In a 2025 interview with Time magazine, President Donald Trump asserted that Iraq and Iran were essentially the “same power” that had fought each other “for a thousand years under different names,” a claim that reflects an absolutely superficial understanding of the region’s history for a leader contemplating confrontation with one of its major states. The statement compresses totally different historical perspectives into a single self-serving narrative.
Although Iraq sits on the land of some of the world’s oldest civilizations, including the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian societies of ancient Mesopotamia, those civilizations did not survive as a continuous political or cultural identity into the modern era. Over centuries the region passed under successive imperial systems such as Persian, Hellenistic, Arab, and Ottoman rule until the modern Iraqi state emerged only after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. Iran followed a different historical trajectory. Despite repeated dynastic change, the Persian cultural sphere retained continuity through language, literature, and historical memory rooted in the same geographic core. This continuity persisted even after the Muslim conquest of Persia between 633 and 651 CE, when Arab armies defeated the Sasanian Empire in battles such as al-Qadisiyyah and Nahavand. Although the last Sasanian ruler Yazdegerd III was killed in 651 CE, resistance and local uprisings continued for decades, reflecting the resilience of social and cultural structures that survived beyond the fall of the imperial state. The works such as Ferdowsi’s *Shahnameh* written around 1000 CE, preserved the narrative of pre-Islamic Persia and sustained a civilizational identity connected to earlier rulers such as Cyrus the Great and Darius the Great. At the heart of the argument lies a broader strategic warning. Treating Iran as though it were comparable to Iraq, particularly in the context of military intervention or coercive policy, overlooks the deeper civilizational foundations that shape Iranian society.
Although Iraq sits on the land of some of the world’s oldest civilizations, including the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian societies of ancient Mesopotamia, those civilizations did not survive as a continuous political or cultural identity into the modern era.
As belligerents, a comparison between the United States and Iran highlights another important distinction. The United States represents a modern nation-state created in the late eighteenth century through the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the constitutional framework established in 1787-1789. Iran’s political lineage predates the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the modern Western nation-state system. Long before the emergence of the United States or Great Britain as political actors, the Persian cultural and political sphere had already produced complex systems of governance, intellectual traditions, and literary heritage, dating back over two millennia to earlier Persian empires.
It also however remains a fact that chronological depth alone does not determine global influence. The United States rose rapidly to become a dominant economic and military power within roughly a century and a half of its founding. By the twentieth century it had emerged as a central pillar of the international order, shaping institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bretton Woods financial system. Today it remains as one of the most powerful states in the international system. On the contrary, Iran’s modern geopolitical position is more constrained. Although it exerts significant influence in the Middle East through political alliances and regional networks, its economic scale and military reach remain far lesser than those of the United States. Its share of global economic output represents only a small fraction of the global economy, and decades of sanctions have limited its integration into international markets.
Political scientists and war historians have repeatedly noted that military victory over a state rarely translates into durable control over a society whose identity is anchored in a long and continuous civilizational memory. Their evolution over centuries is manifested by dense networks of language, religion, and cultural institutions that extend beyond the structures of government. Strategic thinkers influenced by Clausewitz have long warned that war cannot be understood solely in military terms emphasizing that war is inseparable from the social and political context in which it is waged. The British historian and strategist B. H. Liddell Hart observed that military victory over armies does not necessarily translate into political control over societies whose identity is deeply rooted in history and culture. Similarly, David Galula, whose work on counterinsurgency grew out of the Algerian War, argued that national resistances survive not primarily through military strength but through the political and social support of the population. When external forces dismantle the political leadership of such a society, the core cultural framework binds the population together.
There are examples in history, where presumably short and targeted swift operations in wake of popular resistance culture, were drawn into long wars of attrition. From more recent history in twentieth century the Vietnam War illustrated the same dynamic: despite vast technological superiority, the United States confronted a resistance rooted in national identity and decades of anti-colonial struggle. More recently The Soviet Wars in Afghanistan (1979-1989) and shameful retreat of foreign forces from Afghanistan later in August 1921, further reinforced this notion, as Afghan resistance networks grounded in tribal, religious, and social structures were the ultimate force on ground forcing these withdrawals.
Greater the continuity of civilization, more deeply embedded is the culture. Conventional wars often conclude when one state compels another to accept a settlement but civilizations offer a resistance which blurs the strategic objectives for an aggressor. Outcome of recent ceasefire talks reinforce the same pattern; Iran, despite looming war, did not yield to military and diplomatic pressure and kept pressing its national stance.
A lesson in history is therefore not that younger states cannot defeat older civilizations in battle, but lies in the fact that a conflict is taken as an opportunity to defend a civilization. Iran’s enduring strength lies in the convergence of civilizational continuity, social cohesion, regional reach, and faith-driven motivation. The Islamic revolution has resulted in fusion of state authority with Shia Islam embedding powerful ethos of sacrifice, elevating martyrdom as moral victory. This is where the Trump administration got trumped in the imposed war on Iran.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at zulfiqar.shirazi @gmail.com