In his presentation, entitled Persian Praetorians: Iran's Military Heritage and the Rise of the Revolutionary Guard, Ward proposed that valuable insight can be gained into today's Iran and its military through the lens of the Persian empire's long history of surprising military victories, exceptional individual fortitude, and sometimes defeat brought about by overconfidence. He sees Iran's current Revolutionary Guard, the elite of the Iranian military, as a principle protector of the Islamic Revolution, deeply enmeshed in the Iranian Government, and having considerable say in who holds power. The Guard has extended its influence into every corner of Iranian society, and retains a revolutionary outlook, as well as many of the characteristics of its military ancestors. He says in the introduction of Immortal: "since the Sixteenth Century, Iran has been the largest and most significant Islamic state following the Shia creed, and the Iranian rejection of many Sunni beliefs isolates them from much of the wider Islamic World. In the coming century, this uniqueness and the historical memory of the greatness of past Persian empires could feed the Islamic Republic's ambitions for regional preeminence and a more strategically significant revival of Iran's armed forces."