Greece–Iran relations

Greece and Iran have maintained diplomatic ties ever since they were formally established between the Kingdom of Greece and the Sublime State of Iran on 19 November 1902. The Greek and Iranian governments are represented in each other's countries through embassies in Tehran and Athens, respectively. Relations were warm under Iran's Pahlavi dynasty, but quickly deteriorated after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when the new Islamic Republic government began mutually antagonizing the United States (the "Great Satan") and the Western Bloc, of which Greece was a part during the Cold War.

Greece–Iran relations

Greece	Iran
Diplomatic mission
Embassy of Greece, Tehran	Embassy of Iran, Athens

More recently, the two countries have had political spats and escalations on numerous occasions. Out of all European countries, Greece has experienced the highest level of hostilities with Iran since 1979, and it was also the only European country to support the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the United States in 2020. In response, the Iranian government threatened Greece with retaliation if it allowed the American military to use Greek territory as a staging ground in the event of an open conflict with Iran.

Modern Greece has been consistently among the top countries with an overall negative opinion of Iran. In a 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center, 73% of Greeks viewed Iran's influence negatively, with only 19% expressing a positive view. In 2019, Greece expressed the highest level of support among European countries for cancelling the Iran nuclear deal. A poll conducted in 2023 revealed that Iranians rank third among Greek society's most unfavourably viewed nationalities: 51% of Greek respondents held a negative opinion of Iranians, with only Pakistanis (63%) and Afghans (60%) ranking more unfavourably.

In addition to their modern relationship, the Greek and Iranian nations have an extensive shared history going back thousands of years before the Arab conquest of Iran in the 7th century. The Achaemenid Empire controlled much of Greek-speaking Asia Minor and launched multiple major military campaigns in ancient Greece, where a number of independent Greek city-states fought against the Persian army and Persian-allied Greek city-states in 492 BC and again in 480 BC. Just under two centuries later, the Achaemenid Empire was conquered by Alexander the Great, who was an ardent admirer of Persian culture and of Cyrus the Great, after whose system of government he modelled his own Macedonian Empire. While Greek and Iranian culture, language, and civilization intermingled, the two sides' political rivalry intermittently resurfaced, continuing after Greece's Christianization during the Roman–Persian Wars, which ended at the time of the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian Empire, as the latter was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate and subsequently Islamized.

History

A cartoon by Puck commemorating the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Greece and the Sublime State of Iran in November 1902. It depicts a Greek and a Persian sharing a drink for the first time in 2393 years (since 491 BC), notwithstanding sustained Greek–Persian cultural interactions thereafter.

Ancient

Further information: History of Greece § Classical antiquity, History of Iran § Classical antiquity, and Hellenistic period

Relations between the two people date back from antiquity and well before the first Persian invasion of Greece. By the late 6th century BC, the Achaemenid Empire was in control of the entirety of Asia Minor (which included many ethnically Greek areas), as well as many of the Greek islands, Thrace, and Macedonia, the latter two of which make up large parts of modern-day northern Greece. There is also the report by the Greek geographer Strabo of a delegation being sent from Athens to the Achaemenid Empire in 432 BC.

While both sides were sworn rivals during the Greco-Persian Wars, they eventually developed a strong cordiality with each other, especially after the Wars of Alexander the Great. Alexander admired Persian culture and Cyrus the Great, and wanted to create a synthesis with Greek culture that would forever bind and commemorate the Greek people and the Persian people. To this end, he even arranged the Susa weddings in the hopes that having a Persian wife would prove the legitimacy of his identification as a son of both ancient Greece and ancient Persia.

This legacy of strong cordiality would thus be found back for many more centuries in various parts of the world—a harmonious blend of both Greek and Persian cultural aspects. The Kingdom of Pontus was a prime example of an entity (in Asia Minor) where Persian and Greek culture, ethnicity, language, and identity mingled.

Warfare continued between Greece and Persia in the 3rd century BC, with the Parthian dynasty reconquering the Persian mainland and also capturing Seleucia, the capital of the Seleucid Empire, thereby turning the once-great successor of Alexander's empire into a rump state.

Medieval

Further information: Roman–Persian Wars § Byzantine–Sasanian Wars, Early Muslim conquests, and Arab–Byzantine Wars

As the Roman Empire began to fracture along the lines of the Greek East and Latin West, and ultimately following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the main powers in the Near East were the Greek-dominated Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) and the Persian Sasanian Empire. The Roman–Persian Wars, which had started between the Roman Republic and the Parthian Empire, continued intermittently between the Byzantines and the Sasanians. They were ultimately inconclusive, however, and came to an abrupt end with the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, as the Sasanian Empire fell to the Arab conquest of Persia and the Byzantine Empire lost a vast swath of territory to the Arab conquest of the Levant. While the Zoroastrian Sasanian Empire was annexed by the Rashidun Caliphate and subsequently Islamized, the Christian Byzantine Empire remained intact at Constantinople and in parts of Asia Minor. For the next two centuries, the Arabs maintained direct control over Iran, effectively severing contact between the Greeks and the Iranians. By the time the Iranian Intermezzo ended Arab rule in Iran, the Byzantine Empire had begun declining and later collapsed, owing to the Crusades and then to the Mongol conquests, by which Turkic tribes entered Asia Minor, eventually leading to the establishment of the Ottoman Empire and the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Modern

There is a small Christian Greek community in Iran. In Tehran, there is a Greek Orthodox church, which opens mostly during the Greek Holy Week.

On May 24, 2012, the Iran-Greece Chamber of Commerce was founded to strengthen economic ties between Iran and Greece across various sectors such as industry, commerce, mining, agriculture, and services. Additionally, the Chamber seeks to promote bilateral exchanges and investments between the two countries. Mehdi Jahangiri is the chairman of the board of the Iran-Greece Chamber of Commerce.

In February 2016, the then Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras traveled to Tehran, becoming the first Western leader to visit Iran after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was signed. Tsipras met the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and pledged that his country would become an energy, economic and trade bridge between Iran and the European Union.

In January 2020, the Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated that "Greece supports the decision of the USA for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani" causing an official protest by Iran, while the Greek opposition condemned the killing of Soleimani.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Greece donated 200,000 vaccines to Iran.

In May 2022, Iranian soldiers seized two Greek tankers and took the crew hostage at the Persian Gulf. This move was a punitive action after Greek authorities confiscated Iranian oil held on a Russian-operated ship docked at a port in Greece a month earlier due to European Union sanctions against Russia for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On June 8, 2022, a Greek court overruled an earlier court order that authorized the United States to seize part of an Iranian oil cargo aboard an Iranian-flagged tanker off the Greek coast.

On June 14, 2022, the Iranian-flagged Lana tanker ship, which was held by Greece in April, has been released and its oil cargo will be returned to its owner, according to Iran's Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO).

On July 2, 2022, an Iranian-flagged tanker that Greece seized in April, with the United States seizing some of its cargo, was being towed to the port of Piraeus.

See also

• Iran–European Union relations
• Foreign relations of Greece
• Foreign relations of Iran

External links

• Greek Ministry of Foreign Affaires about relations with Iran
• Iranian embassy in Athens