Lol
Word empire is over-used, miss-used af...
Ur not an 'empire' cuz u conquered one neighbor n tiny other pieces of other neighbors...basically all states did that to their neighbors, so don't wave the word empire around so easily...
Russia was an empire for having 1/3 of europe n stomping most, not because of their much larger entire northern asia territory, cuz conquering a few eskimo tribes that didn't fight, hell they had no formal states or borders to speak of.
What territory of significance did sweden ever conquer n hold?
They had their chance with charles XII who defeated denmark, poland the initially russia, but then he lost so he never capitalized on his victories, ran to the ottoman sultan begging for aid, failing that he fought in norway where some stray norwegian bullet took him out...that is the swedish 'empire'..
Well, this is too off-topic, thread is supposed to be about iran (which was a true empire)