November 7th is a day of glory. Everyone knows this, especially those who were reminded of it at school ceremonies before 1990, or had to drive across the square named after it on the way to Buda or the City Park. But that it would also become a day of glory for Iran? That’s a brand-new development—freshly minted just yesterday.
Iran’s relationship with glory has cooled off in recent times. Signs have appeared before, stretching even into the distant past—way back to the Battle of Karbala in 680, where the Shiites suffered their greatest defeat, commemorated annually as Ashura, their biggest religious holiday. You could say their entire social-psychological makeup is ritualistically trained to accept defeat. Yet even among these recurring setbacks, a particularly deep low came this past June, when Israeli and American forces swiftly pulverized Iran’s air defenses and bombed its nuclear facilities.
The Iranian regime, sharp-eyed enough to assess this as its own total failure and a questioning of its half-century-long existence, delivered a resounding response to the West yesterday. True, it had to reach far back in time to the last measurable victory: Shapur II, the Sasanian shah, at Edessa in 260, triumphing over the Roman Emperor Valerian. The emperor and his army vanished into the Persian Empire, and Shapur had the triumph immortalized on the rock tomb near Persepolis—a relief showing the defeated emperor kneeling before the mounted shah, his cloak draped over his shoulder, pathetically puffed up by a totally inappropriate pathos formula.
According to reports, the Iranian regime, allegedly at Supreme Leader Khamenei’s personal suggestion, commissioned a statue version of that relief—and unveiled it yesterday, November 7th, Friday, in the heart of Tehran at Enghelab Square, literally “Revolution Square.” The statue, the Iranian press notes, is a serious warning to the West. Crowds cheered the unveiling, which didn’t hurt that it came with a pop concert.
The West will probably decode this “serious warning” and panic a little. But there’s another, subtler layer here worth decoding. Until now, the regime had strictly avoided glorifying pre-Islamic Persian history—first, because it represented the jahiliyyah, the age of ignorance before the true faith, and second, because the Pahlavi shahs, overthrown in the 1979 revolution, had built their legitimacy precisely on that history. Perhaps for the first time, the regime is centering a Sasanian shah in its celebratory narrative. And right on the central square, renamed from Shah Square to Revolution Square. Does this imply that the era of Islamism has blown its course, and that the country, like any state of a failed ideology, must now lean on tried-and-true nationalism to shore up its legitimacy?
Of course, Iran wasn’t the first to give an example of defeating a paper tiger. Christianity has suffered similarly humiliating blows, when in 1453 the Turks captured Constantinople, shattering its self-esteem and sense of security. The impact resonated across the West, and on that occasion, we commemorated a very old victory against paganism: Piero della Francesca’s fresco cycle of the Legend of the True Cross in the Franciscan church of Arezzo (1450–63). Its final scene depicts Emperor Heraclius, in 628 at the Battle of Nineveh, defeating Shah Khosrow II of Persia and recovering the True Cross stolen from Jerusalem. The shah kneels on the ground among the Christian commanders, whom Piero, unlike in earlier images, updates with contemporary clothing instead of Roman armor. As if to say: “Watch out, Muslims! Just as we got our revenge on the pagans back then, we’ll take Constantinople back too.” The pagans are still waiting, perhaps growing weary by now.
Both works share a tension between glorious past and shameful present, a way to soothe helplessness and ignite hope through a historical example. But you know what? As the old joke goes: ours is prettier.
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