefully replace it with a healthy attitude towards foreign ideas.) I don’t think it’s incorrect to suggest that there are pretty substantial deficiencies in the seem not particularly to like the present path taken by the régime. See e.g. Ahmadinejad (presumably irked by being sidelined) on MEMRI (I know, I know),¹ or the election of Khatami and Rouhani (whose ambitions have often been thwarted by those you seem to be defending here.)

> Never mind the bloody legacy of Calvinism though. The traditional head of the European church launched the crusades and backed the long slog in the Iberian Peninsula.

This seems to be logically fallacious whataboutism—where do you get the idea that OP wants a return to Roman Catholic theocracy?

> So long as the first reaction is to frame Iran in religious terms, the Mullahs are logically correct in their claims about the enemy without.

Simply criticising the religious establishment as done above is common even amongst Iranians, so this seems to miss the point. Now, it may be that actually this is cover for some raving about Muslims generally or Iran qua an Islamic Republic as opposed to one say even less democratic than e.g. Pakistan or Bangladesh. But this comment seems to be a sort of reflexive defence against a certain sort of Islamophobic criticism which wasn’t actually made.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUW_XwvHQNw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bOfDBoQ7yA

Unlike the rest of the world, Americans can only visit with organized tours.[0]

[0]Unless you've got some Persian relatives you're visiting.