Today suicide attack in Russia related to Saudi Prince Bandar’s alleged threats?

[rmi5]

I see where you coming from, the unity of land and common faith among its inhabitants. The Safavids have also fulfilled the fascination for most Persian nationalists to achieve empire size states, the constant longing for conquest, expansion, and revenge.

Though I must say that the conversion subjected Iranians (among other factors) to a unique type of hostility by its neighbors (from East and West). This hostility is rarely if ever forgotten -- irrespective of the need for peace and reconciliation.

That is on top of other mutual racial hostilities as you know. That partially explain why the Arabs-Iranians enmity is deeply cemented -- and extremely resistant to logical solutions.

It got two sides, racial and sectarian – while the real reason is undoubtedly political.

I have also noted that the sectarian hostility within one religion can, sometimes, be stronger than the hostility with two different religions (e.g. Islam and Christianity).

So I partially agree that the Safavids have united Iran internally – but have also created a long term hostile international relations for it.

We need to consider some facts here. As researchers has written in political studies books, The notion of the word "Nation" is a modern phenomena and has started to evolve about 4-5 centuries ago for the first time in the world in Europe and a few other countries and regions.(in which, this time is exactly the beginning of Safavids reign in Iran) Its a long discussion that I don't want to trap into it but the result for Iran is that Iran was one of the first countries in the world that this concept evolved for her people and Safavids did this job by bringing all people before one flag, one empire(in persian we say "Shahanshahi"), one Language(Persian, even though Safavids were Turkic speaking people themselves), and one (sect of) religion (Shiism).
The important point is that Safavids needed to evolve this concept(of being a nation) for Iranian people, since we were involved in very serious wars with Ottomans(in their most strongest era), Uzbek, and Portuguese, and british colonizers.
A nation needs to be distinguished from her neighbors. otherwise, what's the real meaning of that nation? just consider the case in sunni areas of Iraq and Syria. what distinguishes between them? They are all Arabs, they are Sunni, and they are historically pretty the same. That's why a group, " داعش " can be formed and have thousands of followers.
Anyway, this system had many benefits for Iranians. This system prevented them to be absorbed into turkic, arabic, islamic, ... pots, and it preserved our National Identity which is one of the strongest in the world, although we have consisted of many different ethnicities, languages, even religions, ...
It has also prevented us from having internal fights, like what's going on Syria.
Anyway, a secular government in Iran can solve the issue, and it can have a strong positive effect on the Middle-East tensions as well. Sectarian wars are funded politically by some governments as all of us very well know, so a secular government in Iran as one of the involved countries in this mess which we call it the Middle East, can pacify the issue in a large scale.
Sorry for long response.