What the hell is the imperial core?

It’s the “always the same map” countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_countries

Feel free to educate me if you have more information than me but my understanding is Iran was a nice happy country then the U.S. and Britain helped overthrow their government to get a pro oil authoritarian, then the Islamic revolution happened and it turned into a theocracy which shortly after began doing things like treating women as second class citizens

The reason that the first things that come to your mind about Iran are authoritarianism and theocratic patriarchy is because our governments, think tanks, and corporate media have spent the last 35 years beating these thoughts into our heads. There’s certainly some truth to them, but they greatly exaggerate & incessantly repeat them. And they only do this to the countries they want to regime change. They don’t do it to allies or vassals who treat their citizens as badly or worse. And they want to regime change these countries not for any humanitarian reasons but because they’re not being sufficiently subservient. They don’t actually give a shit about the Iranian people’s or women’s freedoms, any more than they give a shit about Palestinians’ lives. They’re always working to manufacture consent for the various regime changes they want to prosecute.