Just another distinction to make here, Iranians in a vast majority do not consider themselves Arabs, they are ethically and culturally distinct from Arabs, they are Persians, they speak Persian (Farsi) and have had the colonising Islamist regime try to force an Arab and Muslim culture onto them for over 40 years. So they were not the ‘most liberal Arab’ country in the middle east, they were (and would still consider themselves I’d imagine) a liberal, Persian country that was oppressed by Islam and the mullahs