Decisive Sassanid victory in the Sassanid-Roman war or 604-628

It is quite disingenuous to disregard the military aspect of earlier Islam to its expansion, sure some (many) would follow Muhammad's vision, others wouldn't and those would call Khosrow for help if the Muslims act aggressively.

Oh no, I certainly agree that military success was crucial to the ascendancy of Islam in the Hijaz. In fact, I think if Madinah's Muslims hadn't been successful in raiding and repelling much larger Makkan forces, even regular proselytizing would have been hamstrung. Islam's social message was powerful amongst women, the poor, slaves, etc, but the Arab tribesmen who convert were more convinced by Muhammad's inexplicable military success. To use the words that the apostate prophetess Sajah said to Khalid after Yamamah - "We were many and you were few. We were strong and you were weak. We were wealthy and you were poor. This is all true, yet it is our warriors who lie dead in heaps while yours celebrate with their wives and their children. Perhaps my God hates me, perhaps your God loves you, but know that I follow what you follow once again." If the Muslims weren't winning battles, one of the main things that convinced folks that maybe this Muhammad guy has someone looking out for him is gone.

However, my contention was that by this time (I'd say that the repulsion of the Four Confederated Armies at the Battle of the Trench is the turning point), the legend of the Prophet's humiliation of Arabia's foremost power is already spreading and Islam is shifting from basically a faith spread by radicial reforming weirdos and social outcasts into a mass movement. Some degree of Islamization in Yemen, Oman, and Bahrain is inevitable unless something drastic happens. You make a good point that even if Islam comes in halfway to these regions, the tribal elites would probably see watch the evolution of Muhammad’s new (and explicitly anti-elitism/anti-tribalist) society with absolute terror and call in their Sassanid lords to stamp out the Islamic reformist preachers in their regions before the number of converts reaches a critical mass.
 
The Sassanids were on their last legs precisely because of the fact that the ruling house had lost some prestige amongst the Parthian clans, because the succession to Khosrau II was so disputed, and because a 26 year war had drained the Empire of valuable resources and most of its people and had ended in a defeat. If Khosrau wins early, all of those problems are avoided, and while the Sassanids are not assured anything, they might hold out and be strengthened by a strong victory, which would make a young Khosrau with a strong treasury and a manpower that is not depleted be also seen as a new Cyrus to the mobeds.

I think this would be a case of 'Winning the War, but losing the Peace'. Khosrow is vindicated, that's wonderful, but how is he going to rebuild the Empire? He is victorious, but now is face with the task of putting everything back together, and that's harder then leading any army. One screw up, and he will lose everything.

Putting what back together? The only time in which a Sassanid absolute victory is likely is at the start of the war, when Rome is reeling from the Maurice-Phocas-Heraclius transition, and at that point there's no devastation in Mesopotamia or Iran, the taxation effort is completely intact, and it's not like Persia completely destroyed the Levant (except Jersualem - maybe) and Egypt at the start of the war - they wanted to annex the territory, it wouldn't work if the land was razed - in fact, there's (dubious) Byzantine reports of Iranian troops stopping Jewish rebels from massacring the Christian parts of Syrian cities.

The Eastern Roman Navy, at this time, is simply the most well funded, well trained, well build, and outnumbering everyone else in the region. I just can't see it. The Eastern Romans can regroup, and teach the Sassanians a lesson.

Iran won't be able to take Constantinople - but without grain shipments from Egypt, demoralised over the loss of the True Cross, and especially if Heraclius follows through on moving the capital to Carthage or Syracuse and demoralises the Byzantines even further, there won't be any regrouping.

Christianity may eventually replace Zoroastrianism as the state faith. I am serious. With the conquest of almost entirely Christianize territories (Syria, Egypt, the Maronite, the Syriac Orthodox.) Kick the Sassanians out of power, and Persia will made Christian in due time.

Why do people always say this?

Plus, how exactly are Miaphysites in Syria and Egypt, Chalcedonians in Anatolia and the Pentapolis and Nestorians in Mesopotamia work together? They heated each other more than they hated Zoroastrians. Plus, at least in Palestine, the Iranian conquest meant that Jews and Samaritans replaced Christians in most positions of faith - Christianity would be nothing more than the faith of the populace.
 
It depends on how early the theoretical Sassanian victory would be, but I don't really see these new conquests lasting. The Persians would have extremely long and diverse new borders to defend and would be extremely overstretched militarily. Whenever the Arabs show up (which I still think they will, POD isn't really early enough to butterfly it) the Persians will have trouble defending all their new conquests.

I see the Persians running into a similar problem Justinian's Roman Empire did. Expanding so far west merely gives them more land to defend, making them stretch themselves thin and ripe for conquest by ambitious neighbours. It's not really about the Sassanids being dysfunctional or unstable, they're in a good position in theory. However their logistics would be overstretched from defending and integrating all this newly conquered territory. Their neighbours are much more powerful potential threats than during the times of Cyrus and the Sassanids do not have a failsafe like the Theodosian walls to fall back on.
 
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So the Roman-Sassanid wars continued on till a hard fought Roman victory that was soon undone by the Islamic conquests.

What if the Sassanids had triumphed decisively?

In essence becoming the Achaemenids come again?

Perhaps driving Rome from Western Asia entirely(or strips on the coast of anatolia?

How would a Sassanid empire that controlled all the Middle East and Egypt up to bythnia fare against the rashidun caliphate?

By 620 the Sassanids, right before the arab conquests were actually crushing the romans, they controlled almost all of anatolia, as well as the levant, all the sassanids had to do was to coordinate a march into constantinople which they were just outside of, and then invade egypt and the remainder of roman north africa because it was cut off, the Sassanids if they had worked somewhat faster in their final years would've been able to push the Romans back into the Balkans and southern Italy.

With Peacetime most likely occurring, the empire can get a breath of fresh air and fend off arab conquerors, mind you in OTL the Arabs failed their initial invasions against the Sassanids. The Sassanids were more or less hell bent on restoring the Achaemenid empire with "pure" zoroastrianism, priests were killed for attempting to make heretic tolerating practices in the religion.
 
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