A power on the Iranian plateau, allied with Babylon under Nabopolassar to destroy Assyria's Nineveh in 612 BC — the very partnership that let Babylon rise in the first place. Jeremiah 25:25 already names 'the kings of Media' in the roster handed Jehovah's cup, decades before the empire Babylon helped build turns against it: the book of Daniel's own 'Darius the Mede' (5:31) takes Babylon in 539 BC, and 'the Medes and Persians' becomes the fixed, unchangeable-law phrase of the Persian court (Daniel 6:8, 12, 15; Esther 1:19). What Media helped Babylon do to Nineveh, a joined Medo-Persian empire does to Babylon in turn.