Don’t buy any of this. The Persians (Sasanian Empire) invented a version of the game chess around the year 600, so are no slouches when it comes to tactics.
One of their favorites tends to catch westerners off guard.
Different individuals come out with totally different positions on an issue, all seemingly sounding authoritative, while rejecting each others positions. This is a means to see what their enemies position will be.
Once the enemy has stated his position, they select the most effective counter to it, and that is embraced as their official position. Sort of.
Importantly, many westerners have the bad habit of a “bias to blather”, holding endless meetings and trying to bore their enemies into compliance. This absolutely does not work against Iranians, who are more than willing for their enemy to waste their own time while Iranians discreetly act.
You can see the folly of this by how the west approached the Iranian nuclear program, and how the Iranians got everything they wanted and the west got nothing.
While the Persians (and Saracens) have claimed many “inventions”, most were either stolen or adopted from other cultures.
“The history of chess spans over 1500 years. The earliest predecessor of the game probably originated in India, before the 6th century AD. From India, the game spread to Persia. When the Arabs conquered Persia, chess was taken up by the Muslim world and subsequently spread to Southern Europe. In Europe, chess evolved into roughly its current form in the 15th century.”
Source: Wikipedia (not the only source on this subject).
Wish you well
HLB