This essay identifies an historically-enduring Iranian insistence on self-sufficiency—which can be summed up, in a superordinate manner, as the idea that the world needs Iran more than Iran needs the world. Economically, this insistence is reflected in a (rhetorical) quest for self-reliance in production; politically, it tends to be articulated in an instinctive anti-(neo)colonial, often defiant stance vis-à-vis the world; and culturally, it is often expressed as a claim to civilizational grandeur, indeed uniqueness. The origins of this conceit have to be sought in antecedents combining economic perceptions with cultural assumptions that long precede Western imperialism and modern nationalism. These, in turn, are grounded in patterns of thought that reflect specific pre-modern physical and geopolitical conditions which go back to pre-Islamic notions of paradisiacal abundance as much as to economic realities encapsulated by Aristotle’s idea(l) of the self-sufficient household. I also argue that the notion evolved over time even as it retained its moral core. What was an instinctive dismissal of the outside world as dispensable, after 1800 became a self-conscious stance against foreign encroachment, real or imagined. In the course of the twentieth century, a quest for material autarky coupled with an insistence on cultural exceptionalism became an integral part of modern Iranian nationalism.

本文确定了伊朗在历史上持久的坚持自给自足的态度-可以用一种上等的方式来概括，即世界需要伊朗比伊朗需要世界要多。从经济上讲，这种坚持体现在（修辞性的）对生产自力更生的追求中。从政治上讲，它倾向于以本能的反（新）殖民主义来表达，常常是相对于人的反抗姿态。世界; 从文化上讲，它通常被表达为对文明宏伟，乃至独特性的要求。必须在将经济观念与早在西方帝国主义和现代民族主义之前的文化假设相结合的前提条件中寻找这种观念的起源。反过来，这些则以思想模式为基础，这些思想模式反映了特定的前现代的自然和地缘政治条件，这些条件可以追溯到伊斯兰前的天堂般的充实概念，以及亚里士多德自给自足的思想（l）所概括的经济现实。家庭。我还认为，这个概念会随着时间的流逝而发展，即使它保留了其道德核心。在1800年成为反对外国侵占的真实或想象的自我意识立场之后，本能地将外界拒绝是可有可无的。在二十世纪的过程中，