His point was number of years old civilization is no criteria for strength of it now.
Many old civilizations even are gone and dusted. Human civilizations started tens of thousands of years ago, maybe 100,000 years ago. We don't know truly.
As far as oldest civilization present today, I searched google / chatgpt. Results shown are in below order:
1- Chinese (Oldest)
2- Indian
3- Persian
Now, ofcourse everyone would claim that they are the oldest. BTW, in Madhya Pradesh India 10,000 years old paintings are found along with other signs. So...? Anyways, how old a civilization is does not mean how it will perform in battle. British and Japanese invaded China at different times when Chinese are clearly very older civilization then these two new ones. So the whole point was bringing this argument that Iran is xxx years old civilization means absolutely nothing. BTW, religions, customs, most of stuff already updated, its another debate that is the current civilization really the one which is present today too. Because no one claims this for Ancient Egyptian civilization (10,000 years+ older, age of pyramids / oldest distinct structures of mankind till date etc).. Modern egyptians do not claim they are 10,000 year old civilization...