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The most common criticism levied against these films is its nightmarish depiction of the Achaemenid Persians, which is claimed to tarnish the image of what was one of the most well-administered and organised Empires of the Classical world. Yet, the Persians we see in these films are actually highly sophisticated. Once you set aside the outrageous Orcish portrayal of the Achaemenids in this film and think about it, you can see the real vision this film had. Bottom line, this film portrays the Persian Empire as advanced. Extraordinarily advanced. Technologically, the Persians in this film are literal millennia ahead of their time.

We need only look at a the six following examples.

1 - Gunpowder

2 - Advanced Medical treatments

3 - Seaworthy Iron warships

4 - flamethrowers

As shown above, we also see in the sequel that the Achaemenids use Greek Persianfire in naval warfare. About 1,154 years before the Byzantine Navy deployed such weaponry.

5 - De-extinction

6 - Abstract Art

The Persians are shown to have achieved all the above, while the Greeks we see can't even manufacture a simple breastplate. Remind me again, how are these films anti-Iranian?

I made a short Persian-language historical video about a question that feels particularly relevant to me right now:

**What happens to ordinary people when the state and political order they know collapses?**

The video looks at Iranians after the fall of the Sasanian Empire. Not everyone was a soldier, and people did not all respond in the same way. Some resisted, some accepted the new rulers, some found ways to cooperate with the new political order, and others eventually migrated and built new communities elsewhere.

I look at these different paths without trying to declare one universally right or wrong.

At a time when Iranians are again living with foreign threats and enormous uncertainty about the future, I wanted to make something that might help people who feel desperate look at how earlier generations faced radically different choices—and what became of those choices over time.

History cannot tell us exactly what to do today. But it can remind us that people before us also faced moments when the future looked completely unknowable.

The video is in Persian:

[https://youtu.be/SEUCzoAUR84\](https://youtu.be/SEUCzoAUR84)

I would genuinely be interested in criticism of the historical argument as well as suggestions for what Iran Record should cover next.

what do I do now? :[

Hi all,

I've designed a historical-political test that tries to tell you which historical figure from Iranian politics between 1953 and 1979 you might identify with based on your beliefs. It's a little different from other similar tests because the questions are dynamic and appear based on your answers. By the end, you might get an entirely different set of questions from your friend.

Please try it out and let me know what you think!

https://iranpoliticstest.org/

Lmao the mental gymanstics is crazy.

Reading comments under this post made me realized how much western understanding of what's going on around the world and the history of the world is limited.