Readers of the book of Esther are familiar with “Shushan the capital,” the seat of the Persian empire where the story’s action takes place. In recent years, archaeologists have learned quite a bit about this ancient city, known in the West as Susa and located in modern-day Iran. Lawrence Schiffman writes:

In [one ancient] inscription, the two individuals identifiable as Jews living in Shushan are witnesses in a loan document written in Akkadian, the language of Babylonia, not long after Babylonia was conquered by Persia. What this shows is that a Jewish community already existed in Shushan soon after the establishment of the Persian empire [in 550 BCE]. We can speculate that some Jews had moved there in the earlier Babylonian period, as Shushan was only a short journey eastward from the areas in which the Judean exiles were settled by the Babylonians after the destruction of the First Temple [in 586 BCE].

It wasn’t long before Shushan was home to a substantial Jewish population. . . . It was only natural that Jews would be attracted to this city. The emperor Darius I, [who ruled from 522 to 486 BCE], selected Shushan as his main capital. He also had a capital at Persepolis, which has also left behind beautiful archaeological remains. But Shushan was a natural choice for his primary capital, as it was the center of an empire reaching “from India to Ethiopia,” as the book of Esther repeatedly puts it. Furthermore, the Greek historian Herodotus tells us that Darius built a royal road to facilitate travel and shipping all the way from Shushan to Sardis in Turkey. . . .

The royal complex, which has been excavated thoroughly, was surrounded by a massive wall, and its buildings were about 50 feet higher than the lower city. Its main components were the actual fortified citadel, the palace (called the apadna, a term also used in Daniel 11:45), and the attached residential area (referred to as “the house of the king” in Esther 5:1) that included the harem, also mentioned in Esther. . . .

[T]he city entered a period of decline and insignificance after Alexander the Great conquered the Near East. . . . Some [talmudic sages] came from the province of Khuzestan, of which Shushan was the capital. However, we know nothing about its Jewish population from the Muslim conquest up until the earlier Middle Ages. By this time the tomb of Nabi Danyal (Arabic for “the prophet Daniel”) was being venerated in Shushan. The Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela (ca. 1162) reported that it had a Jewish population of about 7,000 and fourteen synagogues. . . . By the 19th century it was home to several thousand Jews, and the village was called Shush. But a recent list of synagogues in Iran contains no entry for Shushan, and it appears that its community is no longer in existence.

There is little doubt that if Hizballah had participated more intensively in Saturday’s attack, Israeli air defenses would have been pushed past their limits, and far more damage would have been done. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, trying to look at things from Tehran’s perspective, see this as an important sign of caution—but caution that shouldn’t be exaggerated:

Iran is well aware of the extent and capability of Israel’s air defenses. The scale of the strike was almost certainly designed to enable at least some of the attacking munitions to penetrate those defenses and cause some degree of damage. Their inability to do so was doubtless a disappointment to Tehran, but the Iranians can probably still console themselves that the attack was frightening for the Israeli people and alarming to their government. Iran probably hopes that it was unpleasant enough to give Israeli leaders pause the next time they consider an operation like the embassy strike.

Hizballah is Iran’s ace in the hole. With more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, the Lebanese militant group could overwhelm Israeli air defenses. . . . All of this reinforces the strategic assessment that Iran is not looking to escalate with Israel and is, in fact, working very hard to avoid escalation. . . . Still, Iran has crossed a Rubicon, although it may not recognize it. Iran had never struck Israel directly from its own territory before Saturday.

Byman and Pollack see here an important lesson for America:

What Saturday’s fireworks hopefully also illustrated is the danger of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East. . . . The latest round of violence shows why it is important for the United States to take the lead on pushing back on Iran and its proxies and bolstering U.S. allies.