Stream Watch unlimited documentaries for free for a month at curiosity, stream dot com slash real life floor.

Historically, Persia has wielded massive international influence and prestige.

But there's always been one problem that severely limits any civilization in Iran, including the modern Iran.

Iran's geographic spawn point is Nerf, and here's why take a look at this topographic map of the country.

To the west are the Zagros Mountains, a large chain that makes up a significant portion of the border with Iraq into the north or the Albores Mountains.

Together, the Zagros and Albores largely protect the Iranian Heartland, located atop high plains inside in modern times.

Of the eight largest Iranian cities, with over one million inhabitants on Lee, one of them, a vase, is located outside of this Heartland between the mountains here on the plains that connect to Iraq, Iran's various mountains, separate people and languages, which has caused numerous ethnic and linguistic groups to develop inside of the area.

Transportation between areas of Iran by ground has always been difficult, meaning that whatever regime rules must rules strongly and often harshly in order to keep the disconnected in diverse areas across the mountains united the major cities of Persia have always been located across these various valleys and high plains in between the numerous mountains, which serves as a kind of double edged sword.

On the one hand, the mountain ranges make any invasion of Iran a difficult operation.

The Zagros can be used as an easily defensible high ground position against on invading army from the west, while the Albores conserve as a barrier to invasion from the north.

And even if an enemy overcomes those, they'd still have to fight across the mountains and valleys of the Heartland and take each city one by one.

However, the mountains can also serve toe box, an Iranian empire inside, and limit their ability to project power beyond them, Geography always plays a major role in warfare.

In the 1980 Iraq launched an all out invasion into Iran, with the goal of annexing the oil rich western province of Khuzestan and hopefully overthrowing the Iranian regime and halting the Iranian revolutions influence from spreading any further west.

Let's go back to a topographic map of what the Iran Iraq border looks like in the first couple years of the war, Iraq made limited progress and occupying Kurdistan here, largely because it's just a extension of the illusion plane in Iraq itself and is an easy, flat surface for mobilized units and troops to travel across.

Kyrgyzstan is the only province of Iran that's located primarily west of the Zagros.

But Iraq made only small progress, invading further up north into the Zagros because of the difficulty in attacking the Iranian high ground positions.

In this way, the Zagros protected Iran against attacks along her entire border.

Iraq's invasion was stunted, and after two years the Iranians comply.

Clete Lee pushed them out and began their own counter invasion of Iraq.

But this was just a difficult for the Iranians.

The front line across the border territory was significantly closer to the major Iraqi population centers and military depots in Baghdad and Basra, and they could resupply their front largely across easy and flat terrain.

The Iranians, on the other hand, had to supply their front far away from their major population, centers and depots and from across the other side of the Zagros as well.

Iranian troops and supplies therefore had to make a difficult journey across the mountains in order to reach the front line and in combination with a large international trade embargo.

The Iranian military suffered from supply shortages throughout the war, which was a problem that the Iraqi military simply didn't have to deal with.

It's part of the reason why Iraq, with a population on Lee a quarter the size of Iran, was capable of holding them off in a stalemate for six entire years before a white piece was finally signed.

That changed no borders and gave no reparations after half a million dead.

Historically and in our present time Persia Slash Iran has always sought to expand her influence to the West, and geography largely dictates this.

Despite the difficulty in crossing the Zagros Mountains, westward expansion is still just easier for a Persian regime than any other direction.

To the east is Afghanistan, a region even more mountainous and difficult to control that Iran is.

While there's also Pakistan, a country with over 2.5 times their population in a nuclear weapons armed state to boot.

To the north is Central Asia, a region of the world dominated by open steppes and deserts, where farming is largely impossible that historically was dominated by nomadic tribal peoples instead of settled civilizations, conquering and holding the area for long from the step towards was essentially impossible, or just not worth it for any civilization until the advent of gunpowder and modern armies.

And today the entire area is still largely under the influence of Russia, so no realistic expansion in that direction, either.

That essentially leaves the West, and in times of regional weakness or instability, Persia has always exploited this geographic opportunity.

Look at the imperial borders of the ancient acumen it empire, the sustain Ian Empire, the Safavid Empire and the AF shard empire, and you'll begin to recognize the same patterns.

While Persia has occasionally expanded to the east, the north and the south, those directions have never been a great as their westward expansion has.

And that's because once the Persian armies have crossed over the Zagros and if there's no other civilizations strong enough to immediately stop them in Iraq, there's not much in their way geographically from there all the way to Egypt.

But Persia doesn't necessarily seek out conquest and expansion, just in order to dominate Persia has been invaded and attacked and conquered multiple times during her history from every direction, partially as a consequence of being at the crossroads of the world between Europe, Africa and Asia.

Greeks, Arabs, Mongols and Turks have all taken their turns for invasions across history, and this is letter run to seek out a policy of expanding her territory in order to protect her core area.

This partially explains why today Iran still seeks influence in countries like Syria, Lebanon, in Iraq to the west of her borders.

However, it's not all bad.

One way that Iran received a buff to her geography stats came in the 20th century.

With the discovery of massive oil fields, 10% of all the world's proven oil reserves and 15% of its gas reserves are located right here in the southwestern corner of the country, which has given tremendous wealth to the states.

Well, this could be easily seen as a geographic blessing.

It's also sort of a double edged sword.

The Iranian economy these days is heavily reliant on oil and gas.

In 2012, for example, roughly 80% of Iran's public revenue was made up exclusively of oil exports.

This essentially means that today, the most critically valuable territory that Iran possesses is Kirgizstan, where the majority of this oil and gas is extracted from because Houston is also the most critically vulnerable region of Iran.

Geographically, as mentioned previously, Kyrgyzstan and the oil fields are located almost entirely west of the protection of the Zagros Mountains on a plane connecting to Iraq, meaning that it is certainly the easiest Iranian province to occupy in the event of a war.

But there's more than just that.

Perhaps the biggest weakness in all of Iran's geography is located just to the south here, the Strait of Hormuz.

Persian empires have always spend strong land powers but have never really been strong naval powers.

And this is largely the reason why most of Iran's coastline is located here in the Persian Gulf, including the entire coast of coup Gaston, where most of Iran's oil and gas is extracted.

The only way for warships or commercial ships to get out of the Persian Gulf is through this narrow chokepoint that's only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point.

Some countries, like the United Kingdom, have historically been difficult to blockade because an enemy navy would have to surround the entire island with ships to prevent any resource is from leaking through.

But all in enemy has to do to blockade.

The majority of Iran is to block that 21 mile wide opening, and nothing could get in or out across the ocean.

And it's even worse than that.

Today, one third of the entire global supply of liquefied natural gas and 25% of the global supply of oil passes through this 21 mile wide straits.

In theory, since Iran controls the entire northern coastline, they could blockade or mind the straight themselves and cut the entire world off from massive amounts of critical resource is such an action would be catastrophic upon the global economy and likely trigger an immediate response.

The Strait of Hormuz is therefore the most important feature of Iran's geographic limitations.

If Iran were to ever lose control of this 21 mile stretch of area, all would be lost.

Of course, humans can do a lot to make a bad geographic starting point a little better.

You can spend your peasants tax dollars on things like forts or castles and weak or strategic areas to buff them up.

So if you want to see what it actually takes to build a castle, you should watch how to build a castle.

Next on Curiosity Stream.

Ah, glorious hour long documentary explaining how civilizations in the Middle Ages constructed castles and defensive positions before the advent of modern construction technology.

This is just one of thousands of titles that you can watch on your desktop.

Smart TV, IOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku Chromecast and Mawr platforms through curiosity stream.

They're the perfect site for anybody who likes being entertained and taught something at the same time.

And what's best for real life, Laura viewers is that you can watch any of these thousands of titles for free for 31 days by signing up at curiosity stream dot com slash real life floor and using the code Real Life Lord during the sign up process.

Thank you for watching, and I'll see you again next week.