Are people really arguing that people of Persian descent should refer to themselves as Iranian? Iran formed in 1935. Persia was around for millennia.
I'm a German gay from Los Angeles and even I know that.'
LOL, well, 'German gay from Los Angeles' you may want to stick to Prussian and Bavarian history and stop making a fool of yourself talking about that which you clearly have no knowledge.
'Persia' was the name originally used by the ancient Greeks and Romans and then, subsequently, the rest of the western world in reference to Iran. However, inside Iran, *for millenia*, Iranians always referred to their own country as Iran. In 1935, they officially requested that the international community no longer refer to the country as Persia, but rather by the name that the native population used. The name is derivative of the Aryan tribes that settled in the Iranian plateau. These are Aryans in the actual ethnic sense, not the Nazi sense (blonde, blue-eyed nordic stereotype). The1935 request would be comparable to if the German government asked the international community to start referring to their country as 'Deutschland' instead of 'Germany'.
Further, 'Iranian' is a nationality, not an ethnicity. The population is ethnically primarily (50%) Persian, but also contains Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Lors, and a few others. So 'Persian' as an ethnic identifier is perfectly legitimate if being used by someone who is, in fact, ethnically Persian. Also, the official language of Iran is also called Persian (or Farsi in Iran).
With respect to the motive of some Iranians in the US referring to themselves as 'Persian', the original driver was avoidance of the stigma associated with being known as 'Iranian' in light of the US hostage scandal. Also, most of the Iranians who left Iran in 1979, or shortly thereafter, were part of the secular, monarchist intelligensia who hated the mullah regime that took over after the revolution. They wanted to distance themselves from the Islamic loonies who seized power after the Shah was toppled, so 'Persian' became a substitute identifier that effectively obfuscated their country of origin. It didn't exactly hurt that most Americans are dumber than a box of rocks and can't even find Canada on a map, let alone a country on the other side of the planet.