That was then, this is now

But despite the pitiful state into which the country had descended, the major outside powers, Russian and the Ottoman Empire, did not intervene as they had in 1722-1725.  It was partly that they were busy elsewhere, and surely also that the outcome of their previous attempts had not encouraged them to repeat the experiment.

That is from Michael Axworthy’s A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind, a good general introduction to the history of the country.