Iran’s Railway Revolution
If he were alive today, Darius the Great would have cheered the commissioning by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in March of a new railway connecting their countries. The fifth century Persian king was able to dominate much of West Asia in part because he understood the strategic importance of transportation and organized one of the world’s first highways: the Royal Road. The route spanned all of modern-day Iraq and Turkey, and cut messengers’ travel times by a factor of 12.
