You may want to read up on the state of preparation these countries are going through to reestablish their perceived ancient kingdoms.
It is a constant debate in Military forums about the scale of ambitions these countries possess, but the indisputable fact remains that a) The administrations there have incorporated ideologies of grandeur into their legitimacy and b) Their military postures are targeted toward establishing specific, stated, highly provocative goals of expansionism / wiping out old foes.
Iran is less expansionist, more "Everyone around us hates us and America hates us, so we can only preserve ourselves only by preemptively making them 'friendly'". Even Safavid Persia stopped expanding after its peak, following which the only time it went expansionist was under Nadir Shah. The "us vs the world" mentality grants the theocratic regime legitimacy. The Iran-Iraq war (Saddam's mad campaign in other words) did not help in soothing this mentality either - it still remains in recent memory for many Iranians.
You may want to read up on the state of preparation these countries are going through to reestablish their perceived ancient kingdoms.
It is a constant debate in Military forums about the scale of ambitions these countries possess, but the indisputable fact remains that a) The administrations there have incorporated ideologies of grandeur into their legitimacy and b) Their military postures are targeted toward establishing specific, stated, highly provocative goals of expansionism / wiping out old foes.