Just a heads up, i tend to write pretty long posts because i type around 80-100 words a minute and easily just go on and on until i realise that the text is way to long and most people don't bother reading it
First off, I'm not really active on these boards anymore. But i did want to teach you a little bit of history, seeing as you base most of your history on Hollywood/Anti-Iranian material etc. "God King", there has never been such a thing in Persia. It's something from the movie 300 which seems to be where you base the bulk of what you've been writing about. It's unfair to other Italians, seeing as most of them that i know are educated and know their history very well.
About Cyrus Cylinder being Propaganda, i would have maybe agreed
if there wasn't other sources that confirmed it, for example Grecian authors such as Xenophon etc, and also Cyrus was praised in the Tanakh (Isaiah 45:1–6 and Ezra 1:1–11) for the freeing of slaves, humanitarian equality and costly reparations he made.
Cyrus is literally the only non-Jew to be referred to as a Messiah in the bible.
It's true, some "nomads" as you call it did conquer the 3rd Persian Empire. But it did rise again and again.
Parts of the Eastern Roman Empire fell to the same thing as well and then the all of the empire (Byzantine empire) also fell eventually. Both empires fell due to being exhausted because of war, mismanagement of economy, internal issues etc.
And Rome(Today's Italy) would have also been in trouble if it hadn't been for the distance between Asia and Rome. But Rome eventually fell, just as every empire eventually does.
Now...this might come as a surprise. But did you know that the Official religion in Rome for about 300 years, was a Persian one? And it also effected Christianity heavily when Christianity came to Rome, then it evolved into Manichaeism which competed with Christianity, and Christianity eventually became the Dominant religion in the world.
Mithraism, was especially popular with the Roman soldiers. They actually had ranks in the religion. One of the Ranks was "Perses" (Persian), you could literally advance to be a Persian within the religion.
"And Persia influenced Roman civilization considerably during the Sassanids and the Romans reserved for the Sassanid Persians alone the status of equals. The Roman Emperor wrote letters to the Persian Shahanshah, which were addressed to "my brother"." And of course it was vice versa, the Romans influenced the Persians considerably as well. But consider this, that the Persians were probably the only people that the Romans have ever considered to be equals, and called brother. While as just about every other people, whether from Germania or Brittania, were called Barbarians/non civilized etc.
And i want to answer what you said earlier about Rome conquering Ctesiphon, the Romans did sack it a couple of times yes, and the reason the Persians never came close to Rome...Is because they never tried. "One characteristic of the Roman presence in Persia is that Roman emperors dreamed of conquering all Persia from Trajan to Galerius, while Parthian/Sassanian kings never tried to conquer Rome, Italy or southeastern Europe according to historians" The Persians did want to conquer the old lands of their empire though which the Eastern Roman Empire held, but never Rome.
Now, obviously Rome has had a lot of contributions when it comes to science,architecture and etc. That's true and It's well documented and researched due to Rome and Greece being the only real Ancient contributors to history that Europe has, so the Europeans cling to it. And we will never really know what Persia contributed to science,architecture and other fields in it's entirety because of how intellectuals, academics were persecuted, as well as buildings, temples, books, records being destroyed and burned during the Islamic conquest. But what we do know is that Persia has been the center of science in the world during multiple times of its existence. Take for example the Academy of Gundishapur, According to The Cambridge History of Iran, it was the most important medical center of the ancient world during the 6th and 7th centuries. And also astronomy and mathematics were given a lot of attention. And this continued into the Islamic Era, Most Islamic Scholars, Intellectuals were Persians. Now, I'm not Religious, or a believer of any of the Abrahamic religions, since i read all the relevant books of each religion and studied them. But i wanted to say that there is even a hadith, where there is a quote from the Prophet which states "Men from the land of Persia will attain scientific knowledge even if it is as far as the Pleiades.". I believe this was from the collection of hadith compiled by Imam Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj al-Naysaburi. Haven't read the hadiths in years so I'm not 100% sure.
Now you might say "Oh yeah? Well i read about the Academies in ancient Persia and there were non-Persians there as well such as Greeks that fled persecution from Rome etc, which is true. There were a lot of non Persians in the Persian empire, because it was during most of it's existence, a Multicultural empire that tolerated other people." Rome was less tolerant to other people unless they became Roman(Romanization) but Rome was Multi-ethnic even up to the highest position in the Empire, Take Septimius Severus/Caracalla for example, he was a Black African-born Roman Emperor, or Marcus Julius Philippus a.k.a Philip the Arab. He was an Arab born in Syria. And the list goes on and on.
I just want to add to the Architecture subject, I've never been to Rome, i do have some relatives that live there,Turin and in Napoli. I do admire Roman architecture and would love to visit some day, and i wish there was enough Pre-Islamic Persian architecture so that we would see what their cities actually looked like before they were destroyed and burned, first by the Arabs and then by the Mongols,Invaders and etc. So there isn't unfortunately, you can check reconstructed art of it, but you can never know the grandeur unless you would see it in Person. Some historians believe that the Arabs basically copied Sassanid architecture when they came to Sassanid Persia. Me myself, I think they might have in the beginning but then it just became a melting pot of different styles of architecture.
But in any case, there are some Sassanid structures left and i would have loved to see a whole sassanid city just based of what remains today. And it's very similar to what medieval Europeans would build almost a thousand years later.
Derbent Fortress is one of the structures that remain, i suggest you google it to get an idea.
https://img.rt.com/files/2015.12/original/56838401c3618808058b45f9.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Главный_вход_в_цитадель_Нарын-Кала.jpg
And then there is Falak-ol-Aflak Castle/ also known as Dežbār as well as Shāpūr-Khwāst(Construction started in 226).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Falak-ol-Aflak_Castle_07.JPG
Oh and also Rayen Castle which is another Sassanian fortress,
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Rayen_Castle.jpg
Then there is Arg-é Bam which is believed to have Achaemenid/Sassanian foundation.
And if you would like to see some Parthian era architecture (Yes it was built during the Seleucid Empire, but flourished and built more during the Parthian Era), then check out pictures of the city of Hatra in Iraq. It's the best preserved and most informative example of a Parthian city.
Unfortunately, as you know, history has sort of repeated it self, You've probably seen the videos/images of ISIS destroying parts of the city. When i saw what they were doing do the city, to the statues,ruins, art and etc...It makes my blood boil.
Anyway, I'm gonna stop now and go back to topic. I hope you read what i wrote, and maybe learn a thing or two.
All the best.
Now, Back to topic.
I noticed that this topic turned from the original topic to a U.S vs Iran War scenario, to history etc.
This is just my 2 cents about the U.S vs Iran thing.
The U.S can't win a war against Iran.
What do i base this off? For one thing,
America hasn't won a war outright since WWII. And these are against countries such as Korea back in the day, Vietnam, Iraq,Lebanon,Afghanistan, Iraq again and on and on. The other thing is the fact that none of these countries had their own Defence/military industry. Iran has developed its military industry. It's not the best industry, but it's there. It relies mostly on itself when it comes to military equipment. Whereas the other countries the U.S has attacked, relied heavily on imported military equipment/missiles etc.
Another thing is the Iran-Iraq war. Even though Saddam had the strongest military at the time due to the fact that the Revolution in Iran just had happened, and he took advantage of that and attacked, He still lost and didn't accomplish any of his goals. Even with the U.S help, and sanctioned use of Chemical Weapons.(We all know of the declassified files that mention how the U.S gave Saddam coordinates on where to strike with his chemical weapons) Even with all that, Iraq couldn't win. So the U.S knows that Iran is on a whole other level. Because as i mentioned, since then, Iran has had time to build it's military, develop and grow.
And keep in mind the Millennium Challenge 2002, the major war game exercise that the U.S armed forces conducted in mid-2002, where they ended up losing against the "Iranians"(red side) in the exercise, and couldn't win unless they changed the rules and cheated to make sure that the "American"(blue side) side would win. But when there were no rules or restrictions so that the blue side would win, this is what happened.
"Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalised on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected."
This exercise was conducted 14 years ago, Iran has evolved/grown...A LOT since then. For example, take the Seraj(military speed boat) which they started building in 2010 and have mass produced since, they have their own missiles which they produce and etc.
Iran, with the exception of Turkey and maybe Israel, Is probably the strongest military in the middle east at the moment. But It's catching up to Israel and Turkey pretty fast. (Note that i do not include the weapons of mass destruction that Israel has and Turkey has through it's NATO nuclear weapons sharing programme)
But yeah,Iran is catching up really fast in terms of Military power/Technology. Just think about the scientific output in Iran, Its grown of at least 20-fold since 1979 according to statistics and has been the fastest growing country in term of Science. And that's the reason why Israel wants the U.S and UN to keep and put new sanctions on Iran. It's never been about nuclear weapons etc, It's always been about wanting to keep Iran isolated so that they can't grow as a nation or country, develop their country,technology, military etc. They know that Iran, If it was allowed the same freedoms as U.S allies and etc, would become the undeniable dominant force in the region in a short time. At the moment, some say it is already...Maybe, but It's not it undeniably yet.
Anyway, i could go on and on. But these are just a few of the many points as to why the U.S wouldn't win a war against Iran. They could maybe destroy the country, of course. But they couldn't win a conventional war against Iran, which is why they would resort to unconventional warfare such as viruses etc, but that wouldn't work. And they wouldn't be able to use Nuclear Weapons without being condemned by the world and etc, so all that remains is a conventional war, and that's something which they can't win.
really ? you take a cheap Hollywood move made in 2 month in a silo as a reference?
