EP18 Iranian Interconnections

What this episode is about

The discussion explores the evolution of Persian civilization and its pivotal role as a traditional regional superpower, contrasting its historical alliances, particularly with the United States, against the backdrop of the drastic political transformation in Iran following the 1979 revolution. Historian John Gazvinian provides insights into these interconnections, shedding light on the lasting implications for both Iran and global relations.

Key takeaways

• Iran was once America's 'greatest friend'—a diplomatic relationship that feels like a distant fantasy today.
• Mutual admiration defined US-Iran relations for centuries, but decades of animosity often overshadow this history.
• The 1970s portrayed Iran as a glamorous ally; the polarization we see now emerged from a perfect storm of resentment.
• Understanding Iran's historical allure challenges the blame-game mentality prevalent in today's geopolitical narratives.
• The shift from friendship to 'Great Satan' demonstrates how historical perceptions can flip dramatically amidst political upheaval.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Dan Carlin (Host) · 52 min speaking
• John Gazvinian (Guest) · 35 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 10:00: United States (states), John Gazvinian
2. 10:00 – 20:00: United States (states)
3. 20:00 – 30:00: United States (states)
4. 30:00 – 40:00: United States (states), Mohammad Mossadegh
5. 50:00 – 1:00:00: United States (states)
6. 1:00:00 – 1:10:00: United States (states), Jalani Hussein
7. 1:20:00 – 1:27:13: Battle Guide, United States (states), John Gazvinian, America and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present

Notable quotes from "EP18 Iranian Interconnections"

• Iran takes a 180 degree turn when i was a kid iran was a nation friendly to the united states in fact one of our best friends the shift to a fundamentalist religion-backed.

  about United States (states) · at 1:02

• The blame maybe in any case without further ado the fabulously interesting john gasvinian talking about the american and iranian relationship and you know some history and if you don't know iranian history by the way or.

  about John Gazvinian · at 2:31

• To focus on kind of where it all went wrong whose fault it is and i was trying to do something different with the book which is to say that you know history is not about laying blame or looking for who started it's not a courtroom.

  about America and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present · at 5:44

• Its history with the united states you know this is those forces you mentioned you know the first time we really see this in terms of u.s iran relations is in the 1953 coup when iran tries to nationalize its oil industry.

  about Mohammad Mossadegh · at 16:56

• With saddam hussein without understanding the 1980s and i mean saddam hussein was exactly the kind of guy that normal us foreign policy would have been in opposition of in the…

  about Jalani Hussein · at 1:09:12

• How to donate to the show hey everyone back for one quick second to talk again about battle guide virtual tours you may have heard me bring them up before i hooked up with these guys during the first.

  about Battle Guide · at 1:24:06

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• John Gazvinian — Person · Main guest · 4 mentions · first at 1:39
  Historian interviewed about the long arc of U.S.–Iran relations, emphasizing the pre-1979 history and key turning points like 1953, WWII, and the Nixon-era alliance with the Shah.
• Mohammad Mossadegh — Person · Referenced historical figure · 1 mention · first at 38:04
  Central to the episode’s explanation of the 1953 coup and the oil nationalization crisis; framed as a popular, constitutionalist prime minister whose overthrow shaped later Iranian distrust of the U.S.
• Jalani Hussein — Person · Referenced political leader · 1 mention · first at 1:09:05
  Discussed as the Iraqi leader whose war with Iran (1980s) profoundly shaped Iranian security thinking, including motivations around deterrence and later nuclear anxieties.

Books & papers

• America and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present — Book · Primary recommendation · 1 mention · first at 1:22:44
  Book discussed in the episode providing historical context on the relationship between America and Iran

Companies & orgs

• Battle Guide — Company · Incidental · 4 mentions · first at 1:24:10
  Mentioned in passing, no significant relevance to the main discussion

Places & events

• United States (states) — Place · Core topic · 28 mentions · first at 1:06
  Central theme of the episode, discussing the history and current state of the United States' relationship with Iran

Full transcript with timestamps

0:02 it's hardcore history the guest we're going to have on today is talking about a subject that is near and dear to my heart i first fell in love with what i would have called persian civilization as a teenager by studying ancient history and the persians are in one of their you know perhaps their greatest period it depends on how you define greatest but perhaps the greatest period in their history but they've had many and of course the um long time antagonist in the ancient world of the greeks and and so you get caught up in the the romance and the and the fascinating involvement the persians had in the region then you start studying how often they have that involvement and you begin to understand that this is a traditional regional superpower and then right when i'm really getting heavily into my interest in persia the situation with the modern nation of iran takes a 180 degree turn when i was a kid iran was a nation

1:08 friendly to the united states in fact one of our best friends the shift to a fundamentalist religion-backed revolution where the united states was the great satan was an unbelievable turn of events not just for the united states but for the entire world stage in terms of what it did to things and many people have been born since without any memory of a friendly iran at all john gasvinian uh is going to talk to us today well basically about anything i ask him about so the deficiencies in the conversation are yours truly not asking more questions about more things i remember looking at the clock and thinking wow i've i've kept this historian here a long time i don't want to keep him all day but boy i never even got to x y and z so that's my fault and i do ho oh uh john gazvinian and you all an apology for the way this sounds um you know we have several methods for doing interviews remote interviews

2:12 they all sound great some of the time and then let you down other times so we'll try something different next time so my apologies to everyone involved any mistakes are purely my own or you know imaginary creatures who shall be unnamed i'll share the um the blame maybe in any case without further ado the fabulously interesting john gasvinian talking about the american and iranian relationship and you know some history and um if you don't know iranian history by the way or you want to understand better the traditional place of iran in the region well this is the tinny sounding interview you've been waiting for hello hello dr gavidian it's dan can you hear me yes hello let's start off with perceptions here because i grew up in an era um where i mean i was 15 in 1980 and i was politically aware and so growing up iran was a country that the united states was really friendly with and so unlike a lot

3:21 of americans born after that time period who've only seen iran in sort of an adversarial sort of sense i remember the country as one of our greatest friends in the world maybe our greatest friend arguably our greatest friend in that important region of the world when you go out there today and you want to talk to people about a book that talks about iran what kind of sort of feedback are you getting from the countries um that were on the opposite side of things like you know the hostage taking in 1980 and all that have attitudes sort of changed or evolved or or i mean what are you hearing back from uh from feedback i guess is what i want to know yes no that's very interesting you know i mean you're absolutely right when you say that the 1970s in many ways were a sort of heyday of us iran relations uh you know the united states or rather excuse me iran was portrayed very positively in the united states so it

4:13 was a time when iran was seen as this kind of glamorous uh kingdom to the east of everything that was threatening uh you know this was a time when when the americans thought of the middle east they thought of the arab-israeli conflict the arab oil embargo socialist governments in various arab states the cold war it was not a very positive impression but when they looked at iran this for a country that was just slightly to the east of all of that but it was you know had a friendly pro-american king uh who you know had this uh sort of beautiful glamorous wife and had this a very uh fancy coronation ceremony in 1971 that was broadcast live by satellite into american television you know so it was a it was a very positive impression and it's very easy to forget that now because not that many people of these days do remember that period anymore um you know at the same time though that you know that was a state-to-state

5:10 relationship that was very positive but there was a huge current of underground resentment that was building against the shah the king of iran and you know he was so closely associated with the united states in the minds of his people and he has become extremely unpopular uh so of course that backlash uh reflected on the united states as well but to answer your question about the kind of reception and feedback i'm getting from the book i think people are uh surprised to learn that our history with iran goes back as far as it does you know there's a tendency to look at the last 40 years of antagonism uh to focus on kind of where it all went wrong whose fault it is and i was trying to do something different with the book which is to say that you know history is not about laying blame or looking for who started it it's not a courtroom uh it's about understanding kind of how we got to where we are and the

6:00 overwhelming majority of iran and america's 200 300 year history has been one of mutual admiration mutual fascination mutual idealization it's been a very friendly history for a lot of it's uh a lot of its time i would argue that is actually the timing on the book seems fortuitous to me because i think that um it seems to me ripe for in the near future some sort of breakthrough i would say and one of the things that's so different and i'm sure you can speak to this but i'd like to go back in some sort of linear order at a certain point but now you've got me talking about uh iranian um sometimes they refer to themselves as persian expatriate communities in the united states that that played a similar role in terms of coming to this country after the revolution that the vietnamese who were our friends in south vietnam who fled south vietnam and became a part of communities that have grown up since

6:49 then in the united states i knew quite a bit of persians who who were fleeing the revolution growing up iranians um and it was one of those things where i remember thinking god in so many ways they have a lot of similarities with americans there are fun-loving people they like to dance they're a mercantile people i mean there's all these little stereotypical adjectives you could use to describe the iranians which when you think about it and you realize well they're kind of natural friends in a way and the period of time that we're in right now seems like 15 20 years from now we could look back on as a weird anomaly let's talk about that history though that you refer to i mean in western eyes iran was persia right all the way back to herodotus and all that and then as you point out the real early history of iran with western countries is like the great game stuff with russia and great britain can you

7:40 talk about that a little bit because by the time the u.s arrives on the scene britain and russia have been active in the region for some time sure this is in fact what uh gets iran and the iranian government interested in the united states in the first place uh iran or you know the persian empire or whatever you want to call it historically of sort of hundreds of years had reached a point by the early 19th century uh where it was declining like uh other asian powers of its day in the middle east and powers the ottoman empire and others uh it was much less powerful than it had been um and was very was bitterly aware of the fact that you know european powers were surpassing uh it uh both economically militarily politically and diplomatically um and it was you know iran you know iran it's important to remember was not so it was one of a very very huge country that has never been colonized formerly by a

8:33 european power it was a sovereign state a kingdom that stretched back in the millennia uh but had become so weak by the early you know by sort of 1810s 1820s that you know its territory had been reduced significantly in wars a very important war with russia that trimmed even more of its territory and you know it was being pressured heavily by russia from the north and by britain the british empire from the south from the persian gulf uh and britain's positions here in india um and you know both of those two very very large powerful uh empires were really beginning to interfere significantly within iranian affairs and really pulled the strings in many ways in the background uh source of great resentment for the iranians and they wanted to have what was called a third force this was a new sort of policy that was adopted from around the 1850s uh this idea that the country needed to adopt a third

9:31 kind of friend uh that they could you know sort of friendship that they could wave in the eyes of the british and the russians and say you know back off you know we don't need you we have other allies and the united states seemed like a very obvious choice uh because the united states in the 1850s 1860s was a country that iranians didn't know that much about but they what they knew they really liked what they knew was that this was a country that had come into existence just less than a century earlier on the back of a revolution against the british empire uh and that it seemed to not be interested in interfering in the affairs of other countries uh the only americans they knew were the protestant presbyterian missionaries who would come to iran and build schools and clinics but there was no american embassy there was no you know there was no political diplomatic presence from the part of the

10:18 us government and that kind of made the u.s this kind of alluring blank slate that seemed to have a very hands-off and even some ways anti-imperialist kind of viewpoint um and so they began to cultivate an american friendship uh and every single iranian government from the 1850s to about the 1940s made american friendship a key part of its foreign policy uh to cultivate a sort of third force against the british and the russians the anecdote i love to tell is the very first disagreement that lebron in the united states ever had was in the 1850s when they were signing their first treaty of friendship and the court it took five years to negotiate that longer than it took to negotiate the nuclear deal uh in 2015.

11:02 uh and you know you think why and turns out one of their main sticking points was that the iranians wanted to purchase american warships manned by american sailors flying the stars and stripes in the persian gulf to send a message to the british and the americans said no no we don't want to interfere in your affairs it's incredible to think that was the first disagreement if you know iran in american politics today um but you know it was the iranians saying to the u.s we want you more involved in our business the u.s say no no we don't want to get involved so that's kind of how far we've come in 170 years now in this early period of connection between the two countries how would you describe the governing system of iran or persia at this time is this an absolute monarchy or what do we have there's a parliament of sorts how would you describe the system in modern sort of political science terms yeah in the 19th

11:57 century it was an absolute monarchy like many many governments in the world at the time uh but it was a weak monarchy it did not have it could not exercise there was not a strong central state that exercised complete power over all aspects of people's lives throughout the territory that government a lot of tribal areas and such right these tribal areas various uh entrenched landowning interests uh very feudal in many ways to use the kind of european terminology uh so there was you know the the court the royal court and the king you know the shah uh governed largely through alliances and politics and you know that sort of thing um but interestingly you know you mentioned the parliament iran had a constitutional revolution in 1906 and became the first muslim country with a a parliament immediately the first country in asia to have a parliament uh and that was a revolution that was largely um

12:56 instigated by actually conservative interests uh oddly this is one of those things so iran has always had revolutions not two revolutions in the 20th century in modern times and both of those have been quirky they've been sort of unconventional revolutions that don't follow the standard flavor that we're used to uh the the constitutional revolution of 1906 was led largely by clerics by by ayatollahs and by bizarre merchants you know um traditional traders uh who felt that the the shah's government was giving away too much to foreign powers that um that there was uh you know that that were not that they needed to be consulted more uh for various reasons and and of course a smaller group of kind of um liberalizing intellectuals as well but those were the forces that led that revolution and in many ways those were the same kinds of forces that came together in the islamic revolution of 1979

13:51 it's paradoxical they're forces of conservatism in many ways but they also are forces of radical there's a theme though and it runs through the book and it runs through this iranian history and the theme is this this public dissatisfaction with the iranian governments giving away too much to foreign governments whether it's too much of the of the oil rights or the tax revenues or the decision-making power or whatever it might be it's it's weird to find so many similarities between the public attitudes of say 1906 and 1979 but i see you know you would see that same theme and even the criticisms against the shaw and whatnot there's it seems like there's a you know this is a weird thing to say because every nation has this but iran seems to have this this sense of national pride that can get a government overturned pretty easily if it seemed to be giving away too much to um especially the traditional enemies the british and

14:45 the russians but as soon as the united states steps in and plays a similar role then we become just as much of a target for the for as you said the artisans the bizarre people would you say maybe those are almost a kind of a middle-class representation um and the clerics of the religious folks and and then you have a third force you mentioned uh that comes in in the 20th century where you have a sort of a marxist leftist side too and the three of them all of them though seem to share this antipathy toward the idea that you're giving away too much of of the country's sovereignty or resources to other countries you're absolutely putting your finger on it uh correctly i think and in fact this is the core of to me you know the history of u.s iran relations uh you know it there is there is this this common threat that runs through modern iran in history you're absolutely right it is it is a unique country in a lot of ways uh

15:36 of course every country is unique but its history i guess the uniqueness of iran's history is that this is a once i mean this was this is a country that has been at many points in history one of the great powers of history i mean it's you know the persian m28 the first ancient persian empire of the akron academics you know the sixth entry bc once ruled over almost half of the human population of the world i mean it was you know a country that had a very strong sense of itself and yet also was a declining power uh you know in the 1800s and 1900s but also not only was it a kind of declining post-imperial power but it was one that was not uh invaded or colonized formally by other powers which gave iranians in many ways a certain you know uh it was a perfect storm right it created this country i think this modern state that you know has a yes has a lot of pride and sense of itself in its history yes has a you know a little

16:32 bit of a chip on its shoulder about kind of it's you know it's faded glory but also he's extremely touchy about uh what appear to be kind of you know violations of its sovereignty it's it's national integrity uh uh being kind of pushed around we're told what to do or have people pulling the strings in the background now all of this uh plays out at numerous points in its history but also in numerous points in its history with the united states um you know this is those forces you mentioned uh you know the first time we really see this in terms of u.s iran relations is in the 1953 coup uh when iran tries to nationalize its oil industry um and uh you know the british who the british oil company angular iranian oil company which at the time has a monopoly over the oil production and profits in iran um you know precipitates a long-running feud with the iranian government and eventually convinces the united states

17:30 to overthrow iran's very popular prime minister muhammad in 1953 um that what we forget about him is that he was a the reason he was so popular is that he put his finger very much on the zeitgeist of iranian nationalism of the 1950s the modern rising nationalism which was not unrelated to the nationalism that you're talking about from the 19th early 20th century it was it was the reason he was popular was because he came along and he said we need to give more of a voice to the people but also more of a voice to ourselves as a country and those two things go hand in hand um that you know the shah's powers need to be limited there needs to be more representation through parliament and democracy but that when you do that people will also be demanding an end to british or other kinds of foreign interference uh in the oil industry and vice versa you know that sovereign that true sovereignty true national

18:26 self-determination and democratic representation are two sides of the same coin that has been the common threads through so much of 20th century iranian history well now you got to 1953 before i was going to get there that's such a key year but let's let's get to a little bit about why something like that might matter to to a lot of the other great outside powers right so in the great game era um you know as you pointed out britain's concerned with the strategic location of a place like iran right this is a bridgeway to their empire in india uh for for russia this is part and parcel of their whole they've got a lot of provinces in that region but it's oil that changes things and puts them in a different dimension i mean otherwise you know somebody said that about uh the middle east once i mean what is the middle east without oil can you imagine we wouldn't have been involved like we've been involved all

19:19 these years and by the time 53 rolls around the reason anybody cares to the degree that they do is because of the oil company that you just mentioned that britain um partners with iran with but let's talk about that first let's let's get backwards a little bit and get to the oil since the oil is so much a part of everything um you know oil and money might as well just make them simul you know interchangeable in this case the united states is a big oil producing country in the early 20th century iran's not even on the map the middle east is not even on the map because nobody needs oil in the middle east yet because nobody's got a shortage anywhere talk to me though about this because isn't isn't iran one of the early middle eastern oil fields iran is the very first major big big large-scale oil discovery that takes place in the middle east here in 1907 at master the suleiman in southern iran

20:07 um you know but you're right it's interesting when that when that takes place you know it's a huge discovery and it's very profitable for uh you know for uh william darcy the anglo-persian oil company and he got away we should stop here because one of the things that you said that just blew my mind is he got the rights to drill all like all of iran's oil for years and years and years for like 20 000 british pounds or something like that that's right it was an incredible deal it was one of the best deals i think anyone's ever got i mean i think you know because at the time no one knew how much oil there was in iran and you know how valuable it would be and iran's government was extremely cash-strapped at the time and gave away this concession writes the drill of a you know a huge uh portion of the country um and to take the lion's share of the prophets uh and you know the shah's government at the time needed

20:58 the money um had no idea what potentially lay underground um and what's interesting of course is as you write as you point out correctly the early 20th century you know oil you know it's a valuable commodity but nothing like what it became later um you know and you know and you know as late as 1910 the united states was exporting oil to iran right the united states was the big oil exporter i think a big oil producer of the late 19th early 20th century i mean the oil fields of pennsylvania and texas and so on um so it's um you know when when oil is discovered of course it um you know i think we have to be a little bit careful because i'm not one of these people that you know will claim that you know everything's all about oil you know i think that um you know it's there and it's important and money of course as you can correctly point out um you know but uh in the early 20th century no one really cares that much

21:53 about warning it's um what starts to change in the 1920s after the first world war and after the great powers begin to see for the first time the potential that the internal combustion engine and oil have for powering their navies their fleets as well as of course motor cars and other things uh that it becomes seen as a much more valuable commodity and there is a bit more of a race or a scramble for middle eastern oil a lot of the british the russians uh soviet union as it becomes um and uh also the united states which uh is incredibly um actually amateurish and naive when it comes to middle eastern oil in the 1920s i mean they below opportunity after opportunity to get into iranian oil uh in the 1920s sinclair and the standard oil companies are both trying to get concessions in iran and it's just an absolute you know it's a boondoggle it doesn't go anywhere the british completely outsmart them and

22:50 they continue to maintain the monopoly over iranian war until the 1960s well and if we remember the difference between the russians the americans and the british when it comes to oil in this time period is the russians and the americans have have a generous supply within their own borders and the british don't um exactly so worth so then worth you point out a wonderful thing and that's that it's not all about oil and it's not all about money there are other elements that are very important and one of the ones you bring up and that that we in the west don't pay enough attention to is the religious side of this and very specifically the fact that the people in iran are for the most part uh their version of islam for the most part is is the shia version and they're probably would you correct me on this if i'm wrong the most populous shia state in the world that's correct i mean iran is really the

23:36 sort of the nerve center of shia islam and you know for those who are maybe not particularly versed with these things i mean remain a minority uh the sunni or much more populous you mean islam as a whole circle you mean in islam as a whole not in iran yes yes yes yes correct i'm sorry yes yes uh there are far more sunni muslims and shia muslims in the world so and so but iran is one of the very few countries that is overwhelmingly majority shia around 90 or so shia and you know there are other countries that have sheer majorities or significant pluralities but nothing quite like iran and yeah i mean i think it's significant i think if anything actually weirdly i would say that in some ways i think sometimes we over emphasize religion when in the west when we're talking about middle eastern states i mean you know the religious aspects are of course important but they don't define everything i mean it's

24:31 really not until the 1970s that religion becomes a serious force in politics um and and we see that of course in the iranian revolution of 1979 but for most of iran's modern history the clergy are very much like sort of small c conservative they're quietest as they're sometimes described there they support the state um they play roughly the same role that the clergy has often played in you know kind of european um traditional societies before the 20th century um so something that's not that different from what from the history that we know i mean if you're in iran in 1900 versus in russia in 1900 or you know uh in prussia in 1900 or italy in 1900 here you're still you're you're going to see a very similar kind of state in many ways i mean there are differences of course but you know you're going to see monarchies you're going to see clergy playing a significant role uh in you know in rural communities as

25:26 well as you know at the very nerve center of the state and of the royal court um but in a way that's not radical in a way that's not revolutionary the way that's actually about maintaining the traditional order well and it worth pointing out that the religion in the west was more important in those days too so a comparison in 1900 is more apples than apples so let's look so then let's ask then the obvious question before we get to the the pivotal year of 1953 seems to me the second world war is a pretty important time on the iranian timeline because once again their particular location makes them extra valuable and the fact that a country like germany who one of their main deficiencies in the world is the fact that they don't have access to oil talk to us a little about how iran becomes this focal point in the second world war when it would seem to be a long way from most of the major battlefronts yeah it's

26:18 fascinating actually i think that iran's history in the second world war is very interesting and it's also by the way the first time that large numbers of iranians and americans ordinary ordinary iranians and americans come into contact with each other uh but i'll sort of come back to that i mean you know iran's role in the second world war is interesting because it's a neutral country it has been neutral um you know dating back to the 1820s it hasn't you know it's tried and it maintained its neutrality or it had tried to in the first world war unsuccessfully um it had been invaded uh but in the ninth in the second world war it really tries to insist on its neutrality um you know the feeling is this is this war doesn't have anything to do with us why it's a european war and they try to stay out of it as long as they can uh but unfortunately um you know so there is of course the oil issue all

27:08 right all of the all of the belligerent major religions of the second world war very much want uh oil to power their uh you know their armies and babies and fleets and so on um but also the allies are very concerned because there are large numbers of germans living in iran um the iran's government in the 1930s had begun to draw closer to uh germany's it was certainly not by any stretch their imagination sort of nazi sympathizer but there was a feeling it was a historic lingering resentment against russia and britain and of course when the soviet union and britain joined forces in the second world war it was natural that iran would be more sympathetic to both germany and uh you know its allies so of course the allies didn't like that they tolerated for a bit and then they moved and invaded iran in 1941 and overthrew the king at the time razar shah uh in september of 1941 it took three weeks to depose him they replaced him

28:07 with his very very young son 22 year old muhammad raza shah who became the last king of iran the last shot of iran um the once the allies invaded and occupied iran they agreed that they would leave by when the war ended but they've you know they divided it up into northern and southern sectors the sort of soviet sector in the british sector uh and the united states played the key role of connecting these two sectors because iran had just finished completing a trans-iranian railway that connected the persian gulf in the south up to the caspian sea in the north that railway had been partly built by americans actually but um the u.s uh literally sent over what was called the persian gulf command at the time 30 000 american guys was one of the least known operations of the second world war but it was actually a very critical one because after uh hitler had opened up the eastern front against uh soviet union um

29:04 the uh uh the soviet moscow was completely cut off from western supplies and the only there were another material into russia um there was the northern route which was very cold and very difficult um but one of the best routes was across iran so the allies occupied they invaded they uh then started shipping quantities of american lease supplies along with trans iranian railway up to the soviet union and it was uh american troops that uh that did that so and then they were stationed there for a couple of years you had you know thousands of americans for the first time stationed he won and so then you get the post-war period where we get to um the cold war worries about um communism we get to the uh oil becoming even more important we get to the british post-war situation which is uh difficult to say the least i mean it's trying to find a soft landing from empire and uh so talk to me a little bit about the

30:03 anglo-iranian oil company and the kind of deal that iran had to put up with in other words i'm trying to put iran into a situation here where anyone from any country could kind of understand um how a deal like that graded against them how it was almost a deal from pre-colonial sort of expectation eras and now we were in an era where it just looked like a really bad deal by modern standards can you talk a little bit about that that's exactly right i mean the british were absolutely bankrupted by the second world war um and uh as you said yes looking for a self-landing is a good way to put it i mean they were they were trying to adjust this new post imperial of reality which took some time um and they desperately needed money and the anglo-iranian oil company had been and continued to be the source of great profits for the united kingdom of course after the war britain creates this massive welfare state under

31:03 the labor government of clement atlet um but needs to fund it and well from iran i mean one of the things that's often not appreciated uh uh in britain actually is just how much of the british welfare state that people kind of cherish and take for granted things like the national health service and so on was really um funded not entirely but in very very large measure by the profits from iranian oil and of course in iran this was seen this was an increasingly source of resentment because it's the 1950s now people are it's different it's not the 1910s it's not the 1850s you know the sort of imperial colonial area seems to be drawn to a close and people don't appreciate this very large foreign company that has a monopoly uh over a country the country's oil that employs 30 000 people um but treats iranian manual laborers very differently from british workers who come in and have these beautiful suburban homes with lawns and

32:03 air conditioning and so on uh and you know houses iranians and these kind of slums and has kind of separate water fountains and all those kinds of things um you know in their own country uh you know but you know one of the things i love is that you know the british compound in abaddon you know had a persian club you know it was called where you were going for cocktails and so on but it was you know very conspicuously labeled you know not for persians uh you know british only and this is the stuff really started to great on people on top of which this oil company is taking 80 to 90 of the profits uh and you know is not opening up its books the iranian government not sharing the wealth refusing to adapt to modern times or you know and it really starts to and you have this now but also this rising generation 1950s of increasingly educated modern middle class iranians who see what's going on read newspapers you

32:57 know hear the stories uh and are you know very resentful of this um and they coalesce around uh their hero mohammed masadav who was initially a parliamentarian a member of a bachelor's department uh who becomes a chair of the petroleum committee and really uh is an uncompromising figure a very charismatic figure an elderly man an aristocrat from an earlier era but one who was very sort of liberal and democratizing uh and also believes very strongly that the time has come for the anglo-iranian oil company to leave uh to hand over iran's oil to the iranian people into the iranian government uh to nationalize the oil company and he tries to do that the british declare this an illegal act they you know they refused to have anything to do with it um and uh you know it was a two-year kind of battle that goes on they're dragging it into the hague into the united nations the world court and all

33:55 these kinds of things they impose sanctions and they threaten the war and you know a lot of the stuff that we see today around nuclear issue in some ways uh but this time it's the british right um and initially the truman administration in in the us is if not sympathetic to the iranian position trying to play the neutral you know kind of neutral broker um saying to the british look we understand where you're coming from but times are changing do a deal with these guys you know hand over the oil company you know they'll still let you take some profits but you know symbolically like you know you need to give more than you're giving and the british are and particularly the oil companies very unwilling to adapt it still is very much trapped in a sort of colonial mindset um you know the controversy continues until um you got conservative governments coming to power in both britain and in the us

34:47 churchill and the conservatives come back to power uh in 1952 and and uh eisenhower uh the republicans come take the white house for the first time in 20 years uh at the beginning of 1953 and they ride to power in a wave of kind of anti-communist uh rhetoric and the british see an opportunity they see that this is a very strongly kind of cold warrior anti-soviet anti-communist kind of new administration in the u.s and they play up that angle they don't go to the us and say you know help us out with our oil company uh but they say listen you know you know iran is not ready for democracy for someone like us the russians are going to take advantage they're going to ferment the communist revolution you know look he's already relying on marxists to remain in power and so on uh and they increasingly destabilize the country and they run you know a lot of propaganda and false news stories and newspapers and things like that

35:40 eventually um you know peel away some of his allies and convince the us the cia uh that uh that they should uh over help to overthrow the government in a and they do that in august of 1953. okay this is a your whole book deals with this in such a way as to as to really i mean that was that was too quick of a rundown is what i'd say this is i considered 1953 to be the worst example of the concept of blowback that the united states has ever encountered um and and one can say that you know when i was growing up in the 1970s we had this blow back by the end vietnam was considered a a blowback situation watergate was a domestic political blowback situation i mean we felt like we were being whip-sawed by uh reaping the whirlwind of a bunch of decisions that had been made two three four decades previously in 1953 is a perfect example because by the time uh iranians are taking americans hostage

36:41 in 1979 1980 the advantages right the plus side of the blowback maneuver has been paying off for decades but the bill comes due later and when it did most americans did not i can i can say 98 of americans made no connection between 1979 and 1980 and the fact that the the fuse on that explosive had been lit back in 1953 so let's talk a little bit about that most americans still know nothing about operation ajax and that whole thing yeah it's funny you said that i mean jimmy carter was asked during the american revolution the iranian revolution and the hostage crisis he was asked by a reporter about 1953. you know that the question was phrased exactly along the lines that you just did uh and he said that you know that's ancient history oh um i would have thought he would have known too he was he was a pretty intelligent guy oh he was and i'm sure he knew the history but i mean you know he he didn't

37:40 entertain the premise of the question um and but of course for iranians it was very much not aging in 25 years and that you know that generation that led the revolution in iran in 1979 was um was younger angrier more radical and less compromising um with the united states than the generation of 1953 the young idealistic modern middle class of the early 1950s in iran was very liberal and western and mossad was a very pro-western figure he believed in constitutional government and parliamentary i mean he was just obsessed with the idea of parliamentary procedure and the importance of parliamentary sovereignty and popular representation he had done you know he'd been educated in switzerland and france and constitutional law you know he inspired that generation of iranians to believe in you know in liberal parliamentary constitutional democracy as a way to get your needs met and to hear and to be

38:35 heard and to you know liberate your country from foreign powers and so on but the lesson that iranians have drawn from that was that you know the moment you tried to do that you know the world's greatest democracy in the united states had come in and over from the government because it was not seen as aligned with their interests um so 25 years later it was very difficult that aging generation of chromosome activists of the 1950s to say to young radicals well you know you have to publish newspapers and run petitions and you know run for parliament you know they weren't having that they said what i'm not doing that again you guys did that and you know you got screwed um and they turned more to religion or they turned more to marxism and those you know forces fused uh in the iranian revolution of 1979 to overthrow the shah um so we we haven't really explained though what 1953 was in 1953 so so mohammed

39:28 mozadek is is um is uh is the prime minister right he's elected the uh uh the head of the government uh wants to renegotiate the deal with the uh the anglo-iranian oil company um the british don't like this uh if the way you frame it which i don't consider to be um incorrect is sort of that the british are able to in a way um poke eisenhower in places where he's sensitive because you quoted him a couple of times in a way that made it sound like and i i generally like eisenhower's um and he has a kind of an anti-imperial middle america sort of uh norman rockwell side to him that comes out sometimes and you had a quote or two which sort of represented that in the book but then i remember thinking to myself yes but then the british come back and find those sensitive spots on eisenhower the communism stuff and all the other can you explain a little bit this dynamic between the british who are

40:24 still trying to to piece together little bits of colonial things where they can a guy like eisenhower was not real sensitive to that but both of them in probably i'd say 53 we're talking about the depths of of the anti-communist red scares the second red scare is what we call it in the u.s um uh era how were the british able to sort of manipulate eisenhower into doing something that they wanted but that eisenhower could not be counted on to do it for the reasons the british wanted it done yes and it's important to say you know i don't know that it was eisenhower that they that they really kind of uh convinced uh you know members of his administration uh in particular the dallas brothers the dallas brothers were always up for that though i always get i get the feeling they never met a coup they didn't like well but this was the first one right that's right this is the first one exactly right this set the model for all these

41:13 this is the big cia's first one right we should tell there was no cia there was an oss in the second world war after the second world war of 4748 the creation of the national security state which included the cia so it's this fledgling group of people that have grown out of the oss and this is their first attempt at a covert overthrowing of a government did i get that correct yes and it goes you know in their minds very very successfully you know kind of in quotes and it becomes a model you know comes the next year in 54 in guatemala and chile early seventies again and again we've done a so-called dirty clips operation but by the seventies have become kind of fallen out of favor in many ways but and this you know this was a watershed moment for the cia for american intelligence operation um yeah they look they were able to the british were able to make their case on a number of levels they

42:06 had been you know they they had been bribing newspaper editors and play wrong negative stories about massage they had been bribing uh politicians to you know withdraw their support from him they have been imposing very severe sanctions on the iranian economy that have really been making uh very difficult for muslim govern uh and they've been working on the shah as well the king we sort of forget about him he's a young king at this point um you know iran is not a true constitutional democracy at this point it's a sort of hybrid um where the shah still has control over you know the defense ministry in the army and so on um and isn't a huge fan of his prime minister actually he feels a little bit threatened by him and they're able to take advantage of that but the case they make to the americans the cia and the state department in the new incoming administration um again is a cold war case um and you

42:55 know they're able to do that by already having destabilized and weakened the iranian government so much uh in all the ways that i just described um so it's very it becomes easy for them to say look we have this ready-made kind of plan for like how we can get rid of masada you know he's not you know you can't you know you know he's not a communist himself but i mean there's a there's a risk that that iran is going to open up to communism because of his instability and his inability to govern and so on and so on and it's important to remember that you know the democrats and the republicans in the 1940s 50s 60s uh had very different visions for how to deal with communism in the third world as they called it at the time um the democrats on the truman and later on the jfk as well very much took the attitude that people like mossad were exactly what he wanted um they were social democrats they were they were

43:50 liberals they were you know they were building welfare states in their countries but they were very anti-soviet because they were i mean they were they were western they were they were you know democrats they were not they were not communists by any stretch of the imagination what they were doing and what the democrats liked was that they felt that leaders like that by building welfare states by you know funding education and literacy and health care and all these kinds of things and labor unions would actually take away the appeal of communism uh in in impoverished countries uh give people less of a reason to turn to communism uh the republicans saw it very differently they they said no it's a slippery slope you know anything that looks or smells like a car like communism is gonna is is might as well be a communist you know it's uh in a developing country people don't have a democratic tradition they're not

44:39 ready for democracy um and um there's too much of a risk of destabilization and the soviets will just take advantage and they'll ferment a coup and they'll have a communist revolution now both of these were reasonable attitudes in their own way and they sort of made sense um but as long as truman had been in power uh you know the british hadn't really felt that they had a friend in the u.s when it came to iran they were very frustrated by the americans they felt that the truman administration just didn't understand what they were dealing with you know that they were young these sort of american neophytes you know who were idealistic and you know there were a lot of you know kind of communications back and forth between the british and american governments you know the british sort of saying you know you don't understand we've been dealing with these devious versions for you know for decades you

45:25 know for much longer than you have i mean you know just you have to take a tough line um and they were frustrated because they weren't getting cooperation in the truman administration truman was trying to take kind of an even-handed approach but when eisenhower came in and it came in the 52 election was very much fought on the idea that you know that there were you know pinkos and closet reds in the state department and you know the truman administration didn't really want to win the korean war because the state department oh this is the this is the mccarthy era blooming absolutely and that kind of fire-breathing anti-communism you know was uh for britain they sensed that this was their opportunity this was their moment that's how they could make their case not by talking about oil and profits and things like that um but by saying this is dangerous like you can't you know iran is getting destabilized you need to

46:14 do something and you had mentioned uh you know today we would call it fake news would be the 21st century term for but you were talked about the news coverage and back then of course in the west we had many fewer outlets so it would have been almost uh the same message across multiple different media type platforms back then broadcast networks newspapers radio um but when you had run down sort of the list of how it was being covered well you can see i mean the funny thing is is we think about that as the the good old days of journalism i like to say that the good old days of journalism were between like 1968 and 1988 and this was before the era this was this was post yellow journalism pre-modern journalism but but it was a fake news is not a bad way to describe the way the western public was was receiving their information about this 1953 situation wasn't it yeah it's striking right journalism was

47:09 done very differently back then it was a sort of gentleman's pursuit it wasn't quite the same level of rigor and fact checking and so on and and you look at the newspapers at the time extraordinary the way they reported the new york times in august of 1953 the day after the coup and you know the report is i'm paraphrasing i don't remember the exact words of the headline but it's something along the lines of you know um a coup attempt is slaughtered in iran but mossad had tried to overthrow the shah um and that uh you know that he had been swatted um which is the literal opposite of what happened right it's this idea that the prime minister was trying to overthrow the king and you know that uh the popular this popular king had actually uh managed to to you know maintain himself in power and you know the the grateful public was cheered and relieved by this i think it's the precise opposite of what actually

48:02 happened but over time you know the truth i mean in iran people i think many people you know already kind of suspected um the cia hand and over time it became more and more of an open secret until 20 years later in 1978 or 80 i think with 81 uh kermit roosevelt who was one of the kind of the real masterminds of the coup published his memoir about it um and was very open about his role uh the stacks of cash that were being handed out in tehran and the various dirty tricks that were being uh undertaken and then finally in 2000 the new york times published also the state department released some uh documents and they were published in the new york times at length uh in great length um uh the sort of the um cia's own internal uh report on the coup uh they still censored and redacted some of their language but most of it was there and this was literally a 70-page document internal report written by the cia

49:03 describing in detail there how they did it so there was no disputing about that so in 53 the democratically elected mosadek is overthrown he's replaced by the absolute monarch uh who you know the the feel you get for this guy he's got an almost kaiser wilhelm kind of vibe um you know fascinated by the military stuff but not exa i mean maybe go into a little depth because this guy is going to be the one who determines the feel of this relationship for decades tell us a little bit about the last shaw of iran he's an inscrutable figure i mean you know like so many uh you know major leaders in world history i mean you know no who really knows the shock who really knows who he was or what made him tick and you know but there are there is a an impression that we have with him um you know he was many ways in his father's shadow his father had been had come out of nowhere to overthrow the previous dynasty uh you know he'd been a

50:02 rough crude illiterate uh cossack soldier in the 1920s um but the son the younger shah um you know have been sent off to boarding school in switzerland uh to learn uh one of the most elite private boarding schools in the world um was a very cosmopolitan refined well-mannered young man a very good looking sort of a ladies man um but not a tough guy like his father you know and you know there's always a sense he writes about his own memoirs that you could you know he talks about how his father's eyes could make him shrivel up inside i mean he was terrified of his father he said it was a relationship of awe and fear but not always of love you know um and yeah i don't want to put someone on the couch you know who you know died you know when i was seven years old i mean it's not you know i mean i have no right to sort of psychoanalyze the shark um but there is a sense that there was often a chip on his shoulder

51:01 when it came to military affairs from the very beginning um he was being quizzed and drilled by his father about you know kind of military questions you know his whole reign um he was obsessed with with buying really big fancy expensive military hardware you know the latest fighter jets in the latest tanks and helicopters and everything much of it from the united states by the 1970s the nixon administration who loved the shah uh gave him a blank check to buy all the american military hardware he wanted but before that there had been some resistance especially from the kennedy administration um you know who told them look no you need to you know invest in your country and literacy and political reform and people and rights and things like that healthcare and so on land reform and he did a lot of that um but it wasn't always done as well as it could have been done and he was and it was never accompanied by political reform or

52:00 real political participation genuine avenues for people to participate in the election in parliamentary elections parliamentary elections were largely a joke in the 1950s and 60s and 70s anymore um but he really cared about the military and he was a strong man he was a tough guy he was a sort of a right-wing leader um he was a believer in strength and militarism as a way to protect the country um against communism or against any other kind of external threat i was going to say give us an idea of the amount because you blew my mind with some of the i if you just asked a trivia question who was the united states his biggest arms um customer in the in certain years in the 1970s i would never have said iran but weren't they one of the top u.s customers for arms you said that they practically saved several of the uh of of some of our um aerospace companies i believe absolutely a lot of i mean grumman and

53:01 um uh westinghouse so many of these companies um boeing were struggling in the 1970s 1970s uh it was a you know economically difficult time job lots of job layoffs and so on unemployment um but yeah i mean iran i mean so there was that angle as well i mean the next administration was quite happy to help save some of these companies you know the gigantic iranian contract but it was more than that it's part of the so-called nixon doctrine uh nixon had come to you know to power the years of the vietnam war when there was a real attempt to try to exit some of these quad miners uh in the third world uh and you know he really liked the idea that um american for american foreign policy it was important to find loyal helpful regional powers that could protect and advance american interests in their respective regions and could be rewarded with uh arms sales and the shah of iran was probably the ultimate

53:58 epitome of that um the sort of policeman of the persian gulf uh for the united states um you know the famous you know moments in when nixon goes to tehran with henry kissinger you know leads across the table and says to him you know protect me that's what i need here you know i'll give you all the weapons you want but uh you know protect us here um because the us is not in a position to be able to uh police the persian gulf uh you know in the 1970s now it's not a one-way street of course the shah is always very also very good at manipulating the us uh and kind of getting what he wants out of the us and he is by the 1970s a seasoned experienced smart leader who knows and understands kind of global geopolitics very well and the relationship between him and richard nixon is very good by the 1970s they're big admirers of each other uh but of course they both go down in some kind of ignominy

54:52 well let's talk about that because from a g if we look at this just from a geo strategic standpoint forget human rights forget forget religion forget all these other things and let's just talk you know the old risk board game right um the difference between having a friendly iran in our camp in what the middle east and that whole region looks like to not having a to having an adversarial iran is so different that this is where you really see the damage from the blowback from 1953 i mean if you play the what if game today and say if you have a friendly iran today how different is the entire region um i i mean i i would struggle to to to even begin to examine the ramifications of something like that can you give us an idea though about how important at least in the you know without fantasizing about what it might be like today how important was it in the mid-1970s for the united states and

55:48 and and its allies look the iranian revolution if we forget now because it was kind of a long time ago but the iranian revolution of 1979 was a devastating blow for american foreign policy absolutely devastating no one saw it coming and it was one of the cataclysmic failures of the carter administration or rather it was seen that way i think carter sometimes gets too much of the blame for the iranian level and he was raked across the coal by his political enemies like kissinger by the republicans who constantly harped on the idea that he was the man who lost iran quote unquote uh iran was a very very important american ally in the 1970s it was it was routinely described by american president lbj described it you know he said what was happening in iran was just about the best thing going you know and you know um routinely american officials and presidents would describe iran as an island of stability in an otherwise

56:41 troubled region like just critical to american foreign policy there was no other ally that that bought that level of weaponry that advanced american interests uh so uh uh so broadly in the region and not just its own you know interest but but american interests uh in various parts of the middle east um you know iran was and always is and continues to be a very important country in the region there's a reason why we're so obsessed with you know kind of this hostility towards iran these days because look it's a big country it's a country of you know today 80 million people at the time about 35 million people um but one of the largest in the region both in terms of population and uh geography and of course one of the world's largest oil producers and you know and occupies a key strategic position between the soviet union and the president gulf and all these kinds of things um and we lost it you know i don't want

57:31 to put it in these kinds of american foreign purely kind of american foreign policy terms but if you do it's like we lost iran uh and that was a huge glow uh and but not just that but you know compounded by the fact the way we lost iran which was that it was you know it was lost in a on the back of a religious revolution that rejected all of the basic premises of the cold war you know every rel you know the concern had been at the time that if there's a revolution in a third world country it's going to be a communist revolution no one saw a religious revolution coming because the world's it was the first great religious revolution of the modern era and you know it was just completely outside the playbook and it inspired other types of movements like it in afghanistan and lebanon and other parts of the middle east uh you know it's something that they can hear

58:34 was here you had a king who had the world's fourth or fifth largest army uh four hundred thousand one of the world's largest and most brutal secrets police operators uh the support of the united states and to some extent all the world's great powers um he had everything he'd been in power for 38 years and yet he was all blown away brushed away by a religious revolution led by an 80-year-old cleric um you know how would you draw the conclusion or devout you know uh muslim how would you not draw the conclusion that god was on their side in some way that there's something to be said for religion as a motivating force for radicalism and revolution um for all of those reasons the iranian revolution is such a watershed and such a loss it's such a blow to america so let me go back so um one of the biggest most interesting revelatory parts of the book for me were what you just described because

59:37 when we think about um revolutions that are touting uh the plight of the poor or the people who have needs in society or the downtrodden or the ones who need education and all these kinds of things against you know the the corrupt powers that be in the 1970s especially you think about that as a sort of a marxist platform that's the area where they're usually able to make some some hay as we say here in the states um but this is a different thing because this is as you point out in the book this is not a radical left-wing sort of revolution this is a conservative religious one but that's pushing the same sort of thing offering hope and help to the poor to the downtrodden can you i mean you've introduced it a little bit but can you talk a little about that because you can see how something like that in a region with so much poverty especially outside the major cities how something like this would not just be

1:00:34 popular but that that could be a base of support that keeps it in power for a long time it's an interesting movement it is i mean it's a fascinating revolution for me as a historian it's a fascinating revolution um you know you see you're absolutely right i mean in many ways the islamic revolution of 1979 adopts a lot of the language of the left and of the marxists they talk about you know where you know people when the marxists talk about you know the uh the workers of the world uniting and so you know it's a lot of that kind of language but they they don't put it as much in the language of kind of workers and trade unions and labor and so on but you talk about the oppressed of the earth uh and to this day the islamic republic plays up a lot of that um language they have a foundation called the you know the the um you know the foundation of the oppressed uh which was uh funded by seized assets and money

1:01:31 taken from the shah's regime you know they really play up that kind of stuff anti-imperialist anti-um um you know sort of materialist uh rhetoric but what's striking is that about the revolution is that you know again you know in 1979 the world is divided heavily between communism the kind of the soviet bloc and the american bloc the capitalist democracy democratic bloc um and what really is extraordinary about the iranian revolution is it's the first movement the first revolution that says you know both of these political you know yesterday the third world as it was known was constantly being asked to choose between these two blocks right and of course there was a non-aligned movement and so on but yeah right right there was this feeling of you know you're with us you're with the soviets or you're with you know and the iran you know the iranian revolutionary said you know both of these political philosophies are

1:02:24 fundamentally materialistic um you know whether you're a communist or a capitalist you're you're making your arguments to the to the people based on what is going to improve their material welfare right what's going to improve their um their bottom line um and no one's attending to people's spiritual uh welfare that there is a different path there's a sort of third way between you know marxism and capitalism which is god um and um you know you had a lot of revolutionary leaders who would talk about you know you know muhammad and you know as the first socialist and you know this kind of idyllic 7th century world and you know in 7th century arabia around the prophet and his family where everyone was equal and there was no poverty and wealth was shared and so on because of course islam as as know many of your listeners will know is a religion that does emphasize a lot the alleviation of poverty and giving to the

1:03:20 poor and all those kinds of things so it was easy for people who were very leftist in the 1970s to find ways to kind of fuse that kind of language with islam um and say hey you know what both you know communism and capitalism these are these are foreign um imports they have no place here like you know we have let's draw on some of our own traditions um you know instead of letting the russians and the americans fight squabble over us why don't we tap into our own uh traditions um and that's a very intoxicating message right for um you know in a closed society where you know people don't have a lot of avenues for political participation to be able to turn to authentic traditions um and uh yeah i mean so that so yeah you had this revolution this revolution that was very radical in its way um you know but it's difficult to know how to place it on the sort of left-right spectrum because it kind of rejected

1:04:15 that whole spectrum right what if we compare it then to outcomes so i think one could make a case that those other two for systems of government that you mentioned whether we're talking about communism as practiced in reality as opposed to a classroom version or capitalism as practiced in reality as opposed to a classroom version i would argue that neither one of those sides necessarily lived up to the marketing hype very well how would you grade the islamic republic's revolution and how well they were able to to manage to to live up to the marketing no i mean also like most revolutions about the same i mean you know there were some genuine changes and genuine achievements i mean look um when you look over the last 40 years you know if you want to talk about what has the iranian revolution achieved i mean it did generally achieve some look one of its biggest achievements was genuine foreign policy independence

1:05:11 whatever critically most people might have at the islamic republic today no one will ever accuse it of being a lackey or a puppet of of anyone of the west of the united states um you know the soviet union or even russia i know sometimes there's a bit of a rhetoric about russia these days but i mean iran is not you know russia is not uh propping up the islamic republic i mean russia is a fair-weather friend to the islamic republic so let's achieve that it did achieve some genuine income and wealth redistribution uh and um you know a lot of impoverished people were genuinely lifted out of poverty eventually now on the other hand of course we um you know you can talk about this so the lack of social freedoms and the more repressive religious uh aspects of the iranian revolution of course it never promised freedom it would never claim to be a liberal revolution in that sense it was never the revolution about people's individual

1:06:09 freedoms you know how many was very clear about that um it was uh it was about um you know freeing iran from the yoke of this dictatorial leader um um uh who had you know in the rhetoric of the revolution at the time sold the country you know to foreign okay so then you go from i'm going to skip over because i think it's when we talk about the american hostages for example or uh reagan taking over in the free to me this stuff is is not as important as something like the 1979 1980 iraq war for example and something that americans don't know anywhere near enough about as a military history uh interested person uh growing up in that era the iran-iraq war was the largest thing we'd seen in a long time can you talk about it a little bit yeah this was you know again you're right we forget about this now we don't it's not a war that is very deep in the consciousness of america well poison gas was used

1:07:05 everything yeah no absolutely i mean this was a but this was a generation-shaping formative experience for iranians of the 1980s i mean iran had neptune iran had not with the exception obviously iran had been invaded and got sucked into the second world war but with relatively few casualties the first world war there have been a lot of casualties but mostly from hunger and famine um but you have to go back to the 1820s to find a war that iran was kind of deeply you know involved with a lot of casualties and even then you know iran had simply never experienced something like this you know where you had hundreds of thousands of people died you know boys soldiers and child soldiers being sent to the trenches poisoned gas it was it was a first world war style war that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides both in iraq and iran and it was the first time that chemical weapons have been used uh since

1:08:01 the first world war in uh and it was devastating uh and it is something that stays very much with iranians to this day you've got iran people are always in the u.s very fixated on iran's relationship with the united states and antagonism to the us but it's its war with iraq in the 1980s shaped what iran is today much more than its antagonism uh and it continues to do that in many many ways and you see it when you go to iran but the murals yeah there are a few there are a number of anti-american murals anti-israeli meals and so on but the vast majority of the murals are painted on the walls are um commemorating martyrs of the iraq war um that's the you know that's that's the really powerful experience and i think it continues to motivate iran's thinking to this day when it comes to issues like the nuclear program right you know write about at length in the book um you know i argue that actually the

1:08:59 degree you know the degree to which iran has sort of messed around with nuclear technology has largely been out of its fear of saddam hussein up until 2000. well and i don't think you can understand as an american uh all of our involvement in the region in the 1990s with saddam hussein without understanding the 1980s and and i mean saddam hussein was exactly the kind of guy that normal us foreign policy would have been in opposition of in the 1980s right so we would have called it a soviet client state and yet because of the the problems we had in the late 70s early 80s with iran we'd rather back saddam either openly or clandestinely rather than the islamic republic it's a um it's it's interesting how that turned out so let me ask then the next thing which is we look at relatively recent times with iran and words like terrorism come up israel comes up the protests within iran amongst a lot of times

1:09:52 iranian youth and how those can get crushed and so so talk to me now a little bit about sort of let's say post iran iraq war um um aspects of iran here so in other words i want to find out how iran's doing from you in a second but but since the focus has shifted away from the islamic revolution and comedian hostages and all that um iran i just wrote down terrorism israel because when you look at it now um the the the unrest in the street i mean who was it it was the the female modern martyr not that long ago who was shot i mean it would seem to be that once again now the islamic republic's in the position that the shah was in in the late 1970s but that may be a reaction to western news coverage that doesn't really reflect attitudes on the ground so maybe you could tell me a little bit about israel terrorism internal unrest in iran and maybe you know we've we talked recently a lot about um where in my other programs

1:10:52 where where things are going in the 21st century as opposed to the 20th uh how could we apply that to iran how do you see this sort of the next couple of decades maybe yeah i mean those those are all good questions and that's a lot it's a lot of stuff i apologize sure no no no no no it's fine i mean look i i think of them as interrelated if that makes sense right well absolutely look as a historian i'm always a little uncomfortable with kind of um prediction making predictions and thinking about the future uh because i tend to think much more about the past but you know i um i think if we look at iran today um there's no question the islamic republic is less popular than it has been at any point in its history and there are many different reasons for that i mean of course the large it's come under exceptional degrees of kind of american lead pressure maximum pressure campaigns and sanctions i mean the kinds of

1:11:42 sanctions that have never been placed on a country in peacetime and the common iranian economy has been strong right it's an axis of evil country right right um but of course that's not the only reason i mean you know there are many reasons why people dislike the the system and the government you know on its own terms and plenty of issues with corruption and mismanagement um you know and of course repressiveness uh you know so you know it's a really tough time in iran today it's a tough time to be iranian and to live anywhere the economy is in desperate straits in many ways inflation is very bad people are really struggling um you know and yet we have to be careful there is a fantasy narrative in the us which is that you know that the when is this canola collapse when is it all going to come crumbling down and it's not i mean it's just the islamic republic is not a house of cards i mean is it wildly popular among the

1:12:40 iranian people no not necessarily i mean you know the iranian public like public's everywhere you know you has a wide range of opinions on a lot of things you know and you go to iran and you'll hear all kinds of different things people are angry with the government for all kinds of different things you're not going to hear a huge appetite for revolution and regime change and certainly not kind of foreign back to regime change iranians are smart enough to realize that you know um the us isn't pressuring the iranian government of trying to bring about regime change because it you know it's hard you know the american government's you know kind of heart is bleeding for the iranian people or you know trying to you know concerned about their human rights they they know that they know that you know this is about geopolitics and and you know um you know the fact that iran you and american political interests are very

1:13:33 much do not align um so they are going to be skeptical of any kind of american back uh attempts to kind of foment regime change because they've seen how that's gone in syria in libya uh in other places in the region nor is there an obvious opposition uh leader uh that has any real kind of large-scale credibility um and then you know as unpopular as it may be to say the islamic republic does have its supporters and they're not small in number uh you know people who have grown up with this system of government and who have been rewarded well from it and have jobs and careers and you know uh people have been lifted out of poverty now as i say all of that is true it's also true that it's you know at the lowest point of its popularity by far i think of any point in the last 40 years um but that doesn't mean that it's you know um any minute now it's all going to come crashing down this is a fantasy that's constantly been peddled

1:14:33 since the very beginning of the iranian revolution you know this idea that you know the islamic republic won't last um but it has lasted and without a lot of friends or allies around the world and under a lot of pressure in the us and i just think that you know people who are focused on bringing down the system and you have to exist you have to accept the world as it is not as you want it to be you know i'm no fan of the islamic republic but that you know i'm not going to sit here and you know try to cheerlead regime change because that doesn't seem like a very realistic uh kind of scenario you know i'm curious about the intrusion of the outside world into some of these systems i was talking to somebody the other day about whether or not the old soviet union could have existed in a world with the kind of communication we have now because i mean they used to freak out over one radio signal from

1:15:28 radio free europe what would they do you know with facebook or something like that um how is iran adjusting because i know the iranians uh uh tend to be on an individual level very tech interested how are they coping with the fact that you know the outside world you had mentioned something in your book that stuck with me you had been talking about d you mentioned disco so it was like the 1970s and this was something that the ayatollahs were not not thrilled about as one might imagine no conservative society would have been and i'm thinking he might say forget to myself forget about disco today i mean what what do the iranian ayatollahs think about pornography online that their people might be looking at i mean how how much does the the fact that the outside world can't really be kept out anymore impact a a revolution that's trying to uh maintain a certain let's just say more moral uh a standard for

1:16:20 their people it's a great question it's a tough question uh you know are they developing one of their own i mean are they one of those countries that are developing sort of an internal you know internet of their own kind of i i vaguely remember something like that yeah they would be you know you know i think again i'm not a tech expert me either uh you know i wonder how well that's ever gonna work but you know i look the uh morality side of things morality police like things like the ministry of islamic education and guidance and these kinds of or william things sound very orwellian to us they exist their reality their i think you know there are you know morality through police that go around and you know cashed out a shot as they call them and kind of check on people the way people are dressed and things like that and you know there are things you're not allowed to do any wrong can't just like be out there dancing in

1:17:10 the streets and so on wearing discos and alcohol and whatever but the reality is that all of that stuff goes on very much when it's closed iran and the government is well aware of that and frankly doesn't really care that much um and now that's not to say that a lot of these you know religious clerics who run the show like it um but they're not motivated by that in the way that the revolutionaries were in the 1970s what they're motivated by is real political staying in power and survival and strengthening the system and you know uh avoiding these kind you know kind of these foreign-backed regime change plots and so on and you know staying in power and doing what they're doing just enough to make sure people feel like they can live the life that they want to live and participate just a little bit in politics while also preserving you know control and um and their own kind of survival as a

1:18:07 system um the fact is that you know they know that people are out there having you know alcohol fuel parties and dances in north tehran and so on um you know they're not going to barge into people's houses you know they feel like as long as people feel like they can do that kind of stuff they're you know they're less likely to cause problems they're not really worried about these you know these these kinds of very westernized you know elites in north carolina because you know what they're more worried about right now is the fact that these sanctions have made life very difficult for their traditional support base which is the poor um both rural and urban poor and who are really suffering a lot under these sanctions much more than the wealthy and the westernized elites that's more scary to them you know i can't help but think that we would give our right arm now in the west to have a viable

1:18:58 muhammad mozadek that we could support um as an alternative to the current leadership is something like that ever possible the way that the system's been constructed there in terms of outsiders or or non-religiously approved candidates getting a chance to participate is there a chance to have a muhammad mozadek somebody who we would call you you would call it a a liberal democratic moderate reformer type or is that something that's been sort of sealed off by by the design of the system i don't think that's in the cards now i think the closest we came to that was in between the period between 1997 and 2005 during the reformist presidency of muhammad who was seen in many ways as a liberal reform-minded um constitutionalist kind of president who but who operated within he was a cleric himself who operated within the religious system and there was a lot of excitement about that and what that might hold what kind

1:19:55 of promise that might hold for the future of iran but it didn't work out both for internal and external reasons i think in recent years you know that but there have been more attempts you know the last president was more kind of centrist and you know reform-minded in some ways and there have been you know the movement wasn't snuffed out completely after 2005. but i have to say recently um since the withdrawal of the us from the jcpoa from the nuclear deal in 2018 and the maximum pressure campaign of the trump administration that has had a pretty powerful impact uh it has really helped to entrench hardline elements in iran in a way that we haven't seen in a very long time because that just made it very easy for hardline elements to say you see you can't trust the united states and you can't trust these guys because it was a more centrist reformist government that negotiated that deal um and they were embarrassed they were

1:20:50 humiliated by the withdrawal of the united states uh that you know they brought sanctions relief and there was this feeling that there was a whole new era now and you know this looks different you see you can't do a deal with the us but you know it only lasted three years and when the trump administration withdrew it just it just handed a huge political victory to conservative hardline elements he said look forget about these guys these guys were duped they were you know they were they were the fools of the west of the united states one of the disadvantages dealing with democratic systems is that one one president could have a different attitude from the previous one so let me ask you did was there anything that i didn't ask you about in this conversation uh that i should have or that we can uh or or that's relevant here that we should be talking about i mean i could talk for hours but i mean

1:21:40 i think you hit on some great highlights and you know those are some great questions so i really i really enjoyed the conversation i've done what you're doing and i just you get so tired of the same question so if i could have asked you a few different things we'll call it a minor victory and hopefully we didn't bore you um this was wonderful uh the subject matter is fascinating um and uh i hope we sell you a few books so um uh we will send you a link when the show is out and um and anything i mean listen man if i can do any favors for you in the future or help you out in any way please let me know i really appreciate that that you you're helping me out quite a bit by helping to spread the word about the book i really appreciate that you know um that means a lot and i appreciate your questions because i mean honestly uh it's obvious that you've read uh the book and you know you have some some

1:22:28 great um you know you kind of really engage with it and ask some great questions so i really appreciate it i love the topic thank you so much for coming on and taking the time i appreciate it thank you dan my thanks to john gazvinian for coming on the program his new book america and iran a history 1720 to the present is presently available pick up your copy and find out all the answers to all the questions that in a nearly hour and 20 minute interview i didn't manage to get to somehow anyway he was a wonderful guy to talk to and the subject is fascinating for those who wonder where the next hardcore history show is the big one we are working on it and like the famous you know multiple stages of grief there is the multiple stages of hardcore history show production we are currently at the stage where we have hours of it in the can and you look at it and go now what the heck do we have here is any of this

1:23:23 any good and so we'll we'll get through the subsequent stages and get it to you as soon as possible what i always tell people is all of the carrots and sticks in this business are lined up towards releasing more content so we have every incentive you know we just fail miserably thanks for your patience everybody um looking forward to talking with you more soon stay safe for hardcore history t-shirts or other merchandise go to dan carlin.com if you think the show you just heard is worth a dollar dan and ben would love to have it a buck a show it's all we ask go to dan carlin.com for information on how to donate to the show hey everyone back for one quick second to talk again about battle guide virtual tours you may have heard me bring them up before i i hooked up with these guys during the first bit of covid when they were doing live tours of places like battlefields in france and everything and all of a

1:24:26 sudden were shut down and this is the way they figured out how to pivot from that is so many other business owners have had to figure out what to do in the same circumstances and i love the way these guys did it they converted the battlefield tours into virtual things and it allowed them to utilize a bunch of different elements that obviously wouldn't have been available in a live situation and i'm not saying this is superior to a live situation they both have their strengths and weaknesses what i am saying is if you save up all the money as an american to go to northern france and walk these battlefields first of all there will be things missing that you won't understand you'll have to come home and read about later which you get as part of these battle guide virtual tours when you do those but how likely are you next week after you get home from what would be an expensive and long trip to france to do

1:25:16 this to want to go to russia and visit stalingrad right but you do that in a virtual sense you can go on a different you know battlefield tour every day there's different ways to access them by the way there's a live version which you can be a part of it online when they're doing it live and the historian is there and you can ask questions and all kinds of things like that so that's a real time thing but then that goes you know into the archives and is available for you to download anytime anywhere right as the as a sort of a hard copy version and you can buy those individually you can sign up for a subscription service and access all of them and they have new ones all the time i just think if you're a military history fan uh this is a this is a gimme kind of kind of thing and especially for a gift for people that you may know who are also military history fans this is a fun thing and it's worth

1:26:08 trying and if you'd like to just try and get 50 off you can go to battleguide.co.uk forward slash dan hyphen carlin that's battle guide dot co dot uk forward slash dan hyphen carlin and you'll get 50 off any one of the currently up on the archive tours see what it's all about but we're talking about something that combines you know technology like drone images 360 and satellite imagery on the ground video veteran accounts period footage photographs it's an interesting mix of things that if you are interested in this kind of stuff manages to illuminate the complexity of these battlefields in ways that is difficult to conceptualize in any other situation those of you out there who've read books who've looked at maps who've seen movies you try to get a mental image of things this is one of the best ways i've ever discovered to do it i hope you'll check it out go to battle guide dot co dot u k forward

1:27:05 slash dan hyphen karlin get 50 off and see what i'm talking about

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "EP18 Iranian Interconnections"?

Dan Carlin (Host), John Gazvinian (Guest).

What is "EP18 Iranian Interconnections" about?

The discussion explores the evolution of Persian civilization and its pivotal role as a traditional regional superpower, contrasting its historical alliances, particularly with the United States, against the backdrop of the drastic political transformation in Iran following the 1979 revolution. Historian John Gazvinian provides insights into these interconnections, shedding light on the lasting…

What is mentioned in this Dan Carlin episode?

6 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including United States (states), John Gazvinian, Mohammad Mossadegh, America and Iran: A History 1720 to the Present, Jalani Hussein, Battle Guide. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "EP18 Iranian Interconnections"?

The episode runs 1 h 27 min; the transcript is about 16,502 words in 96 timestamped sections.

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