Iran’s resilience has been forged by adversity

The Cyrus cylinder, inscribed with the earliest form of writing, Babylonian cuneiform, demonstrates that Iran's national story goes back more than two and a half millennia to Cyrus the Great.

- Jack Straw

Now in the British Museum, it has often been referred to as “the first bill of human rights”. The Persian ruler’s benevolence towards the Jews is celebrated in the Old Testament in the Book of Isaiah.

While Cyrus did, at one stage, control almost half the known world, Iran's history of at least the last two centuries has been that of one defeat after another, and of exploitation by foreign powers, principally Russia, the UK and the US. As a result, victimhood is powerfully embedded in the psyche of Iranians, both in terms of their religiosity and their pride in their nation.

I’m far from sure whether the US president, Donald Trump, or his advisers understand this: or the way in which this gives the people of Iran an unusual capacity for endurance.

The two are related, of course — but they are also separate.

Most Iranians are, formally, Shia. On the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632, his followers split. The majority - the Sunnis - chose his father-in-law. The minority argued that the successor caliph had to be a blood relation. There followed a long and bloody succession crisis. This ended in 680 when the Shias’ leader, the prophet’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali, was cut down along with 72 of his followers. Victimhood — “martyrdom” - thus became a key tenet of Shia Islam.