Part Two: The First Shah of Iran

Summary

Behind the Bastards – Part Two: The First Shah of Iran (March 26, 2026)

Podcast Overview

This episode, hosted by Robert Evans with guest physician and podcaster Kaveh Hoda, delves into the tumultuous rise of Reza Khan (later Reza Shah Pahlavi), the creation of modern Iran, and the role of brutal colonial powers and local strongmen in shaping Iran’s 20th-century fate. The discussion blends historical analysis with signature gallows humor, unpacking the complicated legacies of oil, empire, and autocracy.

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Main Themes & Purpose

• Colonial interference and resource extraction: The episode explores how British and Russian imperialism, backed by oil hunger, set the stage for coups and the rise of strongmen in Persia.
• The ascent of Reza Khan: Chronicling Khan’s journey from illiterate Cossack stable boy to war minister and ultimately Shah, the show investigates both his cunning and brutality.
• Modernization at gunpoint: The hosts unpack how “reform” under Reza Shah—and the British—often meant violence, forced assimilation, and enduring trauma for Iran’s diverse peoples.
• Long shadows: They trace how Reza Shah’s actions laid groundwork for subsequent dictators, revolutions, and the complicated legacy of the Pahlavi dynasty.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Colonial Context: Russia, Britain, and the Persian Chessboard

• After the Russian Revolution, Persia (modern Iran) becomes a battleground where Britain seeks to protect oil interests and block Bolshevik advances ([05:22]).
• Britain and White Russian forces “see Persia as a great springboard” to support the anti-Bolshevik White Army in Russia ([05:22]).
• The Persian central government under the Quajar Shahs is impotent, failing to control the military or territory; local tribal leaders wield real power ([06:30]–[12:41]).
• Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC, later BP) sidesteps the Persian government, striking direct deals with tribal khans, building its own segregated company towns, and importing Indian laborers without any oversight ([12:11]–[13:15]).

“They never looked at Persians as real people... This colonial mindset never goes away.”
– Kaveh Hoda ([13:06])

2. Humiliation, Resistance, and British Manipulation

• Stories of direct affront: British oil executives refuse to even hire Persians for skilled positions and introduce segregated fountains “not for Iranians” ([14:29]).
• “Everything is for the oil. None of this is for the benefit of regular Persians.”

– Robert Evans ([17:07])

• The British government, desperate to secure oil and reduce the cost of occupation, issues loans to Persia that are paid back through direct taxation, fueling intense local resentment ([18:19]).
• Secret treaties between Russia and Britain, revealed by the Bolsheviks, further inflame Persian suspicions that they are pawns sold “for a song” ([18:50]).

3. The Rise of Machine Gun Reza

• During the political chaos, Reza Khan, a Cossack officer, comes to the attention of British Field Marshal Ironside, who greenlights his bid for a coup as long as the puppet Shah stays on the throne ([30:29]).
• Reza Khan expertly “charms every British guy he meets,” leveraging social intelligence to collect power despite his lack of formal education ([25:13], [26:07]).
• The hosts compare his crude but effective style to modern power brokers like Donald Trump: “He’s incredibly intelligent socially... And that’s all that matters in Persian politics at this point in time.”

– Robert Evans ([25:13]–[26:07])

• Reza Khan leads a 600-strong column to seize Tehran, encountering little resistance—depicted both as bold opportunism and as a British-backed maneuver ([31:29]).

4. Nation-Building, Branding, and Brutality

• After a series of consolidations and political maneuvering, Reza becomes war minister, then prime minister, before finally engineering his own coronation as Shah ([39:26]).
• Reza Shah chooses the surname “Pahlavi,” invoking ancient Persian glory in a “very clever public relations stunt” ([42:10], [43:23]).
• The British plan the Shah’s coronation, modeling it on the coronation of King George V; scenes are described of “heaps of uncut emeralds... uniforms sewn with diamonds... two crowns like great heretic tiaras” while the country still reeled from a devastating famine ([47:43]).

“We plunged our hands up to the wrist in the heaps of uncut emeralds and let the pearls run through our fingers. We forgot the Persia of today.”
– Robert quoting Vita Sackville-West ([49:54])

5. Reza Shah’s Rule: Modernization, Ethnic Cleansing, and State Violence

• During his reign, Reza Shah embarks on forced “modernization”: bans on traditional dress, severe press restrictions, construction of state institutions, and cult of personality ([57:12]).
• Women are banned from wearing traditional clothing, “beaten and even taken into custody” if they fail to adopt Western dress ([57:12]–[58:34]).
• Reza’s drive for unitary power leads to ethnic cleansing of minority groups such as the Lur people (graphic accounts of mass executions and atrocities, [54:10]).
• Allies and political rivals are systematically eliminated—often “murdered humiliatingly at his behest” ([61:20]).

6. Foreign Policy and Downfall

• Reza Shah’s resentment at British control over Iranian oil grows, but his efforts to play the Germans against the British and Soviets backfire ([66:14]).
• By World War II, Reza Shah is so enamored of Germany that nearly half of Iran’s trade is with the Nazi Reich; he is forced to abdicate when Allies invade to secure supply lines ([67:44]–[69:39]).
• The Shah abdicates in bitter defeat, dying in South African exile, while his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is enthroned—a harbinger of the next era of turmoil ([69:39]–[71:20]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Colonial Attitude:
  “They never looked at Persians as real people... That colonial mindset never goes away.”
  – Kaveh Hoda ([13:06])
• On Reza’s Social Intelligence:
  “He is very good at making every British guy he meets love him. And that’s all that matters in Persian politics at this point in time.”
  – Robert Evans ([26:07])
• On Persians and Punctuality:
  “He’s accused, often angrily, of bringing the concept of punctuality to Persia—that like Iranians didn’t give a shit what time it was before Reza.”
  – Robert Evans ([51:14])
• On Modernization by Force:
  “If they did not do so [give up traditional dress], they were beaten and even taken into custody... Many women stopped going to public places to avoid harassment and became involuntary prisoners within their own homes.”
  – Robert reading Alavi and Singh ([57:12])
• Ethnic Cleansing Atrocity:
  “The colonel started betting on how far these headless men could run. Every man, woman and child had been killed. Not a living soul was left.”
  – Quoting William Douglas ([54:10])
• On the Shah’s Branding:
  “Pahlavi was great branding… Changing the name… Good at branding, especially the father.”
  – Kaveh Hoda ([43:23])
• On Oil Company Transformation:
  “APOC … will eventually be renamed … British Petroleum. That’s right, baby. These motherfuckers. They were always evil.”
  – Robert Evans ([65:19]–[65:45])

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Noteworthy Timestamps

• [05:22]: Background on post-WWI Persia: British and Russian intervention, Cossacks’ shifting role.
• [12:11]: Segregation and exploitation by Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
• [16:58]: Introduction and rise of Reza Khan, “Machine Gun Reza.”
• [26:07]: Robert’s analogy of social intelligence, power, and authoritarianism.
• [31:29]: British non-intervention as Reza stages his coup.
• [39:26]: Reza accumulates near-total power, reluctant monarchy.
• [47:43]: British-planned coronation, opulence amid famine.
• [54:10]: Atrocities and ethnic cleansing against the Lur people.
• [57:12]: Forced modernization, bans on traditional dress.
• [65:19]: The rebranding of APOC to BP and continuation of resource exploitation.
• [67:44]–[69:39]: Reza Shah’s miscalculation with Germany, abdication, and death in exile.

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Tone & Style

The episode features irreverent yet incisive commentary—mixing dark humor with clear moral outrage. Key moments of levity come from the hosts’ banter about British names (“Tiny Ironside?”), Persian cultural quirks (“My people’s eyebrow game has been strong forever”—[34:34]), and personal asides about diaspora experiences.

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Conclusion & Takeaways

Reza Shah’s regime, born of colonial intrigue and domestic brutality, left an indelible scar on Iran: forced “modernization,” the seeds of revolution, and the entrenchment of autocracy. The British, for their part, come out not only as kingmakers but as relentless exploiters whose legacy still lingers (BP!). As the episode closes, the hosts tease future explorations of the Pahlavi dynasty’s next, infamous act.

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For More

• Guest: Dr. Kaveh Hoda’s podcast, “House of Pod,” explores the intersection of medicine and culture with humor ([71:33]).
• Further episodes: The show will continue charting the lineage, with future installments about Mohammad Reza Shah and Mossadegh.

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Behind the Bastards: Unmasking tyrants, one revolting bastard at a time.

Transcript

[A]

Media. Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst history in all of people, or people in all of history, whichever is accurate. I don't know. I randomly put words together based on a predictive text algorithm, much like an LLM, except for I use this collection of bones which. With runes inscribed on them. And that's how the podcast comes to you every week. Thousands of bones with runes inscribed on them that I pick at random. Great. Cabba, how would you like me to read some random bones that might be about the Shah? Or not?

[B]

Let's do it. Let's roll the bones.

[A]

But first, do you want to also welcome back to the show? Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say Kaveh's here. Sorry, yes.

[B]

Thank you again for having me. My name is Kaveh Hoda. I am a physician, I'm a gastroenterologist and I'm also the host of a podcast called the House of Pod. It is a humor adjacent little medical podcast. We look at wellness grifters, we look at what the Maha community and the administration is doing to our current healthcare and have a little fun when we can with it. So you should check it out anywhere. You get your podcast after this. Listen to this. This is more important than afterwards. Listen to me. You'll probably like it or your money back.

[A]

Have you done an episode about our mutual enemy yet?

[B]

Which one? I feel like we have a number. RFK Jr. I've done a number on our show.

[A]

No, no, no, no. Our mutual enemy that we talk about on the side often.

[B]

We did talk about. Can I say his name? Is that okay?

[A]

Of course.

[B]

I don't like to give him more airtime than he needs, but Vinay Prasad, I like him. I like him. He doesn't like me. I have no problem with him. But he's been involved in a lot of aspects of medical. Our medical care recently in the country that I've disagreed with and talk about him recently in one of our more recent episodes. So yes, you can listen to the podcast and hear the episode is influence versus evidence. And we talk about kind of what's happening out there right now in our current healthcare administration.

[A]

Excellent. Not a fan of his. It's mostly good, right?

[B]

Oh, I mean, 99% great.

[A]

Everything's fine.

[B]

Everything is great. Everything is really. If you're really into communicable diseases, this is a good time.

[A]

Excellent. I love communicable diseases and my favorite communicable disease is knowledge.

[B]

I was gonna say it. I swear to God I was gonna say it.

[A]

Let's Spread some together. Yeah

[C]

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[A]

So in the four years after the October Revolution in Russia, Persia had been the site of bloody and constant conflict between Britain and Russia. Again, there's this brief period in World War I where they're kind of fighting together against the Ottomans in Persia as opposed to fucking with each other. And then we've got our revolution and the Bolsheviks are fighting the whites and Britain goes right back to fighting Russia. Right now, I guess it's a little different in that they also have allies who are Russians in this case too. So they're not fighting all of the Russians, just most of the Russians. And basically the kind of broad strokes of this conflict are the Brits see Persia because they've already got a good base in the area and they get resources there, they have interests there, they have a lot of forces that they can get there. It's a great springboard. It also borders Russia, so it's a great springboard for them to use as a base from which to support the White army and the Russian Civil War, right? The Soviets, meanwhile, don't want Britain doing that because it's bad for them, right? So the Soviet Union annexes chunks of northern Persia and they create the Persian socialist Soviet Republic, right? There's like a. I mean, it's more complicated than that, right? There's. And obviously there's local and within, like Persians who are communists who are part of this and, like, want to. There's partisans and stuff. It's much more complicated than all that. But broadly speaking, you've got the Brits and the area they control in Persia that they want to use as a base to support the White army and Russia. And then you've got this chunk of northern Persia that is aligned with the ussr that is itself at least nominally Bolshevik that the Bolsheviks are using as a base, right? And there's fighting betwixt the two. Now, the quasars are still like that shot that that line of Shahs is still in control technically at the point at which all this is going on. But they fail to exert. They don't have any power, right? Like, the Shahs are useless in this conflict. They don't really have any ability to influence what the Russians are doing because the Bolsheviks had just killed their Tsar. So they're sure as hell not gonna listen to some Shah in Persia that they never respected to begin with. Meanwhile, the Shah, like, personally, the guy who is Shah now is that dude who was like 12 when he came to power and has been Ruled like a regent was running things. And there's like a triumvirate of guys who aren't the Shah, who are mostly running things in the Persian central government. And so during this period after World War I, the central government's like bleeding provinces, and big chunks of the army just kind of disappear into comical puffs of smoke because they didn't really want to be in the army. And when push came to shove, they're like, nah, I'm coming back home. No, no, thank you. So the only meaningful force opposing the Soviets are the Cossacks and the Cossack Brigade and their British backers. Again, it's a little more complicated than that, but that's the broad strokes now.

[B]

But the Cossacks, at this point, the Cossacks are not reporting back.

[A]

Yes and no.

[B]

So that's the part I don't understand.

[A]

Well, it's weird again, Russia's. Not everyone in Russia is a Bolshevik. There's a civil war, right? So you've got a bunch of Russians or White Russians who support, at least not the Soviet Union happening, right? Generally, they support some sort of return to the monarchy or whatever. Right? And a lot of Cossacks support the White Russians because the Cossacks had been the czar's shock troops. A shitload of them wind up in the White forces, right? And during this period of time, the Persian Cossack Brigade is still led by a Russian officer. Like, it's still a Russian colonel who's in charge of the brigade, but that Russian's a White, right? So he's siding with the British in their efforts to help the whites against the Bolsheviks. These are very messy wars. Does that make sense?

[B]

You know, as someone who is currently living through the Iranian diaspora, dealing with the Iran war, I think I can understand a little bit of the complexity of this. And this is all starting to make sense in a historical context.

[A]

To me, it's fucking messy this whole period, because it's not just Britain that's intervening in the Russian Civil war. Like, the United States has forces too. Like, there's a whole Allied intervention force. This is number one. Barely talked about anymore, but really complicated. Everything that's going on in this period of time, I'm really smoothing the edges down just because we can't get into too much detail about all of the shit that's going on. But. Right. That's why the Cossacks are on the side of the Brits here, you know? So this is not 1919, 1920, 1921. This is not when, like, Domino theory doesn't really exist in the form it's going to exist. But conservative reactionaries have already started sussing out the basic tenets. Right? They're already telling people, well, look, if Persia falls to communism, where will it stop? Right? Now, obviously Great Britain's real interest here is that if Persia falls to communism, they're not gonna get cheap oil anymore for the navy. And that's a real problem. Right?

[B]

Love that oil.

[A]

Their other problem is they have to keep troops in Persia during this whole period of time. Like their own guys. The Cossacks alone can't hold shit. If they want to know that that oil is safe, they have to have their own dudes there. And that costs a lot of money. So in 1921, Great Britain's two main interests in Persia are stop it from falling to the communists. And if we didn't have to keep our soldiers here to do that, it would sure be great. Right? Those are their primary concerns. Now I want to take you back in time. I know, I just was talking about the Russian Civil War era to talk a little bit about how things within the oil company working in Persia evolved over the early 1900s up to 1921. Right. Because we didn't really talk about that so much in the last episode. And it does matter. So in 1909, that entrepreneur Darcy and the company that he partnered with had transferred their rights, basically had gotten in bed with another company because they needed more money to do the infrastructure necessary to get oil out of Persia. And this new company is called Anglo Persian Oil, or apoc. Apoc. Remember these names. It's going to be real interesting what happens to Anglo Persian oil in the modern era. Now, the way in which epoch functioned from 1909 to 1921 does a good job of showing how dysfunctional the central government of Persia was by this point. How bad the Quasar monarchy is at actually like governing the country. Because AIPAC doesn't deal with Tehran at all. They don't talk to the Shah. They ignore the capital completely because their oil wells and shit aren't near the capital. And their oil wells are in the territory of a bunch of like. There's a mix of like sheikhs and Bakhtari Khans, which are like different, like basically tribal level leaders who actually control the territory where they're drilling for oil and transporting oil. And so the oil company is like, why would we talk to Tehran? They don't have any power here. They can barely keep the capital. I'm gonna make deals with these local Guys, they have the guns and the labor force, right? The capital's not gonna do anything but take bribes from me.

[B]

Fuck em.

[A]

So that shows you how weak the government is at this point in time. As a matter of fact, when the deal between AIPOC and these different tribal groups was concluded in 1910, the company illegally imported 1000 laborers from India without talking to anyone in the Persian government. They take a thousand Indians and make them work in Persia. And they don't ask anybody in the fucking government. Like they don't talk to the first. There's no visas for these motherfuckers.

[B]

They just don't look. They never do. They never look at Persians as real people.

[A]

No, not at all.

[B]

This colonial mindset never goes away. I mean, I mean maybe now it's gone away, but like it was so intrinsic to who they. Right. Intrinsic to who they were as people that they just couldn't see the people living there as being worthy or warranting even that kind of discussion.

[A]

Yeah, it's fucking nuts. And it's really like. So as an idea for how messed up their attitude towards Persians is, period, part of the agreement with these local sheikhs and khans is we'll hire a thousand locals to work in the oil plants, right? But they illegally start bringing in a bunch of Indian workers to do most of the work. Like they aren't going to hire any more than the minimum they have agreed of local people. Right? I want to quote again from that piece Shireen Breisak wrote for the World Policy Journal. And what became a chronic grievance, AIPAC gave Britons and Indians the best jobs, relegating Persians to menial roles. Foreigners occupied the best houses, claimed membership in the exclusive Persian club and sent their children to schools in segregated cantonments. There were even fountains marked not for Iranians, feeding the cycle of enduring resentment that was to characterize subsequent relations.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Basically they're not giving like, they'll let you like transport shit, but they don't give you anything. They're not getting like the most dangerous jobs, but they're not getting good jobs either. They're not getting anything that pays well. And in the areas where the company is activated, there's segregation against the indigenous people who live there.

[B]

Like, and they're, they're so smart. They're never going to let the Iranians that are there get to higher positions where they can actually learn the oil industry, where they can actually learn how to do this. Because heaven forbid, if they were, yeah, they would run it themselves. So purposely keeping them in the dark.

[A]

And then imagine there's segregation in your country because a guy came in last week and is like, nah, you don't get to use the same, like, water fountains because we're getting oil out of here now. Like, if it's just. If it's just a thing that happened a week ago, like, how that would, like, piss you off. Like, what, you guys just got here.

[B]

Like, we are so easily offended. So, people, I have to tell you,

[A]

this is like, anyone would be in this. This is infuriating.

[B]

I've seen Iranians get pretty offended for much less than having a segregated water fountain. So this is nuts, okay?

[A]

Because some fucker just comes in a week ago and is like, oh, no, this isn't your place anymore. There's oil here. This is British property. So as I noted in the first episode, in 1914, the British Parliament had voted for a proposal pushed by Churchill to fuel the Royal Navy with Persian oil. As part of this deal, the British government purchased 51% of Anglo Persian oil, ensuring it would remain an all British company. Which is again, them saying, we're not gonna let the locals run anything. We won't even let them know how to run anything. This is always going to be our shit. So by 1921, northern Persia is a Soviet satellite and guerrilla fighters are advancing on Tehran, which basically can't defend itself without foreign help. There are the Cossacks, which are primarily made up of Persian soldiers. And they are functional, but the government can't even pay them, right? Like, the Cossacks are being paid entirely by Great Britain by this point in time. And Great Britain has to send her own soldiers to occupy large tracts of Persian territory in 1918 just to stop a total Bolshevik vict in the area. Now, one of these Cossacks getting paid by The British in 1921 is our friend Reza Khan, who at that point has been promoted to Colonel. Right? This is machine gun Reza.

[B]

Machine Guzza Khan from stable boy to machine gun Reza.

[A]

That's right. Still can't read, but he can shoot people.

[B]

He can shoot that gun good.

[A]

Khan and his men and about 5,500 British colonial troops are holding the line against the. The communists, right? While British Foreign Secretary Curzon drafts what becomes known as the Anglo Persian Treaty. This authorizes the stationing of British veterans to build a functional army for the central government. Basically, Britain's going to send experts so that the central government can build an army that actually works, right? That's not just the Cossacks. We want there to be a functional army here so we don't have to keep ours here. So we're going to send experts in and we're also going to put a bunch of investment money into Persia to build railroads and reorganize the economy. All of this is to keep the oil flowing. None of this is for the benefit of regular Persians. The army and the railroads and the economy are all so that this is a stable place for the Royal Navy to get its fuel from. Right now this plan is to be paid for by a 2 million pound loan issued by Great Britain who would collect customs duties to pay the loan back directly from Persians. In effect, British tax collectors are now directly taxing Persian citizens to pay for the things that they're doing in order to make sure Great Britain has continued access to basically cheap oil. Right.

[B]

Which is wildly insulting now.

[A]

It's really insulting.

[B]

I'm so angry. The more I learn about this history,

[A]

it's really,

[B]

it's a good thing. I love your colleague James Stout so much because sometimes I learn about the things the British do and I get so mad, but he's so lovable. Then I remember. Okay, it's okay, it's okay.

[A]

We are Americans. It's not like we can get, we don't have that much of a leg to stand on these days.

[B]

True. I'm so confused. I'm torn between two groups. Terrible things.

[A]

That's right. That's right. It's the Team Jacob or Team Edward of colonialism. So yeah, Great Britain's taxing Persia directly. And if it's not, if the British aren't directly running the government, most Persians sure as hell think they are. At this point in time, right at the end of World War I, the Bolsheviks had published a bunch of documents that they'd seized from the Tsar's palace revealing secret wartime pacts. And one of these secret wartime pacts was Britain offering Russia the Dardanelles in exchange for giving Britain Persia. Right. So this comes out and people in Tehran, educated Persians are obviously like, oh, so like they, they just bought us basically they bribed the Czar for us and they think they own our entire ass country now. And this helps spawn massive resistance to this treaty that Secretary Curzon has put together. Initially, Curzon is not all that concerned. He states the case will be settled by cash. And then he proceeds to organize 131,000 pound bribe to the three man triumvirate governing Persia on behalf of the Shah. These three guys agree to the bribe and Curzon, being a genius, is said to have Declared the treaty a great triumph. And I have done it all alone.

[B]

Like great branding.

[A]

He's like, so we're gonna tax these people to build an army to protect our oil, basically, and to keep them oppressed. And the people are like, we don't like that. And he's like, but I bribed three men solving the problem forever, all on my own. Perfect. Unfortunately for Curzon, that damned free press I mentioned earlier got to work and they reported on the fact that Persia's growing triumvirate had sold the country for a song. Next. Per Breisak's article, the treaty was brocked by the Majlis and three successive Persian prime ministers fell. So basically three successive governments fail to gain whatever they need to do in the parliament to be able to govern as a result of resistance to this treaty, which gets it blocked in Tehran. Now this causes chaos because the British are. This is fucked up of them. But also British money and guns is the only thing propping this government up at the time. Right? So when the treaty gets blocked, things aren't just like good, you know, this is a bad treaty.

[B]

They could sell some of the stuff from that Peacock throne.

[A]

They could sell the Peacock throne. It looks like it's worth some money. Yeah. Yeah. So chaos envelops the capital city. And back home in London, the Lords of the Admiralty have real reason to fear that they might lose their hookup to cheap gas. Now, Curzon had basically been like, the fuck around and pretend we care about international law guy. Like, he's bribing these dudes, but he's trying to frame it as like a legal treaty and an agreement between states. And since Operation Bribe 3 Guys failed, all eyes turned to one of the top ranking generals in the Royal Army, Field Marshal William Edmund Ironside, who was referred to as the Lord Ironside, a name George Lucas would laugh at you for giving to a character in a fictional story like the Lord Ironside. Really?

[B]

Okay, we get it.

[A]

It's a bit much. He was also nicknamed Tiny William. Tiny Ironside.

[B]

That makes it a lot better.

[A]

That's really funny.

[B]

Tiny Ironside. That's pretty amazing.

[A]

It's kind of sucked too. Being born with that cool a name and knowing you're going to be a military leader, but also little guy. Like, because people are gonna call you Tiny, like Tiny Ironside is just less cool than the Lord Ironside.

[B]

With that name, your options are limited. You're like, if you're an Ironside, you

[A]

can only be in the military. You can't blame him for Joining the army.

[B]

Or you could be an actor from Starship Troopers. And that's it. Those are your two options?

[A]

That's it. That's right. And unfortunately, Starship Troopers had not quite been invented yet. We had barely harnessed the technology to create Paul Verhoeven at that point. You know, he was still gestating, I believe. So the best way I can describe the Lord Ironside, physically, if you're not looking at, you know, the video version of this, because most people listen to it because it's a podcast, the best way I can describe him is that he had the face of a man who didn't understand why other nations beside England should exist. Like that. Like, look at this guy's face. Like, that is a face of confusion that there are other countries in the world.

[B]

What are they doing? Look at them with their browns and the other countries. Smells coming off their food. Oh, what is this seasoning I'm tasting in the food?

[A]

Oh, God. It's not homoor's there. My British is going everywhere there. I think you're more consistent than me. He's got Lord Mountbatten energy. Yeah, yeah, he does. He has strong. The IRA should have blown up a boat. This guy was on energy. That's what I'll say about this fucker. Although he has bad luck with planes, not boats. So Ironside had been made commander of the Allied intervention force in Northern Russia during the Russian Civil War. And he had been reassigned to Persia in 1921. And basically, as soon as he arrives in country, he seized Colonel Caan, who or Reza at the time, right. And he spots this guy and he's like, this dude looks like a good person to charm and put in position as, like a military strongman. That might be what happened. Or Reza might have looked at this guy and immediately been like, all right, this is the British dude I need to charm. Right. I don't actually know which is truer. There are two different versions, one of which is that Ironside manipulates Reza because he needs a guy. The other is that Reza manipulates Ironside because it gets him what it wants. I think probably both are true. Both guys see each other as useful. Right.

[B]

That said, the typical narrative about Reza Khan is that he was not extraordinarily bright, not well read, as you mentioned, but he did have a sense for power.

[A]

He's really good. Yes.

[B]

Yeah. And he could root out sort of a little bit of, oh, this dude seems to be like a good, you know, ship to hook my. You know, whatever. I don't Know the saying, hook my ship to or whatever. What's the worst sail to?

[D]

I don't know.

[A]

A good guy to hitch his boat to or whatever. That's right. Tie his horse to. I don't know. But this, I think this is good. That is a good point about, like, I try to make this point often about what intelligence is, because there's a bunch of climate scientists out there, and any one of them is smarter than Donald Trump in a million ways, but Donald Trump is smarter than all of them at how you acquire power in a democratic society and use it for your own benefit. Now, part of why he's smarter at that is that he has absolutely no moral scruples whatsoever, but he's completely negated many people's life's work who are much smarter than him because he has that kind of intelligence. And Reza Khan is also that kind of guy. He can't read, he's not super bright in that way, but he's incredibly intelligent socially. And he is very good at making every British guy he meets love him. And that's all that matters in Persian politics at this point in time. And that's all I hitch my wagon to.

[B]

Hitch my wagon to my wagon, too.

[A]

I can't believe none of us could fucking figure that out.

[B]

Boy, oh, boy, oh boy, oh boy. Sorry.

[A]

And there is evidence that the Lord Ironside, Tiny, is charmed by Reza. He describes him, upon meeting him as, quote, a man and the straightest I have met yet. The real life and soul of the show. He doesn't mean that in, like, a sexual sense, but it is funny to be like, that's the straightest man I've met yet. Almost as like. And I've been fucking my way through this country, too, so I can tell. A straight one.

[B]

It's funny, too, because, like, you know, when Reza Khan is raising his son Muhammad Reza, which goes on to be the shah that people think of as a shah in modern times.

[A]

People say the shah. They're talking about this guy's son. Yes.

[B]

When he's raising him, there's, like, no emotional connection there of any kind.

[A]

Absolutely not.

[B]

He treats him as a subordinate because he was one of these old school dudes who was under the belief that showing your son effectively would make them gay. That was like. That was his whole bag.

[A]

Absolutely. Well, and again, to be fair, his mom abandons him after her husband dies when he's eight months old to be like, I'm gonna try again with a new family. Sorry, kid.

[B]

Yeah, good luck. His uncle probably wasn't great either. Like I'm sure his uncle was not like a super enlightened guy.

[A]

You know this kid's first healthy relationship is with a machine gun. Like it's not shocking he becomes the man he is. You know who else had a healthy relationship with automatic weaponry?

[B]

Hellofresh I hear they yet they love them.

[A]

Oh my God love them.

[B]

Can't get enough of them.

[A]

They own a lot of machine guns. A shocking number. Why we can't tell you. Buy their products.

[C]

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[B]

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[A]

And we're back. So we just let that happen, huh? Okay, cool. So, yeah, good stuff. So Rezicon, as we've noted, was, you know, not a bright guy in a lot of ways, but he's very well liked by British people, particularly by the Lord Ironside, who promotes Reza to Brigadier General and makes him commander of the cossack brigade. In 1921, he sits down with the newly minted general and the British officer acting as paymaster for the local Persian forces. And he tells both men, Britain won't stop him if he seizes power. Basically, he sits down with these guys and he's like, look, if you want to take control of the country, we won't do anything as long as you don't depose the current shah, right? That guy's technically our friend. So keep Ahmed Shah is the current shah's name. Keep Ahmed Shah the shah. But you can do anything else you want, right? Basically. And Rez is like, hey bro, sounds cool to me. You know, I'll take that deal any day of the week. And he takes that deal, right?

[B]

Is that the 12 year old? Is it the Ahmed Shah? Is the 12 year old Shah? Are we onto a different shah now?

[A]

I mean, he starts as 12, he's

[B]

not quote, I recognize that people don't stay the age that when you meet

[A]

them, you know, but yes, he is that kid. That's how he gains power initially, right? Yeah. So Ironside is like, hey man, if you want to be in charge, just don't depose the shah. We'll back your play. And then he like goes, claps his hands together, wipes him off, and leaves the fucking country for Egypt. He's just gone, right? He sets up the dominoes and he fucking bounces. So not long after he leaves on February 20, Reza marches a column of 600 men, 600 Cossacks, towards the undefended capital. All other military forces and the local police were ordered to stay inside and keep their goddamn mouth shut. And the coup that follows isn't totally peaceful, but it's like a fairly minimal amount of bloodshed for a coup d'. Etat. Right? But it is a coup d'. Etat. Now, depending on which historians you like best, Reza Khan is either a bold opportunist who executes his own coup with a little help from his British. Beside their promise not to intervene, they don't do much other than not stop him. And the other way to look at this is that Reza is a total pawn of the Brits. A chess piece maneuvered into position by the Lord Ironside to block the reds and keep the Royal Navy fueled. I'd never want to argue for a reduced British culpability in all of this, but if Ironside was the mastermind here, he was a very hands off one. Because as soon as he leaves Iran for Egypt, he's grievously wounded in a plane crash and he's like recuperating in the hospital while the Khan overthrows the government and takes power. Right. Princeton historian Richard Ullman writes, it is idle to speculate upon whether or not he would eventually have come to power had Ironside not singled him out. But it is clear that Ironside and his British colleagues were largely instrumental in placing Reza Khan in a position to bring about the coup d'. Etat. And I think that's accurate. Rezakhan doesn't need much help from them other than backing out. Right. He's got the guys and the guns to do this. And he has a skill for building an army. He's going to very effectively get more guys and more guns because he doesn't have enough at the start of this to control much more than the capital. Right. Once he takes power in the capital, he still has a lot of shit to do. And there's a years long road before he becomes the Shah. He's not the Shah after this coup, he's technically the war minister for Persia, which is a new position that makes him the commander in chief of the military, but also lets him basically pick his own prime minister. And here's how he looks at the time, by the way. This is like how he looks when he's minister of war for the country. Great mustache. It must be said. Great hat. Everyone was wearing hats like that back then. I don't know why, but they do look. That one does look comfortable. I love it. I love a hat.

[B]

Pretty baller. Cossack hat. Look at that.

[A]

Yeah, those like shockos or whatever don't normally look that cozy like his. Looks like it's knitted together at a wool.

[B]

He does this. He's got this like, sneer sort of thing. Down pretty good. Like smirk.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Pretty good.

[A]

Sneer of cold command. That Ramses look. Yeah, yeah, he's got it knocked down. I love that hat.

[C]

Stunning.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

My people's eyebrow game has been strong forever.

[A]

Yeah, those, those brows. Power facts. So all Reza needs to do now at this point is end the war with the Soviets and defeat his numerous local rivals, most of whom are major tribal leaders who had gotten. These are the guys that the oil company apocalypse is paying, right? Like those local leaders are his now his main rivals for power as well as like the Soviets. So Great Britain sends him a friend right around this time to help him out, you know, now that he's newly the Minister of War. And this friend is a British diplomat, Sir Percy Lorraine. Now, Persia is not seen as a great place to be a British diplomat at this point in time. It's kind of like a career death sentence because things have not gone great for a couple generations of British diplomats here. It's been messy for them. Percy's not the Empire's best. He is smart, but he's also awkward and he's bad at being social or at editing his own dispatches down into something people would want to read. His co workers nickname him Ponderous Percy, which is a huge, huge burn for British people.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

Basically.

[B]

These names, these names are so British.

[A]

And Tiny Ironside.

[B]

These get more British as the story goes along, right?

[A]

So this shy bookworm dude is supposed to be like the liaison to Reza and he immediately falls for this handsome and heroic seeming fucking machine gunner who's just made himself the Shah in all but name, right? Just like Ironside. Reza sums this guy up and charms him immediately. And Lorraine writes back to his boss, Curzon. He gets straight to what he has to say and does not waste time in exchanging the delicately phrased but perfectly futile compliments so dear to the Persian heart. An ignorant and uneducated man. Nevertheless, he betrays no awkwardness of manner nor self consciousness. He has considerable natural dignity and neither his speech nor his features reveal any absence of self control. So that's how he's described by Lorraine.

[B]

I have to say he is in some ways so atypical for a Persian man from, like, not wanting to show his kids love to like not using flowery poetry, like especially this age. And every older Persian man fancies himself a poet. The language itself is so flowery. Instead of saying I miss you, you say my heart tightens for you. Instead of saying, we wish you were here, we kept the space for you. It's empty. We have all these flowery little bits of language, and this guy is so the opposite of that. That's what's so interesting about him. He's so atypically Persian.

[A]

And it's both because, I mean, partly he's only half Persian, right? Like, his mom is Caucasian.

[B]

All it takes is one drop. Robert, probably Armenian is one, and we claim, you sure?

[A]

But he's not raised the way, like, I mean, he's certainly not raised in a traditional Persian family at all. He's almost basically an orphan, right? Like, so he doesn't have. And I think part one of the things that results in is that unlike a lot of other people who have stuff like art to learn and culture and family that matter to them, all he thinks about is power. It's the only concern in his mind his entire life is gaining and taking power.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And guys like that tend to be the ones who gain and take power in situations like this because it's all they think about.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Cool. Good stuff.

[B]

Just like podcasting in medical school.

[A]

Yep, just like podcasting. Yeah. So Lorraine uses what influence he has to convince his superiors to advance Reza enough money to fund an army of 18,000 men. He also argues that Reza should be the one that the British back over several local sheikhs and khans who'd previously worked with Anglo Persian Oil. General Ironside also helped his friend, Machine Gun Reza, filing a report with the British War Office that promised Reza would solve many difficulties and enable us to depart in peace and honor. Basically, if we let this guy be in charge, he'll build an army that works and we won't have to. We can leave and we won't have to be ashamed. We won't, like, leave like we did Afghanistan, just, like, getting beat out, Right. And we can keep getting our oil. Right. That's the argument Ironside's making. So it takes about two years of fighting in the heartland of Persia for Reza to take a hold of this chaotic situation, to beat back his rivals, and to restore a form of order or take, I should say, power right, over the rest of the country outside of the capital. Now, the pretense of a constitutional regime still exists, but Reza's prime minister is like, well, now that you're the commander in chief, that's a civilian job. You have to retire from your military job and leading the Cossack brigade, right? And Reza's like, no, I'm gonna keep my private army. Obviously, you never give up your private army. You never give up your uniform if you want to be dictator, right? That's a bad idea right there.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. Keep that sucker on. More medals on it. More and more medals.

[A]

Yeah. And once this happens, basically everyone in the government realizes like, well, this guy's the Shah in all but name, you know. So after he returns in like 1923 to the capital, at the head of an army that had at least been semi victorious, Khan was appointed prime minister himself. Now he's still bound by a pinky swear not to overthrow Ahmed Shah, but somehow Ahmed got the idea that life in Persia might not be safe for him with Reza in charge.

[B]

This four looming monster.

[A]

Machine gun lover.

[B]

Yes, right. Yeah, standing around.

[A]

So he flees to Europe where he spends the remainder of his life in exile. Right now Reza has, at this point, they've basically made a kind of peace. You know, things have been settled enough with the Soviets that they're not worried about that taking about like communists taking over the rest of Persia. And Reza sits down with the parliament and says, basically, hey, have you guys noticed I have all the guns? And parliament says, you sure do, Reza. How'd you like to be dictator for life? And he says, that sounds dope. And In October of 19, I'm smoothing some things over, but in October of 1923, he was appointed His Serene Highness and King of Kings. Although again, he's not the Shah yet. In fact, Reza debates briefly after this point what kind of government should he impose upon his newly won land. Per the World Policy Journal, Reza Khan had toyed with proclaiming a republic following the example of Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish soldier reformer. He sought to emulate. The king of kings claimed to be a reluctant monarch, only agreeing to ascend the throne at the urging of the ulema or mullahs, who thought that conservative Persia would fare better with a shah than with a democracy. At the time, royal titles were very much in the desert air, hence King Faisal of Iraq. So he chose the peacock throne. Right. So he picks being a king as opposed to being like a president who would have been the same as a shah. He wouldn't have actually given up power. But he decides, well, I'll just make myself basically king. Right. So he's. Yeah.

[B]

It is interesting that he goes and he tries to connect with the Turkish leader and is seeing what's happening in Turkey at this time because he loves Ataturk. Yeah, I'm sure he sees like a strong guy who's maybe modernizing Turkey at that point. That's exactly to do that. But it seems like, and you'll know Better than me. But I feel like he's not the politician to do that. He's not the leader to do it with the same sort of clarity that the Turkish Ataturk would do.

[A]

Yeah, no. And he's not nearly as bright. Ataturk was interested in actually building a functional state. Right. The Shah is primarily interested in getting as much out of Iran of, like, he wants to rob it blind. Right? Like, that's why he's. He wants to be the Shah. And it takes him about a year of badgering parliament, but he succeeds in convincing them to formally depose the old Shah and make him the new Shah. And almost as soon as that becomes his job, and we'll talk about the actual process of crowning him, Reza Khan changes his name to Reza Shah Pahlavi. Now, this is an auspicious change during the ancient. As you noted, during the Sassanid Empire, which dominated a lot of the Middle east and North Africa, except for the bulk of the landmass of the Arabian Peninsula. That's, like, a lot of the coast. The language that most Persians spoke was called Pahlavi. Right. Like, that was the term for it. And Reza changed his name. Like, he does this. Like, the reason he does this is what Mehdi Alavi and Atul Singh, writing for the Fair observer, call a very clever public relations stunt. He's basically making a nationalist pitch to, like, Persians saying, like, hey. Or I mean specifically to, like, Iranian Persians saying, like, I am going to be your leader and this is going to be your country as opposed to any of these other groups of people who currently live here. Right. Like, that's the pitch that he's making.

[B]

Halavi was great branding. This whole thing was great branding.

[A]

Halavi, yeah.

[B]

Changing the name. Then he goes on to. I mean, his son actually goes on changing name of the Anglo Iranian or Anglo Persian Oil Company to Anglo Iranian.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, well, we'll talk about that. Yes.

[B]

They're good at branding, especially the father.

[A]

It's solid branding. Yeah. Yeah. It's lasted to this day some of the branding they did. And there's a lot of that stuff. So in their book, the Shah Abbas Milani writes that prior to obtaining total power, Reza began playing at piety in front. Or really. We talked about this a bit. He'd always kind of been like the enforcer, like, religiously that had. He'd been. He'd gained a religious, like, a reputation for that. He likes being in good with the Shiite clergy, and he really ups that during the years when he's like, you know, in charge, but not yet the Shah. Quote, he participated in religious mourning processions. And like the most pious of the mourners, he beat his chest and brushed his forehead in the top of his head with ashes of sorrow and grief. Not long after he was crowned, Reza Shah would change course and begin a carefully planned policy of limiting the power and role of the clergy in Iran. So he's. This is going to be a pattern for him. The people that he needs to get to power, he's going to fuck over fairly quickly. And that does include the clergy. And there will be Titanic. You can tie the fact that the clergy are in charge in Iran today to his decision to fuck the clergy and some of the things he does as a result of that. Right, we're going to talk about all of this. There's really long reaching consequences to this. But nobody calls his bullshit at the time. Right? Everyone's fooled by. Well, not everyone's fooled by Reza's charm, actually. Alavian Singh note in their piece for the Fair observer, not everyone bought into Reza Shah's sham. Four courageous legislators opposed the new Shah. One of them was Mohammad Mosada, who would go on to become Prime Minister years later. The British managed Reza Shah's coronation using the coronation of King George V as their guide. So you do have people who oppose him, including Masada, who will talk about. I mean, Margaret should talk about an episode on her show, actually.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. So it's pronounced Mo. Yeah, I'll give you the two versions of it, the easy one. And by the way, again, apologies, because my Farsi is garbage. Mosadec is probably the easiest way to, with more of a Q sound, but I think it's pronounced more Mosai deg. It's one of these sounds that's hard for Americans. Mosai DEG is with a GH at the end. Yeah, that would be a perfect, perfect person. I mean, he had some flaws. I mean, but he was like, he was one of these heroes that's held up in secular Iran.

[A]

I heard his name for the first time mispronounced in songs that were angry about the CIA overthrowing him, about our government's role in its overthrow. Right.

[B]

Oh, I love to hear that.

[A]

But, yeah, we're not going to talk about him much more in this episode. But I did want to note that, like, not everyone is fine with what Rez is doing. There is resistance. There's very brave resistance. So when he is coronated, as I noted here, the British used like that quote, said the British, I'm gonna go into a little more detail about what that actually means when it says the British used Reza Shah's coronation, like, used the coronation of King George V as their guide. I wanna talk about, like, what that means. So one of the British people who's in Tehran at the time is a writer named Vida Sackville West. She's a prominent author and she's a good friend of Virginia Woolf. And she happens to be in Tehran for the coronation because her husband is a British diplomat. And she kind of inveigles her way into helping to plan the coronation, which Reza sees as both a way to show his continuity with Persia's grand past and to celebrate the coming new modern regime. Now, Sackville west is not a fan of Tehran, which after a decade of nearly a decade of war and starvation, isn't in great shape. Right. She calls the city squalid, with, quote, few pretentious buildings and mean houses on the verge of collapse and little else. Which is not nice given that, like, your government really helped with a famine that killed, like, half the people who lived in the country.

[B]

Like, yeah, contributed to that.

[A]

London wouldn't look nice if 40% of British people died in a famine. I'll bet that much.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, I can take a lot of criticisms, but, like, when they come from the imperialist forces, that's not a fair one. It's not a fair one.

[A]

Nope. So Vita and the wife of the head of the British legation literally sit down with books about the coronation of King George V. Cause Rez is like, Reza's people, I should say, are like, we gotta figure out how to coronate this guy. Cause this is kind of a new thing. Cause he's not being like the rest of the shahs. How should it look? And they leave it to the British people. Cause they're like, well, you know how kings and queens are supposed to take the throne? Right. You figure it out. And so these two women sit down with these books about the coronation of King George V. And they make notes about, oh, there's all these symbols of power that they handed him. There's all these swords and scepters and crowns and precious stones that mean all these things and have these fancy names that are part of this whole process. And they kind of make their own version of it. For the coronation of the Shah. I want to read you a quote about this whole process of planning the coronation from a very British coup by Shireen Breisak. But as I read all this, I need you to remember that again, seven years earlier, about half the country died of famine. When we're talking about how obscene the display of wealth that this represents really is, as Vita Sackville west recalled, the linen bags vomited emeralds and pearls. The green baize vanished. The table became a sea of precious stones. The leather cases opened displaying jeweled scimitars, daggers mounted with rubies, buckles carved from a single emerald, ropes of enormous pearls. Then from the inner room came the file of servants again carrying uniforms sewn with diamonds, a cap with a tall aigrette secured by a diamond larger than the Mountain of Light. Two crowns like great heretic tiaras, barbaric diadems composed of pearl of the finest Orient. We plunged our hands up to the wrist in the heaps of uncut emeralds and let the pearls run through our fingers. We forgot the Persia of today. We were swept back to Akbar and the spoils of India. Soon orders went out to shops throughout Europe. But after the intercession of Lady Lorraine, Vita was given authority to order china, glass, cutlery and stationery from London royal purveyors. She commissioned red liveries for the palace modeled on those worn by the British legation servants. Apropos of the coronation, Vita Sackville west writes to her friend Gertrude Bell. She and Louise Lorraine have been very busy painting the throne room pink.

[B]

It's like I'm envisioning the scene from the cartoon movie Aladdin where he comes in as Prince Ali Abavois, and I wish we could talk about that movie for a long time. I got thoughts. I got thoughts.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Boy, it's so opulent.

[A]

Yes. Yeah. Yes. And all this wealth that could have been used during the famine years to maybe help with the famine wasn't used for that. And also, there's an opportunity here in this capital that's been devastated of like, well, we need a shitload of cutlery and stationery and china and glass. You could have a lot of that made by people in Tehran, by people in the greater Persian area. No, we're sending off to London. We're sending money out of this starving country to bring in stuff from London. It's just better, you know, be a

[B]

job creator, if nothing else.

[A]

Yeah. So this pisses some people off too, right? Oh, really? Now, I wanna. Yeah, I wanna talk about how the Shah gets coronated. And here's how the biography of the Shah describes the moment Reza stepped into the hall where he would be coronated. And he's arrived at. He's known as a very punctual man. In fact, he's accused, often angrily, of bringing like the concept of punctuality to Persia that like Iranians didn't give a shit what time it was before Reza, like is the thing you'll hear people

[B]

say, I'm calling you out la. I'm calling you out la. Persians, sorry.

[A]

But so it's noteworthy he shows up late as like a power move because he can, right, Quote. At last there was a stir. The doors were opened and the six year old Mohammad Reza replied, that's his son appeared in the hall. Behind him walked a procession of the 22 political dignitaries led by the prime Minister. They were carrying the many royal accoutrements necessary for the coronation. Three different crowns, a scepter, three swords belonging to past kings, and even a diamond studded royal bow and arrow. One of the swords belonged to Nadir Shah, a powerful king who united Iran and was reported to have been planning limits on the powers of the clergy. Nadir Shah was also alleged to have attempted a reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis. And he was Reza Shah's great hero. So he's kind of signaling some of what he's going to be trying to do, right, by what stuff they pick for this. So the Shah's son after he's crowned, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was pronounced Crown Prince initially. Now that Reza's the Shah, he promises a reign free of religious influence or internal strife. And he promises, quote, European style educational institutions, Westernized women active outside the home, and modern economic structures with state factories, communication networks, investment banks and department stores. In the words of historian Erevand Abrahemian. Right, he's saying we're gonna be a modern country like all those European countries, right? And you know, there's a lot of good stuff that sounds like in those promises, you know, cut the power of these religious tyrants, let women do more stuff. Sounds great. Roads sounds good. A lot of that stuff will in fact happen. Now first off, it's always debatable how much of this is actually how much of the good stuff that happens has anything to do with the Shah or is it just stuff he takes credit for? But the other thing that's important to know is that like what he does, he does by instituting the most direct one man rule possible. And this means cracking down on and in many cases eliminating all of the local leaders, the tribal leaders who had previously been friends to his British patrons, and doing so in a very brutal way. Ending internal strife means ending any fiction that Persia is a nation of many peoples. And so it was Reza Shah who officially changed the name of his country from Persia to Iran. Per the fair observer, Reza Shah's de tribalization and Persianization led to ethnic cleansing and genocide. William Douglas, a noted American judge, had the following to note about one community that fell fall of Reza Shah Lur after lur. That's the group of people, that's the ethnic group group like the tribe that he's going after. Lure after lure was beheaded again and again. The plate was heated red hot and slapped on the stump of a neck. The colonel started betting on how far these headless men could run. Every man, woman and child had been killed. Not a living soul was left. Wow. This is the kind of shit his soldiers are doing to wipe out any other groups that might be a threat to his power.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Like they're they're beheading people and cauterizing the bodies and then like seeing how far the but their headless corpses will sprint. Fucking dumb like this is a brutal, dehumanizing crackdown on everyone else. That's a big part of what the Shah does.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

Have we had two ad breaks? Sophie no. Okay, great. This is a good time for one. No it isn't. But let's do it anyways.

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[A]

We're back. So the new Shah also put a violent end to what had at that point been some 80 years of increasing press freedom over the course of his reign. He grows increasingly obsessed with the way Mustafa Kemal is doing things over in Turkey. Aping him Reza bans traditional clothing it was now illegal for Iranians to wear anything but Western dress. Now this is something that gets missed a lot when you see conservatives or other people post pictures of Iranian women in headscarves next to old photos of the second Shah in this line of women during the reign of that Shanthehran dressed like Westerners, right? Looking like women in Western cities, Right? And it's always framed as like. And it is fucked up that people don't have like freedom to choose what they wear on their head. But what is not talked about is how those pictures came to be. And so I want to read you a quote from a Lavi and Singh's article about why you have those pictures of women without headscarfs in Tehran. If they did not do so, give up their traditional dress, they were beaten and even taken into custody. This policy caused a massive rupture with tradition. In small towns and villages, people ignored the Shah's edict. In cities people suffered, especially the women. Many women stopped going to public places to avoid harassment and became involuntary prisoners within their own homes. This is not a nice process. He's not freeing people. He's saying, you'll be beaten if you do this thing that you've been doing your whole life.

[B]

Still, this is the point where I have to say two things. There's two things I have to mention. One, and this is for all the aunties out there who might be listening or hear this episode. Please no angry emails. We can accept two truths are happening or have happened. Which is one, the Shahs were repressive and fascist. And also the mullahs are repressive and fascist. And I would argue they're worse. And I would say most Iranians would say it's worse. But it doesn't mean that what they were doing was good.

[A]

This is not a nice time.

[B]

It is not a nice time. And also it probably led long term to some of the conflicts that we had down the road with the mullahs and those that fascist Islamo fascist regime. Another thing I will have you note when this meme was popularized where it's like they show like the picture of like the women that this was Iran in the 70s. Now look, they're animals. Sort of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Always has a weird vibe to it. I posted one of my more popular tweets when I was on X or Twitter was a picture of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. And it was him dancing with the full on dance thing. You can imagine where he's like on the dance floor, it's all lit up. And I said, this is an actual picture of my father in pre revolutionary Iran dancing. And to be fair, it does kind of look like my dad and it does look like the kind of dancing he would do. It looks extraordinarily Persian. In fact, there's never been a more Persian coded picture than John Travolta dancing in that. And it was very popular. And to everyone who thought that was real, I apologize. I'm sorry.

[A]

Yeah, it's important to know that again, there are much better ways to. Yeah, it's bad to tell people they have to or can't wear a certain thing. You can do that without saying it's now illegal to wear what you were wearing before and you'll get beaten in the street if you do it. The shock could have just said, you don't have to dress like the clerics want you to anymore. Do whatever. And doing that also probably would have caused a lot less of the kind of resentment that builds up in the. Right, right. It's just he's a dick about everything. He's a huge asshole. That's Reza Shah, basically. So Iran does modernize a lot during Reza's time in power and early in his reign there are other people who are doing hard work and good work, who are like competent political figures and allies who he's able to entrust to execute and create policy. Right, and this is part of why there's a lot of development in the country. Each of these men though grows too powerful and popular for Reza's liking. He is not a guy who is good at trusting the encyclopedia of the World of Islam notes they were gradually eliminated from the political arena and most of them were murdered humiliatingly at his behest. So not a great dude to work for.

[B]

God, I don't like that sentence, murdered humiliatingly.

[A]

No, that is very haunting. No, that sounds bleak. Yeah, horrible. Oh, I mean he likes cauterizing stuff. So we know that there's some fucked up shit going on here. By 1931 or so, the Shah is about as close to a total despot as one could be. But as cruel as he was to his own people, he was deeply aware of how fragile his hold on power remained. He had seen in action how little effort it took the British to help him onto his throne. Over the years though, he'd also grown increasingly paranoid about their plots. At the same time he was terrified of the ussr and he actually gives the Soviet Union a big chunk of what's today Turkmenistan in 1933 to try and buy them off and keep them happy. And he does the same same to British oil interests. He gives them like concedes a bunch of Iranian soil. He does this a few times and I think he does this to Turkey as well. He gives away a sizable chunk of his country in order to preserve his reign and try to like make friends with these foreign powers that he's hoping will help keep him on his throne. And this obviously pisses people off. He's literally giving away the country. Public authorities and the media were ordered to describe the Shah as a reformer who had modernized the country. He was given credit for reforms instituted by other past leaders like Amir Kabir, while his secret police punished anyone who spoke out about the darker side of the regime. Per Shireen Breisik, Reza Shah's whim was absolute. His memory extraordinary. His thirst to avenge proverbial, his skin gossamer. No elective constitutional system was allowed to grow roots under the Pahlavi's. Another break from Ataturk's example to the untraveled Shah. The concept of a free press was unfathomable. When Reza discovered that Iranians were still using postage stamps bearing the portrait of the deposed Ahmed Shah, he sent his troops to seize the entire supply. For some weeks, Iran remained stampless. And since the newly minted ones with Reza's portrait were slow in arriving from Holland, the old stamps had to be retrieved and circulated, albeit with the exiled shah's effigy blacked out.

[B]

That's a fucking bit. Somebody had to go through each one of those stamps and just write it out.

[A]

Yeah, like, he just had a temper tantrum. He's like, oh, the stamps. Confiscate them all. And they're like, well, no one can use the mail. Hey, boss, we got kind of a problem here. He's like, you got Sharpies, don't you? Wow. Yeah.

[B]

And I'll have you note, this is where. This is the corner of the show in which I talk about Persian contributions to the world. The postal system. You like the postal service? Persians came up with that. You like that? Love it. That's our thing. One of our things.

[A]

And he fucked it up.

[B]

Fucked it up. It's our thing, man, and you fucked it up.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's been your thing for a while.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So when the Great Depression hits, oil revenues from Great Britain dry up sharply again. The British are nominally supposed to pay quite a bit to Iran for the oil that they take out, but, like, during World War I, they stopped paying because they're like, why would we pay? Times are hard. And during Great Depression, oil revenues also dry up sharply, and they're finding ways to fuck with them. They're still selling oil. They are often lying to the government because, again, AIPAC has never cared about the government in Tehran. So they're often. The government in Tehran doesn't usually know what the British Navy's paying for oil. Right. That's all kept in a black box from them. This pisses off the Shah. There's years of ongoing argument with the Shah and renegotiations of that contract with Darcy where the Shah's like, you're fucking us. And they are. The Shah is not wrong. He's being fucked here. So it is still apoc, the Anglo Persian Oil Company at the time, though it will eventually be renamed, as you noted, the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, or aioc. And just in case you're all curious, it's renamed one more time and it still exists today. Kaveh. Do you know what APOC AOC is today?

[B]

Famously known for taking care of the environment. They are now known as BP Wonderful Company, British Petroleum.

[A]

British Petroleum. That's right, baby. That's. These motherfuckers.

[B]

They were bad from the beginning. It's so funny.

[A]

Uh huh. They were always evil, always evil as fuck.

[B]

Even when they weren't killing like ducks and stuff.

[A]

No, no. There's never been a leader of that company who didn't deserve to be flung into the sun.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So the fact that Great Britain's fucking him and that the oil company's fucking him really wears on Reza and resentment over this builds at the same time as an awful lot. So in the 20s up to the 30s, he's getting increasingly angry at Great Britain and increasingly paranoid at Great Britain. And at the same time, a lot of Germans start coming to Iran and a lot of tourists come and a lot of vacationers, but it's German investors.

[B]

These kebabs you have. Yeah, we're going to look into this kebab business you have here.

[A]

No to not very German regime.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

Very nice. Then you know, a guy gets elected, 19, you know, in the 30s, who's not as nice but who Reza Shah finds himself actually in agreement with a lot. That guy's name is Adolf Hitler. And Reza Shah's like this Hitler guy. He's saying a lot, I agree with, about how the British are evil and untrustworthy. He's saying a lot of other things that Reza agrees with too. Stuff on genocide that Reza might not be against. And Germany. This is actually one of the most successful German. It's a mix of spying and an economic influence effort that the Nazi regime carries out over this period of time, which is that by 1940, nearly half of all Iranian imports come from the German Reich and 42% of all Iranian exports are entering Germany. So by the time World War II starts, Germany is kind of more important for the Iranian economy in a lot of ways than Great Britain is. And Reza Shah has come to believe that, like, well, I've got these Germans who are good allies, right? Like these guys will be good friends to me. And he starts, he hates Britain and Russia, both pretty much the same at this point in time. And he kind of, at the start of World War II, he makes a bet that like, I bet Hitler's gonna win. I bet things are gonna keep going well for Adolf Hitler.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

This goes wrong for him almost immediately. First off, he's shocked at the Molotov ribbentrop Pact in 1939 that like the Soviet Union and the Nazis have a detente and invade Poland together. Cause he's like, wait, but I don't like Russia. I thought that we were on the same page about that Germany, right. And When World War II starts, he's like. Like, Iran's neutral. Trust me. Neutral. We're not siding with the Germans here. But when the Germans invade the ussr, that makes Russia and Great Britain allies. And the British are increasingly unhappy with this guy who seemed very sympathetic to Hitler being on the throne. And to make a long story short, the Shah is forced to abdicate. He tells his son, I cannot be. And this is because, like, Russia and Britain, like, or primarily Britain, like, send soldiers into Persia, right? They basically take the country because they need the oil for the war that they're fighting with the Third Reich, and they don't want this guy who's untrustworthy to be able to cut off the Royal Navy's fuel supply. Right? It's part of why there's a conference in Tehran during World War II. The Tehran Conference. It's a big deal. And the Shah, yeah, Reza, is not a fan of any of this. He abdicates, telling his son, I cannot be the nominal head of an occupant occupied land to be dictated to by a minor English or Russian officer. His son, who's 21 years old at this time, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, is immediately proclaimed Shah by the Majlis right after this. And, yeah, that's more or less the end of this guy's story. Reza, the former Shah, gets put onto a British boat. He goes to Mauritius first in the Indian Ocean, but he doesn't like the climate. And he eventually is taken to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he stays under house arrest, dying from a heart attack in 1944. And that's the end of his life.

[B]

That. That's fascinating. First of all, when I heard that we were doing the Shah, I had the wrong shah in mind. So this is fascinating because this is the Shah I know the least about. So that's really interesting to get all this background.

[A]

I thought this was all gonna be the first, like, two pages of a script. On the other Shah, I was like, this is just the context we need. And I just found it so interesting and worth telling. And I like, especially once I hit the fucking great Persian famine. I. This, like, I need to refocus these episodes.

[B]

No, absolutely. And I. And I do think it's so important because it lays out the groundwork for what happens next, really importantly. And it makes it so much easier to understand what happens next. I was under the impression that he had flirted with the Nazis just because he hated the British so much, but I didn't. I didn't realize he was quite so sympathetic. It sounds like the, the allies had their, their fears, which may or may not have been grounded, but makes sense as to why they went in and deposed him. It's always weird to me, that dynamic, because what does that mean? As the son, how do you stay behind? That's just so weird. I guess you have to, you feel like it's your duty. In the best case scenario, you get

[A]

to be the king. Your dad's never been that great. You're 21, probably always figured you could do a better job.

[B]

I mean, I'm curious because at this time I think the 21 year old Mohammad Reza Shah, the son, was just out there in like Europe hanging out like with like B grade celebrities and actresses and partying hard. So I didn't. I'm curious to know where he was at in this stage in his life, but we'll have to get to it at some other point. Three more episodes, please.

[A]

Yeah, don't worry, we will, friends. We will. But we're not gonna do that today. Today we're gonna do something else. We're gonna end the episode with you plugging your pluggables. Wow. Beautiful.

[B]

You are very good at this. So if you like this show, I think there's a very good chance you're gonna like my podcast, the House of Pod. It is a humor adjacent medical podcast. I have on a rotating crew of co hosts and I try to mix up medical expertise and, and people who are just fun and I like to be around like Robert and Sophie for example. And we'll talk about important medical topics, we'll talk about medical grifters and you know, I guarantee you it's more fun than it sounds. So check out the House of Pod anywhere you get your podcast. Our most recent episodes include Influence versus Evidence, which is a lot of what we talked about earlier today. It's a lot of looking at how we decide what happens in our healthcare right now and how we're drifting away from evidence. So anyways, you'll like it, I promise.

[A]

Well, everybody that's been behind the Bastards for this week, check back next week. We'll talk about someone else who sucked, you know, someone different. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.

[C]

Com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday.

[A]

Hit Remind me on Netflix so you

[C]

don't miss an episode for clips in our older episode catalog.

[A]

Continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel. YouTube.com BehindTheBastards we love about 40% of you.

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[D]

pro drivers live for race day, but for small business owners, every day is race day. That's why GoingPro with Lenovo Pro matters. One on one advice, IT solutions and customized hardware powered by Intel Core Ultra processors. Keep your business on the right track. Business goes pro with Lenovo Pro. Sign up for [e-mail] Pro Lenovo Lenovo

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Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. Ever wonder how to make hosting look effortless? Here's a secret Getting ahead of the mess with new Reynolds Kitchens Countertop prep

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