The Long War: Iran’s Oldest Strategy

Photograph Source: Cattette – CC BY 4.0

Most discussions of Iran revolve around oil, escalation, and regime change. Yet Iran today feels easier to understand as part of a much older pattern. For more than 2,500 years, states on the Iranian plateau have favoured patience, distance, and endurance over any kind of immediate full-on confrontation with stronger enemies.

To understand Iran today, it therefore helps to trawl through Persian military history.

Iran has been described...