Iranian officials push back on Marco Rubio’s ancient Persia comparison

Iranian officials have pushed back against US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s October 7 speech in Athens, Greece, in which he invoked ancient Persia while urging Western nations to defend their interests. Their responses, reported on October 10, show how his historical comparison has entered arguments over the continuing US war with Iran. The reporting establishes a dispute over his words, but does not show that the speech changed policy or the course of the war.

What Rubio said in Athens

Rubio spoke with the Acropolis behind him; The Associated Press identified the site as the Pnyx hill. AP reported that he called on Western nations to return to what he described as their civilisational roots and to restore values that had helped Europe and North America achieve global dominance. He linked qualities he associated with ancient Greece, including curiosity, courage and ambition, to the later West.

According to Al Jazeera, Rubio recalled the Persian sack of Athens under Xerxes I in 480 BC. “The Persians plundered the temples, burned the shrines and razed the Acropolis to the ground,” he said, before describing the Athenians’ return and the later construction of the Parthenon. The historical account formed part of a speech about present-day power: Rubio said today’s threats were “every bit as real as they were on the dramatic stage of antiquity.”

Rubio also called Iran’s current leaders “fanatics” who run a “death cult,” Al Jazeera reported. AP said he advocated the “unapologetic pursuit of national power,” stronger ties with Europe and renewed institutions and alliances. His appeal to allies came amid strained US-Europe relations, according to AP. These broader arguments help explain why a reference to a war more than two millennia ago prompted responses about the conflict taking place now.

How Iranian officials responded

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei accused Rubio of collapsing Greek, Roman, Christian and modern history into a single narrative. In a statement quoted by Al Jazeera, Baghaei called the approach “anachronism” and accused Rubio of using an “America First” historical story to justify military escalation. Those are the ministry’s criticisms of the speech; the reporting does not establish that Rubio’s remarks led to an escalation.

Culture Minister Reza Salehi-Amiri urged Western politicians to speak about Iran with a “language of respect,” Al Jazeera reported. He described Iran as a living civilisation whose history extends back millennia. The hardline newspaper Vatan-e Emrouz took another approach: Al Jazeera said its Saturday front page depicted Rubio in ancient Roman military dress and characterised the speech as an attempt to give historical and ideological backing to the US war.

The historical dispute and its limits

Historian Touraj Daryaei told local media that Rubio’s account of the sack of Athens was accurate but incomplete, according to Al Jazeera. Daryaei said it omitted an earlier event: Athenian forces burned Sardis, a Persian provincial capital, in 498 BC, and retaliation was a major motivation for the later Persian attack. His objection concerned the context Rubio selected, rather than whether the sack happened.

AP identified a separate point on which historians or political critics could challenge Rubio’s framing. It reported that his speech treated the US founders as embracing Athenian direct democracy, although the founders were wary of it and created the Electoral College as a check on the popular vote. The observation concerns Rubio’s account of Western political inheritance, a wider theme of the Athens address.

The reported reactions do not provide a measure of Iranian opinion as a whole. A 26-year-old Tehran resident identified as Shima told Al Jazeera she disliked using conflicts from 2,500 years ago to build support for the current war. The same report said some members of the Iranian diaspora and other opponents of the Islamic Republic understood Rubio’s criticism as aimed at Iran’s rulers, rather than Iranian civilisation. Those accounts show differing responses, not their prevalence.

Why the speech matters during the war

Al Jazeera placed the exchange against the US-Israel war with Iran that began on February 28. At the time of its October 10 report, it said fighting had subsided, but a US naval blockade remained in place and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was disrupted. The report documents the dispute over Rubio’s rhetoric in that setting; it does not establish any resulting change in military operations or diplomacy.

Rubio had drawn a distinction between Iranians and their leaders before. At his January 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, he described Iranians as people of an ancient civilisation who took pride in their Persian heritage, Al Jazeera reported. The question raised by the Athens speech is how listeners understand that distinction when ancient Persia is invoked alongside present-day threats. The published responses include official objections and differing individual views, but no representative survey of public reaction.