From <https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/books/review/military-history-persia-iraq-us-civil-war.html>:linebreak[Go there for full review]linebreak======================linebreaklinebreakHow Is the Persian Invasion of Greece Like the Iran War?linebreaklinebreakIn these books, an emperor, an officer and an orphan look for anything that resembles a clear victory in the fog of war.linebreakBy Thomas E. RickslinebreaklinebreakIn the past few weeks, some observers have noted that the United States and Iran are fighting two different wars at the same time.linebreaklinebreakWith their superior forces, the United States and its ally Israel want to show the world that their regional demands have physical power behind them. The leaders of the Islamic Republic, by contrast, with their cheap drone attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, are hoping to consolidate a fractured home front by taking a stand in their front yard. “External aggression by the Great Satan,” the retired Australian general Mick Ryan recently pointed out, “is always good for clerical legitimacy in Iran.”linebreaklinebreakIn other words, one side is employing the tactics of conventional warfare, while the other wages a campaign that is primarily political and economic. Opponents using different means to fight while possessing different notions of victory is often a recipe for a messy and expensive war. As the Christopher Newport University historian John O. Hyland makes clear in his impressive PERSIA’S GREEK CAMPAIGNS: Kingship, War, and Spectacle on the Achaemenid Frontier (Oxford University Press, 453 pp., $140), a similar lesson can be drawn from the conflict between the Persians and the Greeks some 2,500 years ago.linebreaklinebreakPersia's Greek CampaignslinebreakThe Greeks thought of this war as a clash of civilizations, a view that some in the West still hold. But that perspective “could not have been more foreign to the Persian understanding,” Hyland writes. The Persians, with their vast forces, already saw their dominance as complete and viewed the war, he argues, as a problem of managing a nettlesome disturbance at the remote northwestern edge of their empire.linebreaklinebreakIn addition, Hyland says, Western commentators have missed another important aspect of the Persian view, which is that the emperor Xerxes, new to the throne, needed to demonstrate to his subjects that he was a fitting supreme ruler.linebreaklinebreakHence the stately, monthslong march of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors and courtiers through modern-day Turkey, across the Dardanelles and into Greece in 480 B.C. It was, Hyland says, more of a performative display of imperial power than an attempt to destroy the Greek military or bring the Greek mainland under Persian rule.linebreaklinebreakIndeed, Xerxes achieved surprisingly little in his Greek expedition. He commanded a huge army and, as Hyland writes, “the largest trireme fleet ever seen.” But after winning a clash at Thermopylae and burning Athens, he suffered several humbling defeats, most famously in the straits of Salamis.linebreaklinebreakDespite the setbacks, Xerxes claimed he had been victorious. The message to his empire was that he had fulfilled his goals of, as Hyland puts it, “royal order, punishment of the wicked and restoration of peace.”linebreaklinebreak[....]linebreak~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~linebreakA version of this article appears in print on May 17, 2026, Page 8 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: War Stories / Military History.linebreaklinebreak--- linebreak