In a post on his X account on Friday, marking the National Day of Persian Prose and the commemoration of renowned Iranian historian Abolfazl Beyhaqi, Baqaei invoked a passage from Beyhaqi’s millennium-old historical chronicle to underscore the wide gap between the expectation of victory and the realities of the battlefield.
The spokesman quoted a passage from “Tarikh-e Beyhaqi” (The History of Beyhaqi) describing an attacking force that assumed capturing a fortress would be an easy task, only to discover that it was defended by formidable warriors.
Drawing a parallel between the account and present-day tensions and threats, the Iranian spokesman said Beyhaqi had warned a thousand years ago that there was a considerable distance between the illusion of victory and the reality of the battlefield.
“Starting an aggression under the illusion of an easy victory does not mean achieving victory,” Baqaei said, stressing that misjudging a fortress “in which there are lions” and underestimating the difficulty of fighting such warriors would have no outcome for aggressors other than the shame of defeat.