Khuzestan Province

Yet wherever water finds a path through narrow river valleys, mountain springs, or the ancient underground channels later called kanats, human settlement has clung stubbornly for thousands of years.

Around 3000 BCE, in the southwestern lowlands near the modern province of Khuzestan, one of the region's earliest urban societies took shape.

We know it as Elam.

Its principal city, Susa, sat on the fertile plain between the Karun River and the first foothills of the Zagros.

Nobles retained their estates and influence, but their power was now more carefully channeled through royal service.

Yet Khosrow's most enduring legacy may lie in the realm of learning rather than taxation or social order.

In the southwestern province of Khuzestan, the Academy of Gondishapur became, under his active patronage, the most important centre of scholarship in the late antique world.

When the Byzantine Emperor Justinian closed the philosophical schools of Athens in 529 CE, many displaced Greek scholars travelled east.

Early in the war, Israeli warplanes struck well beyond nuclear installations.

They hit places like Khuzestan, Mahabad and Tabriz, not just for military targets, but because these are Iran's fault lines.

Regions where national cohesion and unity are weakest.

and where unrest can spread fastest.

Even though these movements were crushed, they revealed just how fragile Iran's ethnic unity really is.

Israel is playing into that vulnerability.

In addition to the Kerman Shah and Kurdistan provinces, Israeli jets have targeted Khuzestan, which is predominantly ethnic Arab.

Missiles landed near Awaz, Mashahar, and key roads, hammering military staging points and security compounds.

That is exactly why this formed the historical border between Mesopotamia and Persia.

The only exception to this is to the south, where we have the province of Khuzestan.

This region is flat, but it's partly a swamp.

This is where the Tigris and Eupratis rivers join and form the Shet-el-Arab waterway.

So despite being lowland, the swampy nature makes Khuzestan a defensible region.

But this region is populated by ethnic Arabs, not Persians, and therefore this area is vulnerable to separatism and covert operations.

And Iran's intelligence service is always on its high alert in this region.

Assuming that obstacles such as funding, mobilization, popular support, and regional logistics were overcome, Washington could then begin assembling the forces required for a full-scale invasion.

This would likely involve a buildup of hundreds of thousands of troops with the initial phase focusing on amphibious landings along Iran's southern coast and a push toward major cities and the oil-rich province of Khuzestan.

American forces could then attempt to weaken the Iranian military while supporting local opposition groups, similar to the strategy used in Afghanistan in 2001.

Or they might attempt a direct advance toward Tehran, as they did with Baghdad two years later.

I know, Marshall and Sharon, you both mentioned the terrain there in Iran isn't always the easiest to operate in.

And I was reading somewhere that the guys involved in this, when they were in the south around Khuzestan, the province in southwestern Iran, up at the northern part of the Persian Gulf, in the summertime there in the desert, you would get temperatures of 120 Fahrenheit outdoors and 130 indoors, which if you're a Celsius person, that would be like 49 to 55 degrees Celsius.

And then at other times of the year, you're going through mountains in snow, harsh, cold winter weather and things along these routes on the trucks, on the trains and everything.

So it was quite an effort.