Why has Andrew Sullivan started referring to Iran as Persia and Iranians as Persians?  Is this some left-over English tic that has suddenly resurfaced, or is it supposed to be some kind of clever rhetorical jab at the Iranian government?  If the latter, it isn’t working, because it isn’t clever.  Iran has been the name of the country there among the Iranians themselves for a lot longer than it was identified with the name of the province of Fars.  It’s hardly the most pressing matter out there, but it strikes me as a kind of silly pose that serves no purpose.  But, then, this is Andrew Sullivan we’re talking about.

Update: In fairness, we don’t refer to Finland as Suomi or Hungary as Magyarorszag, but it seems to me that since Iran is now the fairly common usage to refer to the country it is a kind of weird affected anachronism to start calling it Persia again.