by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
The American<\/em><\/p>\n A shorter version of this essays appeared in the column \u201cGeopolitics\u201d in the March-April issue of\u00a0The American<\/i>.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n I<\/span>f a no-nonsense Greek infantryman holding the pass at Thermopylae were to be told that, 2,500 years in the future, Western constitutional states would still be facing an apocalyptic struggle with a totalitarian government in Persia, he would hardly be surprised.<\/p>\n Persians, or Iranians as they\u2019re called today, have been at odds with both the West and neighboring Asians since antiquity. In that sense, the bumper-sticker anti-Americanism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is nothing new. Neither was Ayatollah Khomeini\u2019s virulent hatred of the Great Satan.<\/p>\n Darius I incorporated most of the Greeks of Ionia under the Persian Empire, and would have done the same in mainland Greece had the Athenians not stopped him at Marathon in 490 B.C. A decade later, his son Xerxes invaded Greece with a half million infantry and sailors, only to be ruined at Salamis and Plataia by the Athenian-Spartan alliance.<\/p>\n Westerners \u2014 including Xenophon\u2019s Ten Thousand, the Spartan King Agesilaos, and Alexander the Great \u2014 all sought payback against the imperial Achaemenids, who ruled over a Persian Empire that stretched from what is now Pakistan through Saudi Arabia to Egypt and north into Turkey. By Roman times, long after the fall of the Achaemenids, the Parthians \u2014 another Persian-like dynasty \u2014 continued the East-West struggle, destroying Crassus and nearly his entire Roman army at Carrhae. The subsequent Sassanid Persians fought the Byzantine Greeks constantly for control of Anatolia and the Levant, before themselves falling to the wave of Arab Islamic invaders.<\/p>\n The location of Iran explains much of this violent history. It is not only a bridge from the Orient to the West, but also a north-south clearinghouse between Russia and the Arab world. The narrow Strait of Hormuz currently forms the bottleneck for global petroleum commerce, but even in the age of sail, the narrow sea passage always served as a means for Iranians to shut off all entry into the nearby Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n Much of Ahmadinejad\u2019s apparent domestic appeal stems not from his posture as an Islamist who takes on Israel on behalf of the Palestinians but as a leader who seeks to restore a Persian and Shiite claim to Muslim greatness. The efforts of Iran to undermine the Iraqi government, overturn Lebanese democracy, finance Hezbollah, and use Syria to balance the Gulf sheikdoms are not so different from the management of shifting alliances and intrigue that enabled Cyrus the Great to cobble together the first Persian empire.<\/p>\n S<\/span>o, throughout the checkered history of Iran and the West, there have been constant themes that suggest that our current rivalry with Tehran is neither new nor surprising. Fairly or not, Westerners have always viewed their relations with Persia in terms of freedom versus despotism, of individual citizens at Thermopylae fighting the coerced hordes of Xerxes\u2019 subjects. Roman poets likewise depicted Romans fighting Parthians as free-minded Western infantry battling treacherous nomadic horsemen who shot arrows even as they seemed to ride away.<\/p>\n Religion, too, has been an old fault line. Zoroaster, founder of ancient Persia\u2019s religion 1,200 years before Christ and nearly two millennia before Mohammed, painted a binary world of light against darkness in an apocalyptic and all-encompassing belief system \u2014 a view not all that antithetical to subsequent Shiite Islam\u2019s emphasis on struggle and martyrdom. Persians, it seems, have always embraced religion in terms of good believers versus all the rest \u2014 without the pacifism of the Sermon on the Mount.<\/p>\n But then again, Iranians have some reason to be paranoid about foreign interventionists and intriguers. We hear much from them today about the \u201cden of spies\u201d in the American Embassy 30 years ago, about the 1953 Anglo-American overthrow of the democratically elected Mohammed Mosaddeq, and about the joint Russian-American virtual takeover of Iran in 1941.<\/p>\n So is Western conflict with Ahmadinejad\u2019s restive Iran inevitable?<\/p>\n Not exactly, since there have also been periods of realist engagement between Persians and Westerners. Just as historian Xenophon, in the fourth century B.C., believed that Cyrus the Younger was a pro-Western reformer who might bring Persia into the Hellenic world, so too both the modernizing Shah Reza Pahlavi and the reformer Mosaddeq in contrasting ways both wanted Iran to incorporate ideas from the West.<\/p>\n Long after Ahmadinejad and the Iranian theocracy are gone, a powerful and proud Iran will still emulate and rival, still befriend and distrust Westerners \u2014 captive to a history that is as illustrious as it is volatile.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a92007 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson The American A shorter version of this essays appeared in the column \u201cGeopolitics\u201d in the March-April issue of\u00a0The American.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[759],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-WY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11507,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-11th-hour-of-the-11th-day-of-the-11th-month-100-years-ago\/","url_meta":{"origin":3656,"position":0},"title":"The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month\u2014100 Years Ago","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness The First World War ended 100 years ago this month on November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m. Nearly 20 million people had perished since the war began on July 28, 1914. In early 1918, it looked as if the Central Powers\u2014Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "World War I"","block_context":{"text":"World War I","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/world-war-i\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1741,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/remembering-the-pacific-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":3656,"position":1},"title":"Remembering the Pacific War","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Today marks the 65th anniversary of the invasion of Okinawa. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Sixty-five years ago, on April 1, 1945, the United States Marines, Army, and Navy invaded Okinawa. The ensuing three months of combat resulted in the complete defeat and near destruction of imperial Japanese\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4436,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/remembering-okinawa\/","url_meta":{"origin":3656,"position":2},"title":"Remembering Okinawa","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Dealing with suicide bombers--60 years ago by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Sixty years ago, the United States military invaded Okinawa on April 1, 1945, the last bastion of the Japanese maritime empire that stood in the way of an assault on the mainland. Operation Iceberg was perhaps the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2005"","block_context":{"text":"April 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/april-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2558,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-muslim-demands-for-headscarves-are-exaggerated\/","url_meta":{"origin":3656,"position":3},"title":"Why Muslim Demands for Headscarves Are Exaggerated","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Hudson New York Islamic attire for women \u2014 the burqa and hijab \u2014 is back in the news, though with a twist: In America, where they are legal, problems and lawsuits are arising, while in France, where they are banned, Muslim women are happily complying. There is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Women"","block_context":{"text":"Women","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/women\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3990,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/too-few-troops\/","url_meta":{"origin":3656,"position":4},"title":"Too Few Troops?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 17, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson The American Enterprise Online When Saddam\u2019s statue fell in April 2003, 70 percent of the American people, along with both Houses of Congress that authorized the war, were quite happy with President Bush\u2019s decision to depose the Baathist regime. Three years and a messy reconstruction later,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2006"","block_context":{"text":"May 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/may-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4934,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-american-war-of-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":3656,"position":5},"title":"The American War of War","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 1, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"It's not quite what we've been told. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online (1)\u00a0In this new age the American military does not like fascists, and it thus will unleash horrific power to eliminate autocrats like Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein. (2) It is as difficult to provoke\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2003"","block_context":{"text":"April 2003","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2003\/april-2003\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3657,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions\/3657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}