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.

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 most anti-Iranian countries in the world. 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.