Iraq and Iran are actually pretty distinct historically. Iran is the center of the old assyrian empire, a tradiional stronghold of Shiite islam. Iraq is the traditional center of sunni islam.
They pretty much form the front line of the roman / persian forever war, so they're probably some of the most constant antagonists in recorded history. Then there's this whole fault line in islam that runs between them. Then in modern history they had a really bloody war, that left a huge number of people seriously ill and disabled because of us-supplied Iraqi chemical weapon use.
I've been trying to think of a european equivalent and I've come up short because I simply can't think of any two polities that have been so consistently at odds, or so consistently under distinct and radically opposed rulerships. There's definitely more similarity between Japan and China, for example, or the USA and Russia.
What is now Iraq was largely almost always under Sassanid/Persian rule. The old Persian capital of Ctesiphon was basically next door to modern Baghdad. The old fault line was really in eastern Anatolia.
Rome held Mesopotamia for a very brief period of time and didn't have much impact other than the occasional army passing through until the Muslim conquest.
You're right. I kind of assumed geographical continuity because there seems so much cultural continuity between shia islam and zoroastrianism, especially the socialist bent.
I thought Iraq was basically three ethnic/cultural groups. The Kurds in the North, the central region was mainly Sunni Arabs, and the South and East were mainly Shiite's who may also be of Persian descent?
Sure. Not sure how old this situation is: there's an enormous amount of migration in the ME in the last century or so.
For the modern history, part of the problem was that the Baath party, and the Iraqi state in general, was kinda a sunni-only thing. Afaik the british arranged it that way with King Faisal (II? I?).
Sweden and Denmark, or Sweden and Russia (or, occasionally, all three) comes to mind, but they've kept things civil between them for the last couple of hundred years.
They pretty much form the front line of the roman / persian forever war, so they're probably some of the most constant antagonists in recorded history. Then there's this whole fault line in islam that runs between them. Then in modern history they had a really bloody war, that left a huge number of people seriously ill and disabled because of us-supplied Iraqi chemical weapon use.
I've been trying to think of a european equivalent and I've come up short because I simply can't think of any two polities that have been so consistently at odds, or so consistently under distinct and radically opposed rulerships. There's definitely more similarity between Japan and China, for example, or the USA and Russia.