Last week, Tehran held a big party. As it is controlled by the hardliner Alireza Zakani, the Tehran municipality is not known for its love of music or public concerts, but this was a special occasion. Five well-known singers sang (all male, as solo singing by women is forbidden in Iran) as a statue was unveiled in Tehran’s Revolution Square.

Based on a rock carving near the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis, the statue displays Shapur I, a Sassanian emperor from the third century, lording over a Roman emperor.

The Roman kneels in front of him as Shapur holds his head high, victorious. (The kneeling figure is the Syrian-born Roman emperor Phillip the Arab although it was another emperor, Valerian, that Iran took as a prisoner of war in the year 260.)

The message of the statue is not particularly subtle. As the Islamic Republic reels from the war it fought with the US and Israel earlier this year, it attempts to boost its credentials by resorting to nationalist imagery. Having invaded large swathes of Roman territory across today’s Turkey, Iraq and Syria, Shapur fits the bill.

In case anything was in doubt, the government-run Mehr News Agency affirmed that the statue “sent a clear signal of Iran’s power and deterrence following the recent 12-day war with the Israeli regime”.

This isn’t new. Posters showing Roman emperors kneeling to Shapur went up in Tehran, Shiraz and other cities in the weeks after the war. They were emblazoned with messages in Persian but also in Hebrew. The week before, a statue of Arash the Archer, a mythical Iranian hero, appeared in Tehran’s Vanak Square.

Most markedly, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asked one of his favourite panegyrists to perform a religiously tinged version of Oh Iran, a popular nationalist song, in July.

Iran’s resort to imagery of ancient empires has been analysed as a major shift, with critics seeing it as a cynical and opportunist attempt to curry favour with a population for whom the hackneyed traditional Islamism of the government has lost lustre.

Motorists drive past the statue of Shapur I during its unveiling in Tehran's Revolution Square.