The land was called Persia, and in 500 BC was the most powerful state in the known world. It ruled most of central Asia and lorded from the Balkans to Egypt. The name Iran was given to the ancient nation much later on by a minor officer–turned-emperor called Pahlavi in order to make the place sound less Arabic and more Arian. Persia met its Waterloo when successive Persian kings decided to occupy Greek city states around 490 BC. All you history buffs know the rest. 

Marathon came first in 490, when the noble Athenian youths intercepted Persians disembarking from their ships and massacred them to a man. The Athenian leader, the great general Miltiades, ordered a presumably overweight hoplite to run 26 miles to Athens and announce the Greek victory. (The city’s elders were ready to burn Athens down in order to deprive it from the Persians.)  Pheidippides is the name Herodotus gave him; per Lucian, he uttered “Χαίρετε, νικῶμεν”—greetings, we are the victors—and dropped dead from exhaustion. In today’s Los Angeles marathon, anyone who makes it past 18 miles is awarded a medal. This is for safety reasons, something not surprisingly ignored by the Greeks back then.

Ten years later, the Persians were at it again. This time they came by sea and land. King Leonidas of Sparta became and remains the most heroic of all men by holding tens of thousands of Persians at the narrow pass at Thermopylae for days on end with his 300 Spartans. Donald Trump would most likely deem them losers, but there they stayed until they all died doing their duty. In the meantime, the Athenian admiral Themistocles gathered his triremes in the straits of Salamis, just two miles from Athens, and manned them with strong young men itching to engage the barbarians. Once the Persian fleet was bottled up in the narrows, the Greeks attacked, ramming and sinking them to the bottom. The Persian King Xerxes, who had been watching from a hilltop, fled for his life. No Persian ever attempted to invade Greece again. 

But a Greek called Alexander the Great conquered all of Persia some 100 years later, and even married King Darius’s daughter—along with Roxanne, the beautiful Bactrian wife he already had won in battle—thus showing Greek civility towards a defeated foe. Herodotus the historian saw Persia as a misguided nation, preferring tyranny and fear to the Greek love of freedom and the rule of law. Two and a half millennia later, not much has changed. Iranians have always submitted themselves to coercive powers and laws.

Which brings me to Trump and his maniacal partner Benjamin Netanyahu. The latter dared to call his at times genocidal army “Spartans,” an abuse no living Spartan can accept. My mother was a more than 10th-generation pure Spartan, and if she were alive she would have been up in arms over the comparison. Displacing some 700,000 Lebanese while killing hundreds has not made the headlines while we bomb Iran. Israeli hardliners are out to kill everyone opposing them. Defenseless refugees and their children in Lebanon and Jordan are daily being killed by the Israeli air force, and the American government is looking the other way. My only prediction is that Iago Netanyahu will lead Othello Trump to self-destruct—unless the Donald wakes up and smells the rat.   

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So, as of today, while the bombing continues, what is the future of the ancient land of Persia? Its people, unlike the Greeks and the Americans, have always chosen to be led by authoritarian men, eschewing democracy and majority rule. My closest friend, Aleko Goulandris, a major shipowner and gentleman, no longer with us, was once invited by the then-King Juan Carlos of Spain to visit with him the shah of Iran in Tehran. During a formal dinner, Aleko and his wife were forced to dine standing while the shah, his wife, and the royal Spanish couple ate to their heart’s content—seated. The reason was that Aleko and his wife were not royal. When I expressed outrage and told Aleko he should have left the table in protest, he said: “I could have been shot.” I said that I would have turned the table over and left. “You wouldn’t be here today,” said my friend. 

There you have it. It was fantasy land, a sergeant’s son, whose father assumed the title Shah, playing King Darius 2,500 years after the fact. But back to the present: For much of the past 200 years, a weak Iran accepted foreign powers such as Britain and America controlling its oil resources. In 1953, the pajama-clad Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the oil, but not for long. The CIA sent Kim Roosevelt over quicker than you can say “Mohammed.” The pajama premier was overthrown despite his great popularity with the people. The Swiss-educated playboy shah was brought back and installed on the Peacock Throne by the kingmaker Roosevelt. Plus ça change, as they say in gay Paree.

What does the future hold for Iran? No one knows, but since the 16th century the country has been threatened by imperial powers. If Israel has its way, the place will be divided and dominated. If Trump has his, the place will turn into another Syria with a complacent leader at the head. In the meantime, 110 or more dead, innocent children up in heaven are looking down at these two so-called world conquerors.