I started on page five hit the end button after going back a page, so I don't know what you were going to say or what you have said, but this just illustrates a delusion.
I never said that Iran wasn't rugged in its terrain, not once. They have tall mountains, but they face the wrong direction. The area facing the steppe is no where near as rugged as the Caucuses is for Anatolia.
You have said that the Byzantines had the benefits of it and by implication that somehow that's that different.
And the Caucuses is not relevant to Byzantium's protection from the steppe. Byzantium had to face invaders via (modern) Romania again and again, which means that all that the Caucuses does is change what part of the empire is being attacked.
So whether they're as rugged as the Caucuses is of no importance. You might as well compare them to Scandinavian range for all that they relate to the defense of the empire from the steppe..
You can repeat yourself as many times as you want, I'm just not going to play your game here. No matter how many posts you make you cannot change the geography of Persia unless you print them and stake them in the gaps.
The geography where Iran is surrounded by mountains just as much as Byzantium is?
http://www.freeworldmaps.net/asia/iran/map.html Compared to:
http://www.freeworldmaps.net/europe/turkey/map.html
Not perfect as Byzantium's borders in the east at their furthest don't match modern Turkey precisely, but good enough.
The only thing you will ever accept is that the Byzantine Empire survived where it was because of incredibly talented generals, a superiority of its breed and nation, and his sophisticated government. You don't care about the terrain of the region. You don't care about anything that would make the Byzantines even moderately dependent upon the terrain for defense, as you've already proudly said the Byzantines weren't defended by Mountains, but by generals.
Because the terrain of Iran is even more unfavorable than Anatolia or the Balkans.
The Byzantines taking advantage of terrain for defense does not mean that that terrain saved the Byzantines when generalship failed - as 1071 on shows very nicely. (the Turks, unlike the Arabs, counting as from the steppes).
I never said anything whatsoever about breed or nation. Just government and organization.
As if Persia never had generals that could possibly match the Byzantines, or that the Byzantines regularly engaged in warfare with steppe nomads, both are completely false. You don't seem to notice that peninsulas are afforded the defense that having water on four sides bring. You just don't seem to care about geography.
I never said Persia never had generals that could match the Byzantines. But looking at Iran on the whole, the region fell to invaders repeatedly.
And Byzantium very much did have to deal with steppe nomads on a regular basis. Not from the East, but certainly from the NW.
So the one not concerned about geography is the one focusing obsessively on Central Asia as if not bordering it means the steppe is irrelevant. The one who thinks that because Iran's western mountains are taller than the eastern mountains that those mountains don't matter. The one who refers to a peninsula as surrounded by water on four sides (which I would normally be less nasty about but when you're treating it as if being on a peninsula brings you security regardless of your ability to defend yourself, making a distinction between the benefits of
no land borders and
some land borders is relevant).
But wait "They have mountains! Byzantium had mountains so its all the same."
I'm done with that.
They have mountains, and tall ones, and across the frontier. Same as Byzantium has in Anatolia and the Balkans. But hey, if you want to pretend that they don't count because of mountains that aren't on Byzantine borders, go ahead. We should count the Alps as protecting Byzantium from French invasion while we're at it.