TEHRAN, Iran – As the world awaits the announcement of a possible agreement to end the conflict between the two countries, Iran and the United States are invoking historical and geographical references to the MENA region.
Iranian officials have revived key moments in the nation’s history to promote a message between the two countries that it is a David vs. Goliath battle, in which the weak ultimately win.
This comes after US President Donald Trump announced that a deal with Iran was “largely negotiated” and Tehran also indicated that a deal could be reached soon. Both sides are keen to present an agreement that would end the 66-day conflict as a victory.
historical messaging
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghai drew parallels to the march of the Romans against the Persians in the third century, saying the invaders were eventually forced to “make peace” with the latter.
Bagai also posted an image of the Roman Emperor Valerian after his capture by Shapur I of Persia in 260 AD. The illustration has been repeatedly drawn by Iranian authorities in recent months to evoke nationalist sentiment and promote the idea that Iran will once again stand up bravely against invading forces.
Sunday also happened to be the anniversary of a more recent conflict, when Iran fought an eight-year war with neighboring Iraq from 1980 to 1988 under a new revolutionary government that still exists today.
Every year, the Islamic Republic celebrates the 1982 recapture of Khorramshahr, a predominantly Arabic-speaking city in Iran’s western Khuzestan province.
Khorramshahr was a turning point for the Iranian side in a long war in which hundreds of thousands of people from both sides died, and the battle was one of the bloodiest.
The word has been used in government discourse and messages during the United States’ recent war with Israel to symbolize the country’s long history of resistance and determination to maintain territorial sovereignty.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Ahmad Vahidi used the fighting to signal that Tehran would continue fighting the US and Israel in the region.
Referring to Israel, he said, “The liberation of Khorramshahr will be a lasting model for the future victory of Khorramshahr, the liberation of Quds Sharif (Jerusalem), and the destruction of the evil Zionist regime by the Axis of Resistance and the fighters of the Islamic world.”
Iran’s relatively moderate president, Massoud Pezeshkian, linked the event to the current conflict.
“Iran’s Khorramshahr today is the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote to X. “Resistance, sacrifice and fighting against aggression are rooted in the culture of this land.”
Preparing for peace
Mohammad Mokber, an adviser to slain Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, said neither former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein nor US President Donald Trump fully recognized Iran’s power at the start of the war.
“While the first is buried in the trenches of Khorramshahr, the second is suffering from the quagmire political crisis created by the Zionist regime,” he wrote to X.
Kazem Ghalibabadi, a member of Iran’s negotiating team and undersecretary of foreign affairs for international affairs, linked the issue of Khorramshahr to the United Nations Charter and the country’s current concerns.
“Any state that has been the victim of invasion and occupation has an essential right to legitimate defense in defense of its territory, independence and integrity,” he said.
Ghalibabadi added that the Iranian government now follows the same logic: “the pursuit of peace and power, diplomacy and integrity, and resolute defense.”
First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said the retaking of the city in 1982 showed that the new government could defeat the invasion on its own terms.
The Iranian government now aims to “defeat our barbaric enemy” by standing its ground, he wrote in X.
The latest barrage of messages from Tehran’s leaders comes after President Trump appeared to suggest he wanted to take control of Iran.
The US president posted on his Truth social account on Saturday a photo of a US flag covering a map of Iran with the question: “America in the Middle East?”
In response, the X accounts of multiple Iranian embassies abroad posted a map of the United States covered in the Islamic Republic’s flag with the question, “United States of Iran?”
The Trump administration has emphasized that it wants a long-term moratorium on uranium enrichment in Iran and the extraction of highly enriched nuclear material from the country.
Officials also said they hoped to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has blocked through a fifth of the world’s oil shipments, but without tolls from Iran.
Israeli officials have remained largely silent about the U.S.-Tehran deal but are reportedly pushing for a return to war.
