Iran has always been the target of invaders and has outlived them all
For Iranians, the current assault is part of a much longer history in which repeated invasions have tested the country’s civilisation but never succeeded in breaking it
By Hamid Dabashi
March 17, 2026
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he teaches Comparative Literature, World Cinema, and Postcolonial Theory. His latest books include The Future of Two Illusions: Islam after the West (2022); The Last Muslim Intellectual: The Life and Legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (2021); Reversing the Colonial Gaze: Persian Travelers Abroad (2020), and The Emperor is Naked: On the Inevitable Demise of the Nation-State (2020). His books and essays have been translated into many languages.
Iranians have a very long historical memory.
The way they talk about the Alexander invasion of Persia in 344 BC, it is as if it happened last week on Tuesday. The subsequent Arab and Mongol conquests of the seventh and 13th centuries happened just a few days ago.
With this Israeli-instigated, American cosponsored invasion of Iran on 28 February 2026 still unfolding with carpet bombing and vicious, total destruction apace, the country re-enters its sustained and prolonged history.
Iran does so in a fateful encounter with the most malicious colonial and imperial thuggery of the combined forces of Israel, the regional settler colony, and the dysfunctional US empire that it has sadistically manipulated for decades to keep itself afloat.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not an exception – a mushroom that grew out of nowhere. His diabolical designs on the world around his settler colony surface from the deepest layers of genocidal Zionism.
Lo and behold: Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and now Iran – in total ruin and utter despair. This Iranian invasion is the wet dream of Zionism, wholly interpreted.
The significance of this momentous re-entry of Iran into the bosom of its historical memories can scarcely be exaggerated.
Read more:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/iran-outlive-invaders-since-alexander-us-israel-will-fail
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Sea also:
Why Iran has already won the war
By Dr Patrick Ringgenberg
Iran and Middle East Program, EPFL-Lausanne, Switzerland
Associate Researcher, IHAR, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
March 2026
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War on Iran: These are the heritage sites devastated by US and Israeli attacks
From Isfahan to Tehran to Khorramabad, Israeli and American strikes have damaged landmarks, including some inscribed by Unesco
By Rayhan Uddin
March 16, 2026
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/these-heritage-sites-iran-have-been-damaged-us-israeli-war
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Are the US and Israel waging war on Iran’s cultural heritage?
Iran says at least 56 of its heritage sites damaged or destroyed in war.
By Sarah Shamim and The Associated Press
March 17, 2026
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/17/are-the-us-and-israel-waging-war-on-irans-cultural-heritage
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The war of aggression waged by the U.S., Israel, and their allies against Iran goes gobal – economic, energy & food crisis
March 16. 2026
https://afsaneyebahar.com/2026/03/16/20706411/
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Reza Pahlavi’s supporters in Iran are turning against him
The son of Iran’s last monarch has encouraged protesters to risk their lives and stayed silent on civilians killed by the US and Israel
By MEE correspondent in Tehran
March 16, 2027
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/reza-pahlavis-supporters-iran-are-turning-against-him
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Zionism’s biggest mistake in 300 years. End of project.
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Prof. Yakov Rabkin & Prof. Pascal Lottaz
For decades Israel pretended to be an innocent country established after the horrors of the holocaust for the protection of the Jews. Turns out, it was all a lie. The zionist project is much older and has little to do with the wishes of the Jews when it was established. Inherently a christian doctrine, Zionism was always a plan to resettle the jews of Europe even against their will and to dominate West Asia in the process. Today, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs and Prof. Yakov Rabkin are discussing the past and the future of a racist settler-colonial political project that has become so violent in the past decade that the entire world now sees it for what it is. An irredeemable political sin.
March 16, 2026
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Amir Mortasawi (alias Afsane Bahar) (امیر مرتضوی (افسانه بهار 