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Iran: The Latest
Oil, revolution and ayatollahs: how Iran went from great power to rogue state
00:49:46
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- [00:04]
Ali Ansari
The telegraph.
- [00:09]
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- [01:24]
Ali Ansari
From 2005 to the present, really, you've seen the complete dismantling of the Republic at the hands of the Islamic revolutionary organs of the state. Short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.
- [01:42]
Peloton Advertiser
Today, President Trump says Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the attacks.
- [01:53]
Ali Ansari
The Pentagon is weighing a takeover of that island as a way to force the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran begged for this ceasefire and we all know it.
- [02:04]
Roland Oliphant
Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on. I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Iran. The latest. It's a bank holiday weekend in the United Kingdom, for which reason we will not be in the studio today. We'll be somewhere else doing DIY or sitting in a traffic jam on the motorway on the way to the seaside or something of that sort. But in lieu of a daily news themed podcast, I have recorded a special edition of. It is part two, in fact, of our History of Iran series with the distinguished professor of Iranian history at St. Andrews University, Ali Ansari. Our last episode on this was focused on kind of ancient Persian history into the medieval period, going through the Muslim conquests, the rise of Shia Islam in Persia. This episode, we're skipping a few centuries, I'm afraid. I asked Ali to take us through the 20th century, through those periods that have culminated in the war that is being fought today. So without further ado, here is our conversation. I hope you find it as enlightening as I did.
- [03:21]
Ali Ansari
The first thing I'd say is that, you know, you have to look at Iran in the 19th century as a great power that receives a bit of a shock. And the shock is basically it's confronting two other great powers that on any sort of metric, have become greater than it aspires to be. So the Russians and the British. Russian and British imperial power basically squeeze Iran. And Iranian intellectuals think about how best to respond to this. And the response is interesting because the response shows just how nuanced and interesting these intellectuals were in engaging with ideas from the West. And they understood actually, that Western ideas were more of a challenge than perhaps they'd faced before from other sort of different cultures and empires and others, that these were ideas which brought with them ideas of modernity, freedom, liberty, and other things. And. And quite a few Iranians actually traveled to the west, and they traveled to Britain in particular. Some stayed here for. For quite a while. And they absorbed a lot of the ideas, a lot of the political ideas that they. They encountered. And what they understood, which is. Which is interesting, is that, you know, it's not all about military might. That military might is as an aspect of different political changes. And at heart, you have to change politically in order to be able to sort of deal with the challenge in the modern world. And the reason Britain, they discovered or they felt was successful was because of their sort of affection for liberty. And they got really fixated on this idea of liberty. And one of the things they became particularly fixated on your priest and Roland, as they became particularly fixated on with newspapers, they found newspapers completely fascinating. They couldn't work out how Britons and others would print a paper every day and then chuck it out and print another one the next day and so on and so forth.
- [05:06]
Roland Oliphant
Which period is this? When are we talking about?
- [05:09]
Ali Ansari
This is sort of the 1818-20s, 30s, you know, the early part of the 19th century, right? So they come to Britain and they sort of see these things, and they're fascinated. And there are accounts, there are diaries, diaries of Britain's. Iranians come to Britain and they're taken on tours of things like King's College London, for instance, and they go and see the Thames Tunnel, which is, you know, for them is an extraordinary feat of engineering. I mean, they just can't sort of, really sort of fathom it. And they get to go and see all sorts of aspects of industry and what you find is that Iranian intellectuals develop a sort of an affection for what you might call, you know, the Anglophone political system. Okay. They're not as impressed with the policies of the British Empire. I mean, they find the policies of the British Empire a great disappointment to them because they always think that the British have these great ideals, great aspirations. They love, you know, constitutionalism, the rule of law, so on and so forth. But at the end of the day, when it comes to imperial power politics, they tend to cut corners, you know, cut deals with the Russians, so on and so forth, and don't actually, you know, project that sort of idealism which their political thought aspires to. So you find this dichotomy. And the reason I say this is because I think it's very important for us to understand that the relationship with Britain in particular, particular is a mixed one. And it's not all negative. I mean it's, it's, it's. Actually there are large periods and large sections of Iranian intellectuals, by the way, who see the British model as one that works for them. Britain, they understand, is, is a nation built of different nations. The Scots, the Welsh, the Irish, the English. And they bring together into this sort of like homogeneous whole of British island. And of course that for them also works for them. Iran also is a multi ethnic empire, but they want to develop into a national state. And the first great, great revolution that Iran experiences in 1906, basically the birth of modern Iran is the Constitutional revolution. And the Constitutional revolution is basically a revolution based on British ideas. British ideas are parliamentary. I wouldn't want to say democracy because it wouldn't be democracy as we understand it. I mean, there were, you know, women were not as yet given the franchise, for instance, but nonetheless it's a system of parliamentary constitutionalism, if you will, that's modeled on the British system on the basis, on the back of British ideas and British help, actually. I mean, the British were extremely helpful, certainly on the ground, diplomatically on the ground in enabling this revolution to take place. But they subsequently cut a deal with the Russians in 1907 to basically abandon the constitutionalists in Iran. The first of many moments, I have to say, Roland, when the Western powers basically cut loose Iranian democrats and their
- [07:45]
Roland Oliphant
aspirations, which I suspect is going to be. There's going to be a theme through this conversation.
- [07:49]
Ali Ansari
Yeah, it's a running theme. I'm sorry, I, I'm sorry to say. I mean, in my view, the Constitution, 1907 is actually the period when the British have the greatest responsibility for letting the side Down. And many, many British politicians, by the way, and activists were appalled.
- [08:04]
Roland Oliphant
So what. What exactly did Britain do then? What. What was Britain's role and what was the.
- [08:08]
Ali Ansari
So what. What basically happened is that, you know, you get a constitutional revolution assisted very much by the British Embassy at the time. I mean, one of the staggering things of the constitutional revolution is that most of Tehran's male inhabitants, those who are politically active, some 14,000, I mean, think of the numbers, 14,000 of the population in Tehran at the time of maybe a quarter of a million. So 14,000 Iranian men, obviously at this time, all gather and congregate in the British Embassy compound in Golhak in Tehran, and they take refuge there, sanctuary there, under the sort of the protection of the British charge d'. Affaires. And they instruct the British charge d' affaires to be their interlocutor with the government. So he goes on and he sort of basically effectively negotiates on behalf of these Iranian protesters, revolutionaries, the new constitutional settlement. And when the new ambassador, or the British minister, it should be said, arrives finally in Tehran at the end of 1906, a gentleman by the name of Cecil Spring Rice, who basically writes back to Edward Graham, he says, British prestige has never been higher. You know, this is an extraordinary period in Iranian history and we are, you know, we are top dog. Edward Gray basically says, well, you know, I don't think this is going to get anywhere. You know, it's sad, I'm sorry to say, a motif that is repeated many, many times where the people on the ground in Tehran say, this is a momentous development, we need to back it. And the people in Whitehall say, no, we don't want to get involved in this revolutionary mumbo jumbo. Actually, what we need to do is, is we need to settle our disputes with Russia across Asia at the French behest, get into this sort of like entente convial with the French, but also back up the Franco Russian alliance in case of a war breaking out in Europe. And of course, for the British at the time, the real threat came from Germany. So they. They basically cut the Persians loose, signed what came to be known as the Anglo Russian convention in 1907, which divided Iran into spheres of influence. And these fears of influence basically gave Britain the sort of the marshlands of Belichistan in the southeast, much to the British Indian government's horror, I have to say, and Lord Curzon and many others who thought it was a very, very bad agreement, and handed the Russians basically their sphere of influence, where the British wouldn't sort of intervene was most of northern Iran. So most of the populated centers of Iran. And the Russians, of course, were not interested in constitutionalism or the constitutional revolution and took every liberty that they had to crush it. And it's interesting that this Anglo Russian Convention, according to later historians, particularly A.J.P. taylor, writes that the Anglo Russian Convention was probably the most controversial part of British foreign policy before appeasement in the 1930s.
- [10:51]
Roland Oliphant
Good Lord.
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Ali Ansari
It caused a huge amount of angst among British politicians, intellectuals, many of whom could not understand why Edward Gray was siding with czarist Russia over the constitutional aspirations of the Persians.
- [11:05]
Roland Oliphant
Right. And this involved, this, this involved occupation. There were Russian and British troops.
- [11:10]
Ali Ansari
No, so this is, this is the paradox. Course it did basically allow, you know, it did involve Russian. I mean, the Russians moved troops in and they basically crushed the constitutional movement. The British, of course, adhered very strictly the terms of the Russian Convention by saying, well, you know, this sphere of influence, but we're not going to, you know, but we've agreed in this that we mustn't interfere in the sovereign rights of the Iranian people, so on and so forth. And of course, what Edward Gray basically said was that he thought this Anglo Russian convention would settle the Persian question. But in actual fact, it drew him into the Persian question even more because of course, Persian revolutions, Iranian revolutions were saying, according to this Anglo Russian Convention, you know, you, you, you are now by agreement, by legal agreement with the Russians. You know, you have to stop them interfering in this country. You have to stop them getting involved. And so Gray found himself drawn in and gr. He says, he says, no, no problem. No country gave me more problems than Persia, which again, is a motif that I'm sure will be repeated. But do you know, it's, it's a very interesting template. And of course, you know, Iranian revolutionaries came to London. They consulted with the noted Persian scholars, Persianist scholars like Edward Granville Brown and Cambridge. They sort of sent out pamphlets. They were urging the British to support them. They said, you know, in a very special sense, the Constitutional Revolution is the spiritual child of Great Britain. They said, it's the spiritual child. You need to come and back us. But of course they didn't. And, you know, the rest is history in that, in that sense. So on that front, you know, it's an enormously important part of Iranian history in terms of laying the foundations of the modern state in terms of the constitution. Although, as Iranians would have find, no government really paid any attention to the, the language of the constitution. They sort of like paid Lip service to it, but they didn't really actually enact it. But nonetheless, it basically set the template and set the framework for political activity in Iran henceforth, just to get a
- [13:03]
Roland Oliphant
grasp of what that changed at home in Iran. Yeah, that was a. That was a. An absolutist monarchy, was it? That was finally. This is the first kind of attempt to restrain the shahs or restrain the kings.
- [13:14]
Ali Ansari
Absolutely right. And to impose the rule of law and all that, you know, and basically. And of course, the constitutional revolution at the end of the day basically falters and stalls and fails, because at the end of the day, the aspirations of the revolutionaries for, you know, vast, impressive ideas of change and, you know, mass education and so on and so forth just didn't match their capabilities. I mean, there was no state in Iran per se to be able to achieve this. So we had to wait, really, for a change in dynasty. That was to come. After the devastation of the First World War, where Iran became a battleground for the great powers. After the. The First World War, you get a new government comes in, not wholly with British help, but the British, being the dominant power in Iran at the end of the Great War, basically were very keen actually to get out and essentially facilitated or enabled this new coup d' etat government to take it, to take hold. It was led by the commander of the Cossack Brigade, a gentleman by the name of Reza Khan. And of course, the Cossack Brigade had been the Russian outfit in Iran, but since the Russian Revolution, all the.
- [14:15]
Roland Oliphant
They were called Cossacks. Were they actually Cossacks? Were they commanded by a Cossack?
- [14:19]
Ali Ansari
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was called the Cossack Brigade, it was called the Cossack Brigade, but it was basically. Basically, they weren't actually genuinely Cossacks. They were main. They were Persians trained under the Russian manner.
- [14:28]
Roland Oliphant
Right.
- [14:28]
Ali Ansari
And they were meant to be light troops and whatever, and they were known as the Cossack Brigade, but because during 1917, after the Russian Revolution, all the Russian officers went or were shot or whatever, the Cossack Brigade basically became officers by Persians, by Iranians who came up the ranks. And actually their money was paid for. They were financed by the British because the British couldn't have them running riot through Iran as a. As a mop. They had. Someone had to pay them. So the British paid them. And essentially, you know, Reza Khan comes in. Lord Curzon had a moment where he was hoping he was going to settle an Anglo Persian agreement, something that also offended Persian nationalists. Although there's a huge controversy about that, I don't, I won't go into that at the moment. But the, ultimately the British position was we don't want to get involved in Iran. Much better to find a strong man to sort this out, stabilize it, so on and so forth. But one area where the British were involved, and I have to go back a bit, is obviously oil.
- [15:18]
Roland Oliphant
This is a very important theme. Okay? Yes.
- [15:21]
Ali Ansari
So at the same time, and this is why I think Edward Gray's, why Edward Gray was so short sighted with his Anglo Russian convention in 1907, was that in 1908, after seven years of desperate trying to find oil, believe it or not, when you consider how abundant it is, but the seven years of really hard graft trying to find oil, a British Australian sort of company strikes oil in southwestern Iran in 1908. And in 1909 you get the foundation of the Anglo Persian Oil Company. And what the Anglo Persian Oil Company does and with the discovery of oil, although it takes time obviously to develop and the industry to grow, is it gives Britain a very clear strategic interest in Iran. You know, so prior to the discovery of oil, the interest of Iran to Britain was as a buffer zone against India, to protect India. But now Iran becomes important in its own right. And of course oil as we know, you know, shapes Iranian history and also Anglo Iranian relations throughout the 20th century and 21st century. So it's a momentous event. So in some ways when you're looking at history of modern Iran, Britain was the midwife not only of the modern Iranian state, but also the modern Iranian economy. Okay, so fascinating. Do you see what I mean? I mean, and that's how intimate it is actually. And that's why I think we need a much more nuanced understanding of that relationship.
- [16:38]
Roland Oliphant
It's interesting that when you speak to Iranians, they're very aware of this and they've got a lot to say about Britain. And I feel like Britain's are fairly oblivious.
- [16:47]
Ali Ansari
But the thing is, I think a lot of the politically minded Iranians relationship and understanding of Britain in that respect is painted in very sort of primary colors. It's basically a mythology rather than history. And I think you have to see it. I mean, I think the Anglo Persian, Anglo Iranian or company that it was to become was one of the more notorious corporate institutions obviously in Iran that were operating at the time. But they also did a lot of very interesting things too. The mere existence of the Anglo Iran Oil Company was the first major industrial conglomerate to operate in Iran. It developed all sorts of work practices. The Development of a working class, even the introduction of association football, by the way. But at the end of the day, the problem with the Anglo Iran Oil Company, as we'll see we're summarizing this history in a way, but is that it had a very favorable deal concession and ultimately that was to come to a head in the post Second World War period.
- [17:42]
Roland Oliphant
Just to summarize, 1906, a constitutional uprising, a proper revolution, an attempt to impose kind of a constitutional monarchy on a democracy that basically fails or is spread aside. So you end up with. What do you end up with in this interwar period? Then you end up with, it's another monarchy. Is there a parliament?
- [18:06]
Ali Ansari
Yeah, there is, but it doesn't really function. I mean, what's very interesting about it, when you look at the intellectuals, they sort of look at it and they say the constitutional movement has failed. You know, we, we, we, we, we can't succeed. And we can't succeed because we were trying to constrain a government that didn't exist. You know, we, we don't have government institutions. We, we don't have the means to do things we want to do. So what they do is they flick back and they go to European history and they say, what do the Europeans do? And they look at it and they say, what we need is an enlightened despot on the 18th century model. And actually the figure they settle on is Peter the Great, which is not, which is not a, it's not the best choice, I'd say. But anyway, they settle on Peter the Great because Reza Khan comes from the Cossack brigade, so there's that sort of Russian association. And it's this idea that what we need is someone to come and build the state. You know, build a proper modern state, mass education, separate judiciary, dress codes, language reform, you know, build a modern national state. And then we can apply the constitution and restrict it. Right. Of course that's not how it works.
- [19:07]
Roland Oliphant
I mean, basically, that's the idea. Okay, okay.
- [19:09]
Ali Ansari
Yeah. So Reza Shah does build. I mean, basically the interwar period is, is, is the period when I would say 50 to 60% of the promise of the constitutional revolution is fulfilled. The key part is that it doesn't fulfill the democratic aspirations of conscious revolution. It fulfills the state building aspects of the constitutional revolution.
- [19:30]
Roland Oliphant
Right.
- [19:30]
Ali Ansari
And so you do get a modern state. So that period, I have to tell you, the period from 1906-19, say 41, when Reza Shah is eventually overthrown during the allied invasion of World War II, is an absolutely central Period for understanding modern Iran. I mean, you cannot understand modern Iran if you don't look at this period. This is when the modern state comes into being.
- [19:52]
Roland Oliphant
This is when the country that we're now talking about is born.
- [19:54]
Ali Ansari
Absolutely.
- [19:55]
Roland Oliphant
Okay. 1941. The war's already broken out. Iran is occupied, duly occupied by the British and the Soviets.
- [20:03]
Ali Ansari
Yeah. And then the Americans come in in 42.
- [20:06]
Roland Oliphant
The Americans come in 42. At the end of that period, the Brits and this. There's so much to get through. I kind of want to get through World War II quickly. I know, but there is, I think, just very quickly, I think an important crisis where the Brits leave, but the Soviets don't. And I say important because, as I understand, it's perhaps the first big crisis of the Cold War.
- [20:30]
Ali Ansari
It is absolutely right. So what happens is when the Allies go into Iran, Churchill privately says to his own private sector, he says, you know, we have the justification, but we don't have the right. I mean, he's quite clear about it. He says it's quite controversial. But he said, needs must. It's a war situation. Nazis are rushing blitzkrieg through the Soviet Union. We need a land bridge to the Soviet Union to supply them. Plus the fact, of course, that the British were very anxious about the oil. You know, the oil refinery.
- [20:56]
Roland Oliphant
Forget the oil.
- [20:57]
Ali Ansari
Yeah. So, you know, they said, you know, what if the Germans bomb the oil refinery? You know, I mean, so we need to keep in. So they move in. But the agreement is that they make Iran as part of the allied powers. But the agreement is the allies will withdraw from Iran six months after the end of the war. The Americans, the British withdraw, the Soviets don't. And the Soviets sit around and they provide a protective umbrella around sort of separatist movements. In Mahabad, the Kurds, and in Azerbaijan, the Azeris, because they say really want to join with, you know, what is then the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. And it's a major, major crisis. And it's basically resolved in two parallel ways. One is the canniness of one of the Iranian politicians. They basically say to Stalin, we'll give you an oil concession in the north if you get out of Azerbaijan. And Stalin falls for that, basically. And the other one is suggested anyway is that Truman basically said to Stalin, you know, you need to get out. We're not, you know, we're not messing around here. It's difficult to know how effective the Truman ultimatum was because nobody's ever found it, by the way. But apparently there was one. But nonetheless, the Soviets withdraw, Azerbaijan is brought back into the fold, into the patrimony. And of course, Iranian politicians, having kicked out the Russian bear from northern Iran, think, oh, and we haven't had to offer an oil concession there. Why don't we turn our view to the oil concession in the south that the British are sitting on? And it is remarkable actually to see how oblivious the Anglo Iranian Oil Company was to the threat that Iranian nationalist politicians would then turn to look at the oil concession in the south.
- [22:30]
Roland Oliphant
Right, and this is a really important bit because this is something that always comes up when you talk to Iranians, particularly when they're talking about, about British and American perfidy. And it's part of the story of Western interference in Iran. The Iranians basically nationalized the company. There's a guy called Mossadegh, Mohammad Mosaddegh.
- [22:51]
Ali Ansari
Yeah, he's a nationalist, the Prime Minister who comes in heading the National Front.
- [22:55]
Roland Oliphant
So the narrative we often hear is that Mosaddegh was a democratically elected prime minister who was evicted by the CIA and MI6 because he had the temerity to try to take back Iran's own oil. How much of that is true and how much of it is a myth?
- [23:15]
Ali Ansari
I mean, there's enough truth in there for it to be a legitimate sort of narrative. But the fact is that he's basically a parliamentarian. He gets a lot of votes to become a member of parliament for Tehran, but he's not the democratically elected prime minister because the Prime Minister is appointed by the Shah. And basically what happens is there's a negotiation that takes place with the Anglo Iran Oil Company that becomes extremely long winded, painful, you know, whatever. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And there's a Prime minister at the time, an ex general by the name of Rasmara, who finally persuades the Anglo Iran Oil Company to renegotiate the contract on the basis of a 50, 50 share, you know, so 5050 ownership. But before he can present it towards Parliament, he's assassinated. Okay, so it gets a bit, it's a bit lurid. And it's very dubious how the assassination happened. It's a very fever atmosphere. And they basically go to Mossadegh, they say, look, you know, this situation is just dire. It's febrile. If you want to bloody be Prime Minister, you do, you know, if you want to see through this nationalization, you do it, you know. And they all expected Mossadegh to turn it down, but he didn't he said great, I'll do it. You know. And he was in his, I mean he's quite elderly at the time, but he decided to take on the mantle and then he sees through that nationalization bill. The narratives that you get are very simplified narratives of what happens in this period. But in a basic sense, you know, he takes through the legislation for the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry. The British are obviously not happy about this. It's their major overseas asset. It's a major source of hard currency. Also oil is still priced in pound sterling. Majorly important for the British economy. They're bankrupt after the Second World War, just lost India, just decolonizing. And the last thing you want to do is lose this major source of hard currency for them because you're building a welfare state. And of course we, we end up in this extraordinary crisis. And, and the crisis is one where essentially the British persuade effectively the Americans to take the lead in changing the government in Iran so they get someone more suitable to negotiate with. So after two years of wrangling, basically Eisenhower, because the coup plans were all drafted, contingency planning was all done under the Labour government. But Attlee was never keen on using such means. Churchill and Eden were less scrupulous. But at the end of the day, and this is my view certainly, I mean the coup of 1953 is an American project more than a British project because it was the Americans in the driving seat who led it.
- [25:42]
Roland Oliphant
Interestingly, I was looking this up recently because of the current. But before we get to the coup, the Britons tribe, a blockade of Iranian ports as well, an embargo, there's a blockade enforced by the Royal Navy. It's all very, all these echoes of history. But this bit, this bit is true and that there are, I was talking to my colleague David Blair about this recently. He says apparently there are, there are all these archival documents that you can read through and it's absolutely fascinating seeing MI6 and CIA officers kind of sitting down in hotel rooms in London or somewhere and, and literally kind of plotting a coup that, that literally happened.
- [26:20]
Ali Ansari
First of all, the CIA documents you have to, you have to view with a degree of, not skepticism but a lot of them are quite self justifying. You know they, you know we were brilliant because a lot of these CIA documents were in, after the effect in, in, in, in search of funding. Okay. So they say, you know, we're actually marvelous, you know, we organized this coup and whatever and of course they were planning but I mean the whole sequence of events is a Little bit more murky than the way the CIA does. I think, you know, the main thing you have to, you know, people look at the coup of 1953 as an aspect of the Cold War and it was, you know, it isn't it? But actually it was all run by people who were ex OSS officers in the Second World War. They're all basically covert, you know, sort of like Special Forces people from the, from the Second World War. And I think the part of the problem is, is that the, the 1953 coup should really be viewed, if you want to understand it. I wouldn't want to sort of necessarily, you know, justify it, but if you want to understand how it happened, it's because it's a bunch of people with a hangover from the Second World War who think this is the sort of thing you do. I mean, you know, you just go,
- [27:21]
Roland Oliphant
they're a bunch of buccaneers and that's what they do.
- [27:23]
Ali Ansari
Yeah, I mean, Kermit Roosevelt had been busy doing stuff like this in Egypt and he'd been in other. And you know, they were all say, MI6 officers who, you know, again, had a, had, had a, had a track record, obviously had been operating in the war. I mean, this is, this is what the memory was very, very, was very, very recent. So that, that's part the issue. But again, you know, you mustn't ignore the fact that Mossadegh by 1953 had made himself quite unpopular with large sections of Iranian society, including many of the clerics, many on the left. He was seen as very high handed. He was seen as, you know, at best a romantic idealist who, who was confronting things he couldn't deal with. So, you know, there are many parts of this equation and I think, you know, a proper historical study would show that. I think the trouble is in, in the Iranian sort of political consciousness, they talk about it in a, in a very, very sort of like evil empires versus Plucky.
- [28:15]
Roland Oliphant
Evil empires versus the Iranians. Yeah, yeah.
- [28:17]
Ali Ansari
And it's, it's not quite, it's, as I said, it's not quite so straightforward.
- [28:21]
Roland Oliphant
So there, there is a coup, Mossadegh is removed. And I kind of want to, this is important because it sets up the period of. The next period is the period of the Pakhlavi monarchy that leads us to 1979, which is really what I'm trying to get to now. So you end up with, you end up with a shah, a relatively absolutist monarch, I think it's fair to say.
- [28:44]
Ali Ansari
So basically, he, I mean, it's different. So the Shah obviously comes in. Mahmuda, as a shah, comes in in 1941 as a 21 year old when his father's been deposed. So he's, he's a fairly sort of like, inexperienced and lacks confidence, so on and so forth. He then, you know, participates in this coup, effectively comes back in 53, makes completely the wrong conclusion, by the way, when he comes back and he says, you know, my people love me. You know, they all love me. Actually, it's, it's more probably an affection for the institution of the monarchy over love for him himself. But he, he basically spends a good eight years consolidating his position. I mean, he's not. There are several things that are quite interesting about this and that is that the Americans actually fall out of love with the Shah quite early on. They, they just don't think he can get anything done. And it right happened to, you know, the turn of the 1960s. The Americans are thinking, as the Americans do, by the way, oh, you know, we need to find a strong man, maybe a good military man to come and sort this country out because it's not going anywhere. And the Shah eventually, basically, after a period, you know, period of turmoil in the early 1960s, takes the helm. And he takes the helm and basically develops what he calls the White revolution. And the White Revolution is an attempt to anticipate or prevent a red revolution, a bloody revolution, by basically imposing a program of reform. And the Americans are full square behind this. But it's, it's a program reform that is in some ways a victim of its own success because it does develop the country economically in a very dramatic way, actually. I mean, Iran becomes the tiger economy of Asia in this period in the 1670s. What the Shard doesn't do is he doesn't match this economic reform with any political reform. And in actual fact, he goes in completely the opposite direction. So when you say he's a fairly absolutist monarch, he really becomes that in the 70s. I mean, he's not that earlier on. He's building up to it. And he builds up to it because he uses this tremendous economic, you know, dramatic economic growth and explosion of oil wealth that occurs really in the 70s to basically, you know, puff himself up. I mean, you know, it's, it's an extraordinary program of welfare and economic development which I think Iranians today, by the way, are very envious of. But the mistake the Shah makes is that he, you know, he basically doesn't match it with any political liberalization, not until it's too late, basically. I mean, this is the problem. So you get this enormous, you know, growth of a middle class, vast student body, you know, all these idealists fighting for various political ideologies. And at the end of the day, the shah, who I have to say was always quite a superstitious and religious man, had never really perceived the threat to his throne as coming from the religious classes. He always saw it as coming from communists. So he spent a lot of his time suppressing the communists and not as much time keeping an eye on the clerics. And of course, it's the clerics that were to be his undoing.
- [31:34]
Roland Oliphant
We're just going to take a short break now. When we come back, we'll be talking about 1979 and the rise of the Islamic republic itself.
- [31:49]
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- [31:51]
Ali Ansari
Hablas espanol?
- [31:52]
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- [32:29]
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- [33:00]
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- [33:35]
Roland Oliphant
Welcome back. You're listening to a special bank holiday edition of Iran, the latest. With me, Roland Oliphant. I'm speaking to Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian history at St. Andrew's University. And we're talking about Iran's modern history, the past century or so that has brought us to the point we are at today. So that brings us to 1979, which is really the crucial bit that I think listeners want to understand where the Islamic Republic came from, how did we, this regime that we're now facing, talk us through this experience. Extraordinary moment. There's so much we don't have time to talk about the whole revolution. But I, I was thinking, I suppose one thing to help, to help listeners understand the revolution is the, the influence of Khomeini, who ends up as Supreme Leader, ends up leading it. And his philosophy of. Is it veliat.
- [34:27]
Ali Ansari
The guardianship of the jurors?
- [34:29]
Roland Oliphant
So. So while the. The Shah's been worried about communists and it's the Cold War and whatever else, there's this other guy, this cleric from. Com, this Shia cleric who's been coming up with a completely different ideology, not a Marxist ideology, that ends up underpinning the revolution that comes apart and underpins the country that America and Israel are now at ceasefire with, as I currently speak. Talk us through that. What is this idea and why is it so powerful?
- [34:58]
Ali Ansari
Khomeini is a sort of an activist cleric. I mean, in quite the sort of contrast with most of the other senior clerics. Most other senior clerics were what we call quietest. They sort of felt that, you know, their job was to do serious theological learning and not get involved in politics. But in some ways, you know, Khomeini was the archetypal clerical Marxist and that. He sort of said, you know, you know, our job is not to think about the world, our job is to change it. And he was very active on that. And he, while he was not a Marxist himself, he had a lot of good, you know, he.
- [35:29]
Roland Oliphant
The latest is an original podcast Telegraph,
- [35:31]
Ali Ansari
created by David Knows and hosted someone who transcended that.
- [35:35]
Roland Oliphant
If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following around and if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others.
- [35:43]
Ali Ansari
Thesis show.
- [35:46]
Roland Oliphant
Sign up to our new daily newsletter, basically the Argument, or listen to our sister podcast. We are still on the same email address, Battle Lines Telegraph, or you can
- [35:58]
Ali Ansari
call our handles the show Notes with the producer.
- [36:03]
Roland Oliphant
The executive producer is.
- [36:05]
Ali Ansari
And those are the great Italians, you know, the grand itol. These are the jurists. And, you know, he. He was developing ideas that had been originated back in the. You know, actually the. The first time it was mentioned, I think, is the 17th century. But it sort of comes a little bit more to fruition in the 19th century with this idea that really those with authority or those with authority in the Muslim community are those who understand the law. But the Khomeini basically just simply refined that even further and said there should be a single person who has the right to adjudicate everything. And this is why really in the revolution, you know, as Khomeini became initially the symbolic leader of the revolution, but ultimately the practical reader of the revolution as it came to be developed, was that people criticized, you know, Khomeini's ideas because they said that essentially what he's doing is he's replacing the crown with the turban. I mean, you know, that we're moving from one form of autocracy to another form of autocracy. But this one is just even worse actually, in practice, because this is a religious despotism as opposed to sort of monarchical despotism, which is, you know, at least can be in some ways secular. This is one that actually makes it all very sacred and. Makes it sacred. And, you know, Khomeini comes in with that, with very powerful ideas. He. He's able to. He's a very astute political operator. You know, he doesn't talk about a lot of these ideas until he gets into power, actually. And when he gets into power and when the revolution succeeds in overthrow Shah by the end of 1978, 79, and Khamenei comes back, he then basically has a referendum in Iran. And he says, you know, we have a referendum on the abolition of the monarchy. And they say, what are we going to replace the monarchy with? They say, we're going to replace it with an Islamic republic. And they say, what is an Islamic republic? And they say, don't worry about that. We'll work it out once we've had the referendum. So they basically have this referendum. Everyone votes to abolish the monarchy because obviously the revolution dictates. I mean, why have a revolution if you're not going to abolish the monarchy? And then Khamenei says, we've got an Islamic republic. And then they spend the next, you know, eight, nine months discussing what that is. And much to the horror of some people, I'd say they realize that an Islamic republic is not actually sort of like a Christian democracy where it's an Islamic republic. Because everyone's Muslim. It's an Islamic republic because Khomeini wants to install as the sort of institutional overseer of all this, this concept of the guardianship of the jurist, I himself as the overarching sort of ethical, moral and political guide. And this notion of the supreme leader then sort of dominates. And what you have in the Islamic Republic is this hybrid. It's basically a hybrid constitution. I mean, remember, in Islam, there's no such thing as a republic. Nobody ever discusses a republic. The republic is basically drawn if. If the 1906 Constitution was drawn on the British model, the 1979 Constitution was drawn on the French model, and it's basically a French Fifth Republic. That becomes the model for the text, and that's the republic. But the Islamic element is all these ideas of Islamic government that Khomeini brings in, and there's this essential tension between these two elements. The republic is what you and I are familiar with. You know, again, the parliament, judiciary, you know, president.
- [39:03]
Roland Oliphant
This is why we have. We have the Majlis and we have Kalabak, who is a speaker of Parliament. And at the same time, you have a supreme leader who ultimately has.
- [39:10]
Ali Ansari
Yeah, so basically what he does is they continue many of the elements of the prediction revolutionary constitution. They rename it basically as, you know, an Islamic assembly rather than a national assembly. But they also had this notion of a presidency and a prime minister. They eventually get rid of the notion of the prime minister, so you just have a presidency, but it's modeled on the French Fifth Republic. But then on top of that, they overlay this sort of Islamic jurisprudence. And. And this is the problem. That's the tension, and that's actually fundamentally the underly. You know, the fundamental tension that has basically rocked the Islamic Republic since its inception.
- [39:42]
Roland Oliphant
And he gets away with this. He gets away with this. How is it. Is it simply because he has the. What becomes the irgc? He's kind of Red Guards. It's Beck and call. Is it thuggery or.
- [39:54]
Ali Ansari
He gets away with it because he's. He's the charismatic founder, father figure of the revolution. And critically, because there's a war. So there's. There's two things that, you know, as I said, Khomeini is quite an astute political player. He does two things to get his things across. First of all, he creates an absolute blood enemy at the United States. So he sanctions the seizure of the US embassy in November 1979. Focuses people's minds on the external enemy.
- [40:19]
Roland Oliphant
Famous hostage crisis.
- [40:20]
Ali Ansari
Yeah, yeah, the hostage crisis. But then in September 1980, Saddam Hussein invades Iran and you get an eight year war. And obviously during a war situation, all sorts of things can get done. It's the parallels today are quite interesting, by the way. I mean, in the sense that hardliners think, ah, war, great, you know, we'll use that to bring in austerity, religious austerity, so on and so forth. But the war is a double edged sword for the Islamic Republic because it allows for the Islamification of the revolution initially. But as the war gets more and more prolonged, concessions have to be made, you know, to a national sentiment, a certain amount of freedom of thought and others. And of course, Khomeini dies in 1989. It is worth noting this, by the way, I think the first Iranian ruler to die in his bed actually for nearly two centuries, not to be sent into exile or killed under a US bomb or whatever. He dies, but he doesn't die before he's issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, which of course haunts the Islamic Republic for the next 10 years. As you know, there's this idea that he says, you know, Salman Rusty wrote, you know, this book, blasphemous, so on and so forth. You have to kill him. Not the sort of reviewer, not the sort of review that, you know, any author wants to get. And you know, it causes a major crisis, of course it caused a cause a major crisis of the West. But that's precisely what Khomeini had in mind. I mean, he wanted to ensure that the ability of the Islamic revolution to basically normalize its relations with the west were always going to be hindered. And it's always been the case. And of course, what happens in the subsequent period, you get, you get two phases of history in the Islamic Republic. You get. The initial phase from about 1989 to 2005 is the period of what we may call the republican intermezzo in a way, the republican phase where two presidents really tried to push the Islamic Republic down its Republican stage from 2005 to the present, really, you've seen the complete dismantling of the republic at the hands of the Islamic revolutionary organs of the state, including, as you mentioned earlier, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the leadership office and almost every institution of government become subsumed under the Islamic autocracy that is basically in charge today, essentially. I mean, that's what it is.
- [42:30]
Roland Oliphant
Yeah, it's an interesting way to define it. I was wondering, you talked about the Iran Iraq war there and I know it's a huge subject in its Own right. And I don't think we have a time for a full history of the war or anything like that. But how important is that war today? And I say this because I think the answer is probably very. At least in kind of. I mean, when I. My brief visits to Tehran, I have noticed, you know, there were still posters everywhere of martyrs, people who died during the war, and a lot of people of a certain age who I spoke to. I mean, everybody had a story, you know, that, you know, I was walking down the street in 1980 something, and a rocket, nearly an Iraqi rocket nearly killed me there. And all of this. How important do you think that period, that huge, enormous war in which masses of people died is for understanding, or the Iran that the Israelis and Americans are fighting today?
- [43:21]
Ali Ansari
So, I mean, a bit like the Mossad crisis, there's a sort of a history and then there's a mythology. The mythology is enormously important. The mythology of the Iran Iraq war is the founding myth of the irgc. And the irgc, the Revolution Guard call, sort of nurtures it, cultivates it. That's why you get these posters and martyrs and this and that and the other. I think for many younger Iranians, Gen Z, so to speak, the war is ancient history. They're not interested in it. And I think this is the. So for many of the leadership in Iran today, the Iran Iraq War is a very, very influential. It has a profound influence on their way of thinking, including this sort of missile defense. Because, of course, in the Iran Iraq war, Iran was subjected to Scud missile attacks from Iraq. And they sort of understood, you know, having the sharp end of missiles, they sort of thought this is something we need to develop. But I think as with the Mossadegh period, by the way, for many younger Iranians, it's not relevant actually anymore. There are some, you know, younger devotees of the Islamic revolution who also feel that they missed out on the war and want to fight their own war, which is what we're seeing today. So it's interesting, I mean, the Iran Iraq War has had a profound effect on the way in which Iranians see the world, particularly of that generation. But also many of those who fought in the war also much, much more sanguine about the prospects of fighting another war. And it is interesting that a particular generation both learnt a lot in terms of how they want to fight, but also were much more conservative in a way in terms of their approach to fighting another war. They just didn't want to fight another war. And I think this is why you Know, what we're seeing today is going to have some interesting consequences. I mean, one of the problems about analyzing what we're seeing today is analyzing the impact of a war in real time is difficult. And we won't really see what the consequences of what's happened now for months to come, probably until we see how the fallout is. Because I think there's all sorts of diverse opinions in Iran, by the way, and unfortunately, some people are willing to paint these very, very broad brush strokes and actually take some at face value, what some officials in Iran are telling. It's not at all clear, actually, because there are strong, strong divisions not only between, you know, those who are what we might call more reformist versus hardliner, between state and society, between the generations, you know, between the younger and the older. There's all sorts of divisions in that and approaches, which is what makes Iran actually quite interesting as a country in the Middle east going forward.
- [45:43]
Roland Oliphant
I was wondering, it occurred to me that you divided kind of the Islamic Republic's history into there. There was a kind of almost a republican period. And now I kind of, I mean, I'm simplifying. I understand you're simplifying. I think we all, we all get that. And then the, the consolidation of kind of the IRGC and everything since 2005 and, and the sidelining of the republican project. There's another way to divide it, of course, which is between these, these two supreme leaders, Khomeini and Khamenei. I don't know why they have to have such similar names.
- [46:14]
Ali Ansari
It's frustrating.
- [46:15]
Roland Oliphant
But of course, it strikes me that as a historian, you've just seen the, the end of a, you know, the end of an era. I suppose if it was a monarchy, be the end of a reign. Ali Khamenei is now dead.
- [46:25]
Ali Ansari
Well, it is really, it is at the end of reign because his son has succeeded him as well, you know, which shows that monarchy is back.
- [46:32]
Roland Oliphant
So what, I mean, I suppose it's far, you know, it's a little bit early for historians to sit back and say what, what, what was the Hannah say of, of that period?
- [46:41]
Ali Ansari
For me, it's very. So Khomeini obviously is the person who saw the country through revolution and war, of course, dying in 1989, straight after war. I think harmony's ruled and I think it is ruled from, you know, effectively 1989 to 2026 is, is from a historical perspective, is one of the most catastrophic rules that Iran has ever witnessed. I mean, if you look at it, you know, My, My view of the Islamic Republic is that it is at heart an extractive state. It's an extractive state that basically inherited a very rich, if flawed state from the Pahlavis in 1979. It has proceeded to spend its inheritance down, and I think Khamenei has overseen that spending down of the inheritance in a much, much more accelerated fashion. And they haven't really understood the notions of basically developing, building, investing. And when I say investing in the state, I don't just mean the economic infrastructure, I mean the political infrastructure. They, you know, certainly from 2009 onwards, they basically abandoned the political project in that sense. They basically said that Iran, the Islamic Republic, has people who are on the inside, as they call it the Khudi, our people, and then everyone else. And everyone else is basically defined as a heretic. And as you can imagine, you know, if you're defined as a heretic, you have no rights or legal rights at all. So Khamenei's project, which, let's even take the nuclear program as an example, this idea that some people think that the right to enrich uranium is part of Iran's sort of like political DNA, I mean, it's complete rubbish. I mean, of course it's not. It's an obsession that Khamenei oversaw. And people, people think that Iran may have spent countless billions of dollars on this project. To what end? I mean, some people are even saying that the opportunity cost of Iran's nuclear program is about a trillion dollars over 40 years. To what end? I mean, what has been the result of this? The result of this has been that we've engaged, we've got involved in a war that has basically destroyed the political and possibly the economic infrastructure of the country. A political, economic infrastructure, I would say, that has been built up since the 1920s. I mean, that's the way you need to look at it.
- [48:43]
Roland Oliphant
The whole destroy Israel, destroy America, that's all ideology. Do they believe it? Why was Khomeini so obsessed with these?
- [48:50]
Ali Ansari
Because. Because they're obsessed with it. Because it's part of the sort of what I would call the totalitarian project, you see, that you set down sort of ideological litmus tests that the true believers will believe in and they'll sign up to. And the true believers do believe it, by the. And the true believers do. But not 95% of the country don't believe in it. They're not interested anymore. And this is the problem, you know, that what the Islamic Republic has become is a vast kleptocracy in which a group of people is hanging, hanging, you know, by their fingertips onto power. And the way they want to do it is to maintain this radical ideology, to sort of, to maintain a certain cohesion among their own base. It's like women's veiling. I mean, nobody, most women don't fail anymore in Iran. They're not interested. But of course, it's part of being a Muslim. So, you know, they're quite determined to maintain it and retain it.
- [49:38]
Roland Oliphant
Let's finish on going back to where we began with, with constitutionalism in 1906. So one of the themes of this conversation.
- [49:44]
Ali Ansari
Nostalgia.
- [49:44]
Roland Oliphant
Well, one of the themes of this conversation are these repeated attempts to achieve emancipation, democracy, whatever you want to call it, reigning in the monarchy. And there's 1906 is 1953 and. And as it's told, and then there's 1979 and another uprising against the Shah to restrain him. And then the Islamic Republic itself has seen a series of uprising, most recently in January, that seem to be part of the same. Is it fair to say they are part of the same story?
- [50:12]
Ali Ansari
I think so. I mean, I think so. And I think there's part of this drive, I think, in Iran, and I think it's part of our problem is we focus too much on the state and not enough on the people. And if you look at the people, you see there's a, A recurrence of people seeking a sort of a constitutional settlement, the rule of law, Liberty. Liberty. As I started this podcast, you know, this is. The idea of liberty is such a central focus of intellectual and political life in Iran. And the tragedy is that they just simply have not reached that point yet. I, I think for those of us who take a historical look at it, there is a. There is a view that we will get there. I mean, we will eventually get there. And I think one has to be cautiously optimistic that it will be achieved. But it has been an extremely difficult path, and one can only hope that the west will make up for some of its past errors and not abandon the Iranian people when their next, you know, when their next sort of attempt at this occurs, which I'm sure will come, by the way. I mean, I personally, I don't see how the Islamic Republic comes out of this latest farago with any, Anything but reform at the heart of what it's going to have to do. I mean, if it wants to rebuild the country economically, it's going to have to change the way it does things. I mean, it cannot continue as it
- [51:20]
Roland Oliphant
has been that was Alian Sari of St. Andrews University speaking to me about Iranian history. As I suppose you could probably tell, I was reluctant to leave the conversation there, but that was about as much time as we had time for. If you enjoyed that conversation, do let us know. We've had a huge response to episodes looking at Iranian history previously. There is of course a very rich seam to mine, and once again, thank you for listening. We'll be back with normal service on Iran the latest on Tuesday, May 5th. Until then, that was Iran the Latest. Goodbye Iran the Latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Roland Oliphant and Venetia Rainey. If you appreciate if you appreciated this podcast, please consider following around the latest in your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. For more from our foreign correspondents on the ground, sign up to our new daily newsletter, Cables via our website or listen to our sister podcast Ukraine the Latest. We are still on the same email address battlelinestelegraph.co.uk or you can contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show. Notes the producer is Max Bauer. The executive producers are Venetia Rainey and Louisa Wells.
- [52:56]
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- [53:35]
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