Xerxes Strikes Back: Rubio's Acropolis Speech Hands Tehran a Unifying Script
A speech in Athens has given the Islamic Republic one of its most effective domestic messages of the war. On October 7, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke on the Pnyx, opened with the Persian army of Xerxes burning the city’s shrines and set Western sacrifice against what he called the cult of death run by Iran’s radical mullahs. Since October 9 the speech has led front pages across the Iranian spectrum, from the IRGC-affiliated Javan to the reformist Shargh and Etemad, and it has drawn replies from the Majlis speaker, the Leader’s foreign policy adviser and the Foreign Ministry. Much of the coverage is ridicule. Its substance is more serious. We assess that Rubio touched the one theme the regime, its reformist critics and much of the secular public share, which is pride in an empire older than Islam. The regime is using that theme to argue that Washington’s real quarrel is with Iran itself, and we judge that this framing will outlast the current news cycle.
What Rubio Said on the Pnyx
Rubio went to Athens to speak to Europeans. Standing on the hill where the Athenian assembly once met, with the Parthenon behind him and about 250 invited guests in front, he extended the argument of his Munich Security Conference address in February. The West, he said, must recover its confidence, rebuild its industry and defend its borders.
Iran was a minor character in that story, but it was cast in the role Iranians resent most. Rubio began in 480 BCE, when the armies of Xerxes entered Athens and burned its temples. He then traced a continuous line from Athens to Rome, from Rome to Christendom and from Europe to America, and later named Alexander among the heirs of Greek ambition. In the middle of the speech he praised the Spartans who held their post at Thermopylae. Western heroes, he said, may be willing to die for their cause, while the radical mullahs of Iran run a cult of death that glorifies child suicide bombers. That passage became the center of Tehran’s response.
How Tehran Answered
The first official reply came the next morning. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei called the speech an anachronism that fuses Greece, Rome, Christianity, Europe and America First into a single lineage. He wrote that Washington now wants to dress its naked bullying in the language of a philosophy of history, and he reminded Rubio that Greece also produced Thucydides, the historian of imperial overreach.
On the evening of October 9, Majlis Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf posted the line that nearly every paper reprinted: “Those who follow Alexander’s legacy will share Valerian’s fate; you will kneel.” Kayhan ran it the next morning as a front-page headline. On October 10, Ali Akbar Velayati, the Leader’s adviser on international affairs, went after the cult-of-death charge. He argued that Washington praises resistance to the last man at Thermopylae while belittling the same steadfastness in Iranians, and he called that double standard sophistry in the service of domination. His conclusion, that Rubio’s problem is with a strong and independent Iranian civilization and not with the Islamic Revolution, became Kayhan’s headline on October 11.
The newspapers turned the speech into a running cartoon. Farhikhtegan filled its October 10 front page with a battered Rubio in torn Roman armor, slumped on the ground with a white flag, under a headline calling him a little Valerian. Vatan-e Emrooz put his face on a Spartan hoplite, and Jam-e Jam dressed him in a toga at the gates of Persepolis. The next day the government daily Iran gave him a Pinocchio nose, and Javan drew him at a podium in a cardboard Spartan helmet. Farhikhtegan suggested he attend three Shahnameh productions now playing in Tehran. Vatan-e Emrooz noted that President Trump had undercut his secretary of state a day later with a diesel deal with Moscow. By October 12, Hamshahri was still running a front-page rebuttal.
The breadth of the response is the main finding. Reformist papers that usually mock the state’s anti-Western rhetoric joined in. Shargh ran a lead editorial by Kioumars Ashtarian, a University of Tehran political scientist, on public diplomacy in the service of warmongering. Arman-e Melli quoted former diplomat Ali Bigdeli as saying Iran is caught in a cultural war. Javan cited Vali Nasr of Johns Hopkins, who warned that Islamophobia is giving way to Iranophobia. Our October 10 Iranian Press Monitor first noted that history had displaced the war itself as the leading hardline frame.
A Quarrel Older Than the Islamic Republic
For most Americans, Xerxes is a villain from a textbook or a Hollywood film. For Iranians he is Khashayar Shah, a king of the empire that Cyrus founded and Darius organized, and the ruins of Persepolis sit at the center of national memory. The Greek account of the Persian Wars is the oldest Western story about Iran. For 25 centuries it has cast Persia as the despotic East.
Iranians keep their own record. In it, Alexander is the man who burned Persepolis in 330 BCE, and Zoroastrian texts call him accursed. Shapur I, who captured the Roman emperor Valerian in 260 CE and carved the scene into the cliffs of Naqsh-e Rostam, is the proof that Rome could be humbled. By listing Alexander among the West’s heroes, Rubio chose the one figure in Greek history whom Iranians remember mainly as an arsonist. Qalibaf’s reply works because every Iranian schoolchild knows both names.
The Shahnameh carries the same memory into Persian literature, and Cyrus, whose cylinder Iranian nationalists present as an early charter of human rights, adds a second source of pride. In this telling, Persia is the tolerant empire and Greece is the origin of a Western story that has cast Iranians as the despotic Other ever since. The grievance is old and sensitive. In 2007, the film “300” drew condemnation from the government, members of parliament and the press alike, and the government spokesman called it cultural and psychological warfare. Rubio’s tribute to the Spartans revived the same memory.
How the Clerics Learned to Embrace Cyrus
The Islamic Republic spent its early years distancing itself from this heritage. Ayatollah Khomeini denounced the Shah’s 1971 celebration of 2,500 years of monarchy, and revolutionary clerics treated the Achaemenid past as Pahlavi property. That has changed. On October 10, the Mashhad daily Quds, published by the Astan Quds Razavi foundation, built its lead headline around the once-monarchist phrase 2,500 years without apparent hesitation.
The shift began with the Cyrus Cylinder exhibition in Tehran in 2010 and became state policy after the June 2025 war with Israel. Ali Khamenei asked for the patriotic anthem Ey Iran, long associated with secular nationalism, at an Ashura ceremony. State billboards filled with Rostam and other heroes of the Shahnameh. In November 2025 the Tehran municipality unveiled a statue in Enghelab Square of Shapur on horseback over a kneeling Valerian, under banners that read Kneel before Iran. When Qalibaf told Rubio that Washington would kneel, he was quoting his own government’s street art.
In practice, Rubio walked into a campaign that was already under way. The Islamic Republic has spent sixteen months recruiting the Persian kings to its cause, and an American secretary of state celebrating the Greek victory over them gave that campaign its most useful villain to date.
The Cult-of-Death Charge and the Children of Minab
Rubio’s line about child suicide bombers had a historical basis. During the war with Iraq, Iran sent teenage volunteers to the front, and the state still honors Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh, who died under an Iraqi tank in 1980 at age 13. Martyrdom also runs deeper than that war, through the Karbala story at the core of Shia piety.
The charge arrived at a poor moment for Washington’s message, however. Iranian state media has spent seven months mourning the pupils killed in the February 28 strike on a school in Minab, where Iranian accounts put the death toll at more than 150. Front pages carried dedications to the Minab children in the same week as the Rubio cartoons. Editors paired the cult-of-death line with Minab and asked who in this war is killing children. Velayati’s point about Thermopylae sharpened the reply, since a speech that celebrates dying to the last man is an awkward platform from which to condemn martyrdom.
Erasing the Line Between the Regime and the Nation
Read closely, Rubio’s insult targeted the radical mullahs of Iran. He said nothing against Iranians as a people, and his Xerxes passage was about Athens. U.S. messaging on Iran has long rested on that distinction between opposing the regime and respecting the people. The Iranian press spent four days erasing it. Nobonyad wrote that Washington’s hostility targets the historical concept of Iran, Velayati said the problem is Iranian civilization itself and Quds called the speech racist. Every cartoon placed Rubio in Greek or Roman dress opposite Persian kings, so readers saw a contest between nations with the clerics nowhere in the frame.
The structure of the speech made this easy. A text that opens with Persian invaders burning Athens, honors the Spartans who fought them and ends its roll of Western heroes with Alexander invites an Iranian reader to stand on the other side of the line, whatever the speaker intended. The effect matters most among the urban middle class and the young. These groups are the least moved by the regime’s religious rhetoric and the most attached to pre-Islamic symbols, and many of them strongly dislike the clerics. When an American official appears to mock Xerxes, the regime gains a rare chance to address them as fellow patriots.
The report identifies several reasons for the size of the response. Nationalism is now the regime’s broadest source of support, reaching people that religious mobilization no longer reaches. The speech also strengthens the hardliners’ favorite argument against negotiation: if Washington’s quarrel is with Iranian civilization, no concession will satisfy it. Farhikhtegan made that case on its front page, and Nobonyad tied Rubio’s 2,500-year enmity to Javad Zarif’s argument for engagement. The theme also divides the opposition. Some monarchists abroad applauded a U.S. official who denounced the mullahs, and Farhikhtegan mocked them for cheering an attack on Xerxes. Finally, the campaign costs nothing. With war at sea, a falling rial, protests by pensioners and workers and a Leader unseen for about seven months, a fight over Xerxes asks nothing of the budget and gives every faction something to share. Because Rubio is secretary of state and, by Trump’s own account, a possible successor to lead his movement, Iranian writers read the speech as a statement of durable U.S. intent. The same week’s Hormuz developments are covered in Seven Conditions First and the October 12 Iranian Press Monitor.
Key Points
- The response is broad and cross-factional. The speech has appeared on the front pages of hardline, government, municipal and reformist dailies alike, and it has drawn replies from the Majlis speaker, the Leader’s adviser and the Foreign Ministry. This degree of convergence across factions is unusual (high confidence).
- Tehran has collapsed the distinction between the regime and the nation. By recasting an attack on the mullahs as an attack on Iranian civilization, the press has turned a central premise of U.S. messaging against Washington (high confidence).
- The speech fits a campaign that was already under way. Since the June 2025 war the regime has deliberately courted pre-Islamic pride, and Rubio supplied that effort with a ready-made Western antagonist (high confidence).
- Hardliners will use the speech against negotiation. The argument that Washington’s enmity is civilizational, and therefore beyond the reach of concessions, is already being aimed at advocates of engagement such as Zarif (moderate confidence).
- The civilizational frame is very likely to outlast this news cycle. It helps the regime at home and carries no cost abroad (moderate confidence).
What to Watch
- Cyrus Day at Pasargadae, October 29 (7 Aban 1405). The state may try to stage its own gathering at a site where crowds have chanted monarchist slogans in past years.
- Formal diplomatic language. Whether Rubio’s words surface in Iran’s formal messages to Washington, in statements at the United Nations or in IRGC statements on Hormuz. If they do, the speech will have hardened Tehran’s negotiating language as well as its headlines.
- The engagement debate. Further attempts to tie Zarif and other advocates of talks to Rubio’s 2,500-year enmity would show the theme being used in factional politics.
- Diaspora monarchists. Continued attacks on Pahlavi supporters who welcomed the speech would indicate that Tehran sees the theme as a way to split the opposition.
- U.S. messaging. Whether Washington adjusts its language to keep Xerxes, Cyrus and the Shahnameh on the nation’s side of the line it draws between Iranians and their rulers.
This special report is based on an Iranian Press Monitor analysis dated October 12, 2026 (20 Mehr 1405), with an appendix of Iranian front-page headlines on Rubio from October 9 to 12. Sources for the speech and official reactions include CBS News, the speech text as published by Greek City Times, Mehr (Baghaei), Entekhab (Qalibaf), Tasnim (Velayati), Kayhan, Eghtesad News, RFE/RL and the Washington Institute. Headlines are from the print editions of Farhikhtegan, Vatan-e Emrooz, Jam-e Jam, Asr-e Iranian, Sobh-e No, Tehran Times, Etemad, Iran, Javan, Hamshahri, Sedaye Iran, Nobonyad, Quds, Shargh, Resalat, Arman-e Melli, Kayhan and Jomhouri-ye Eslami. Translations from the Persian are the report’s own. Casualty figures for Minab are Iranian accounts and have not been independently verified. The one verbatim quote is Qalibaf’s, as translated in the report; all other statements are paraphrased.