Lexicus
Deity
Well, they started it with the Greeks, but details details and imperial mindset.
Quite the pause after the Mongolians, tho. Took until 1950 or so to get back to population levels from before?
For reference, here's a graph (for anyone wondering, this is not remotely true):
File:Historical population of Iran.svg - Wikipedia
Alexander the Great invades Iran in the late 4th century, then the Seleukid kingdom rules Iran with Macedonians essentially positioned as the "master race", ruling over the other ethnic groups present in Iran. Eventually the Seleukids fall apart (largely due to the Romans beating the tar out of them in Macedonia and Anatolia) and lose control of Iran to the Parthians, who then spend roughly the next 300 years fighting what many historians consider to be a very long war against the Romans. The Parthians are replaced by the Sassanid dynasty c. 220 AD, and the Sassanids keep fighting wars with the Romans for another 400 years until the final Roman-Persian war in the 7th century exhausts both states and leaves them easy pickings for the Muslim conquests, which destroy the Sassanids and reduce the Roman empire to a rump based in Anatolia.
That covers about 1,000 years of war between Iran and the west right there. It's a little while before Iran can be said to be fighting "the west" again; I'm not super familiar with the intervening history but basically I'd argue the Ottoman Empire was a "western" state for all intents and purposes and the Ottoman-Safavid wars begin around 1500 and continue for another 200 years. The Russo-Persian wars begin in the 17th century and continue until the 19th, and then of course you have the joint invasion of Iran by the British and Soviets, the installation of a British-friendly Shah and the subsequent history of Western meddling in Iran leading to the lslamic Revolution and the present situation.
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