Sajjad Azhar
The escalating tensions between Iran and the United States have revived a long-standing intellectual debate: is the confrontation merely a geopolitical struggle, or does it reflect a deeper clash of civilizations?
British historian Peter Frankopan, a professor of global history at Oxford University, has described the attack on Iran as potentially the third major turning point in modern global history, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the attacks on the World Trade Center. Such interpretations indicate that the current crisis is being viewed not only through a political or military lens but also through a broader historical perspective.
Recently, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remarked that “a fanatical regime like Iran, which believes in religious delusions, cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also argued that “the old world order is over.” These statements raise an important question: what kind of new global order is the United States attempting to shape?
This debate echoes the theory presented in 1993 by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in his famous thesis, “The Clash of Civilizations.” Huntington argued that future global conflicts would be driven less by ideology or economics and more by cultural and civilizational differences. Observers now wonder whether the Iran–US confrontation reflects precisely such a civilizational divide.
Iranian officials strongly reject this narrative. Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, recently declared that Iran would defend its “6,000-year-old civilization” and that the country had prepared for a long conflict if necessary.
Some analysts therefore interpret the standoff not merely as a dispute between two states but as a confrontation between two distinct historical traditions and political visions. On one side stands Iran, a country that historically emerged as a global power more than once and ruled large parts of the known world for centuries. On the other stands the United States, the dominant superpower of the past century and the leading representative of the modern Western political and economic order.
Iran: A Civilization That Became a Superpower Twice
Iran is among the regions where evidence of early human settlement dates back tens of thousands of years. Historically, the Iranian plateau became a major center of civilization with the arrival of Indo-Iranian tribes around 2000 BCE.
The Achaemenid Empire, founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great, is often regarded as the first great Persian superpower. At its peak, the empire stretched from Anatolia in the west to the Indus River in the east, covering nearly 7.5 million square kilometers. It established one of the world’s earliest administrative systems and a remarkably organized imperial structure.
After the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE, Persian power eventually revived under the Parthian Empire, which rebelled against Greek rule and re-established control across much of the region.
Later, the Sassanian Empire (224–651 CE) marked another golden age of Persian power. During this era, Persia and the Roman Empire were the two dominant global forces. The Sassanians controlled territories stretching from the Caucasus to the Indus River and presided over the peak of Zoroastrian influence.
The empire eventually collapsed after the Arab conquest following the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah in 636 CE. In later centuries, Iran passed through various dynasties including the Seljuks, the Khwarazmians, and the Mongol rulers.
The Safavid Empire (1501–1722) restored Iran as a powerful regional state and established Shiite Islam as the state religion. This period was followed by the rule of Nader Shah, the Qajar dynasty, and finally the Pahlavi monarchy, which lasted from 1925 until the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Comparing the Civilizational Trajectories of Iran and the United States
If Iran’s history stretches back several millennia, the United States is a relatively young nation. The US emerged as a sovereign state following the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Within little more than a century, it began rising as a global power, eventually becoming the world’s dominant superpower after the two World Wars.
The American model—built on secular governance, institutional checks and balances, capitalism, human rights, and democratic ideals—has shaped much of the modern global order.
Iran’s contemporary political structure, however, emerged from the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Iranian state is founded on the doctrine of Wilayat-e-Faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) and a political philosophy that challenges Western liberal capitalism and American influence in the Middle East.
Thus, the ideological confrontation today is not strictly between Iran’s five-thousand-year-old civilization and America’s modern one. Rather, it is largely between the revolutionary Islamic political system established in Iran in 1979 and the liberal democratic order championed by the United States.
Clash of Civilizations or Strategic Interests?
Before the Islamic Revolution, Iran was one of Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East. After 1979, however, relations deteriorated sharply and have remained tense ever since.
Today, Israel has become the United States’ most trusted ally in the region. Many analysts argue that American policy in the Middle East is deeply intertwined with Israel’s strategic interests. Yet historically, relations between Iran and Jewish communities were often positive.
When Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 BCE, he allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Because of this act, Cyrus is described in Hebrew scriptures as “the Lord’s anointed,” making him one of the few non-Jewish figures to receive such recognition.
Even during later Persian and Islamic eras, Jewish communities generally enjoyed religious freedoms in Iran. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Iran quietly maintained diplomatic and trade relations with the new state.
However, after the 1979 revolution, Iran declared Israel an illegitimate state and began supporting groups opposed to Israeli influence in the region. This shift fundamentally transformed Middle Eastern geopolitics and laid the groundwork for the present confrontation.
For this reason, many scholars argue that the current crisis cannot be explained solely as a clash of civilizations. While Iran represents one of the world’s oldest cultural traditions, the roots of its present conflict with the United States and Israel lie primarily in the ideological and geopolitical consequences of the Islamic Revolution.
Whether the tensions will evolve into a broader civilizational conflict or remain a contest of strategic interests remains one of the most critical questions shaping the future of the Middle East.
