Professor Ali Ansari (6:02)

T -10 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (6:20)

Ali, thank you very much for coming to the podcast. It's a mighty subject today.

Professor Ali Ansari (6:24)

Thank you very much. And I suppose we're going to start with Iran.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (6:27)

Yeah, just start with the whole history of Iran.

Professor Ali Ansari (6:29)

One of the interesting things about Iran, I have to say, compared to, say, if we were to look at the history of Britain or the history of France or whatever, is that actually it almost has a dual history or a dual historical inheritance, by which I mean, there's a sort of a real historical inheritance, if we can put it that way, a sort of a tradition that's been born from what we would be familiar with characters from. From. From Greek history and Roman history of people like Cyrus the Great and Darius and Xerxes, you know. But also what the Iranians have inherited is a very, very rich mythological history. And that, for me, is fascinating because that mythological history in many ways has informed the Iranian mind much more profoundly than the real history. I mean, it's a curious twist in a way, and it reminds us, and I think as me as a historian, it reminds us that these historical narratives are much more complex and mixed than we think with Iran.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (7:21)

It is a place that has been both bigger and smaller than its current borders. Where is the Iranian heartland, both geographically and historically? And where did it begin?

Professor Ali Ansari (7:32)

Well, interestingly, traditionally, and the Iranian worldview, they have this concept of the empire of the Iranians. Now, Iran itself is basically a cognate term that comes from, and we might as well deal with this from the term Aryan. Now, of course, the term Aryan has a lot of very negative connotations today, but traditionally in the 19th century, as people tended to use the term as a linguistic distinction, and what the Iranians were, were basically part of the Indo European family of tribes that came from Central Asia and moved from that sort of Central Asian basin into what is we now know as the Iranian plateau. And the area which they populated, which they considered to be their, if you will, their territory, their core lay between the rivers of the Euphrates, the Indus, and then the mountains, the Caucasus, and then in the, in the northeast, the Oxus. Now, this is rather large, you might imagine. You know, I mean, this is, this is basically the empire of the Aryans, or the empire of the Iranians, as they call it. And it's obviously grown and shrunk according to time. But in the traditional historiography, that is their sort of area. That would be the area of the sort of Persian world. Modern scholars refer to it as the Persian world. This is where the Persian language is relatively dominant. Although, you know, one might say even in India, of course. I mean, what's fascinating about India is that India under the Moguls was basically Persian speaking. Government was in Persian. Which is why, of course, when the East India Company, you know, went to set up in India, of course, they also, they all learned Persian. I mean, Persian was the dominant. Why? Because it was part of the Persian world. And this sort of area, which is, I suppose, a sort of maximalist view of what would be the Persian world, is one that Iranians, in a sort of a literary sense at least, tend to adhere to. Although it has to be said, the Persians themselves, one might say, are basically, if you want to look at Persian as a province, is now in southern Iran. But the current territory of Iran is basically a slightly reduced sort of borderlands of what would be considered the sort of the Iranian heartlands.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (9:29)

And the Persian empire is one of the first significant, very large imperial entities in human history, isn't it?

Professor Ali Ansari (9:36)

Well, in the ancient period, there are three essentially Iranian empires or Persian empires. And the reason they're called Persian, by the way, is because the Greeks tended to ascribe to, to one particular the dynastic tribe, essentially the. The tribe that granted the dynast produce the dynasty. So the first Persian empire, which is founded by Cyrus the Great, who takes Babylon, takes Lydia, takes Egypt, essentially forms this vast, vast conglomerate stretching essentially from what is now eastern Afghanistan all the way through to Thrace, you know, up to Greece, and then to the north, is the first, what we might term universal empire. It far exceeds any of the previous ancient empires in its scope and its reach. And interestingly, the German philosopher Hegel says that all history begins with the Persians. The Persian Empire is where the, you know, the light of sort of enlightenment or the, the light of conscious begins, but then he says, but then passes away. So obviously after the Persians, it then goes on to the Romans or the Greeks and so on and so forth. In European histography and European identity, the ancient Persian Empire looms large. You know, one of the interesting things about Persia is it's part of the foundation myth of the West. So the west is defined against the ancient Persian Empire. It's because Darius and Xerxes are not able effectively to absorb the Greek states into their imperial domain that as Herodotus then says, you get this division, you know, this is a fight between east and West. And that, you know, great universal empire of course eventually succumbs to the, to the challenge of Alexander, who of course at the time Iranians did not consider the great. I mean, this is what I always tried to point out to people, they just, you know, and in fact, in Zoroastrian texts, in the, the old, the pre Islamic religion of Iran, they, they talk of Alexander as the great destroyer. But in classic Iranian sense, I have to say, over time they grow to adopt Alexander. So in the mythology, of course, Alexander becomes a Persian prince. So it all becomes very, it's okay. Then, you know, he sort of took over, but that's because he's a Persian prince. And of course, in a practical sense, in many ways, when Alexander did take over and absorb, he, he became a Persian king in actual fact, much to the annoyance of his troops, but he adopted many of the modes. So that ancient Persian Empire is absolutely central, you know, not only in terms of Iranian identities, certainly as we know today, but far more in a sense, the Western identity for modern Iranians, of course, they tended to. That period of their history was largely lost in the mists of time and replaced by the mythology. And the reason that happens is partly because the second great Iranian dynasty, the Parthians, come in from the east after the brief period of Macedonian rule, and they bring with them a whole host of historical mythologies of their own. But the Parthians last for enormous 500 years. I mean, think about it. 500 years. It's quite. And of course they are the first Iranian dynasty to confront the Romans.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (12:31)

So they do so very successfully.

Professor Ali Ansari (12:33)

They do, they do. And the, the great clash, of course, is the battle of Kahai, where our good old mate Crassus, you know, ponders over to the east to have a bit of fun, to try to emulate Caesar and the others and gets a rather bloody nose and it's a devastating defeat. It's interesting that it's not seen so much in Western historiography quite as much as, say, you find, you know, the battles in Germany and others. But it is a pretty devastating defeat. And Augustus, you know, later takes this great effort to bring the standards back and so on and so forth. And it reminds the Romans that the Parthians are a serious military power that need to be respected. But at the end of the day, the Parthians are a very. I don't want to. My colleagues will criticize me for using the term, but they're not feudal, but we could describe them as sort of feudal. It's a much more tribal monarchy, if I can put it that way, even though it's a powerful monarchy. And ultimately, in the third century ad, they are overthrown by a new dynasty from Persis, from Persia, in the south, the Sasanians. And it's with the Sasanians that the mythological history and the real history finally merges. The confluence of the two rivers meets, you see, and then you get this one narrative, and the Sasanians, we enter the sort of the light of the day in that sense. And the Sasanians rule for about 450 years. And they too, are a major challenge both to Rome and to the Byzantine Empire.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (13:49)

And then how do Iranians think about this catastrophic event of the Arab conquest of the Sassanian Empire, given that they've inherited both of those sort of simultaneous legacies?

Professor Ali Ansari (14:01)

Well, what's fascinating about it is, of course, here is where you get this clash of two distinct narratives. The Muslim narrative narrative has to tell you that this is a great thing. You know, the decadent, indulgent Sasanian Empire finally collapses against these vigorous, you know, Arab nomads imbued by this dynamic religion. Interestingly, really, in the last hundred years, and even, I would certainly say in the last 20 years, even in the Islamic Republic. But this, of course, reflects the politics of the day. Let's not forget that there is a sort of reaction against this and this view that actually the collapse of the Sasanians, in some ways, while they wouldn't want to call it a tragedy, there is a sort of a lamentation. And if you look at the Book of Kings itself, of course, the great Persian epic, it ends with the end of the Sasanians. That's the end. Now, if you think about how many Arabs actually invaded Iran in this vast territory, by the way, in the seventh century AD, we're not talking about more than 50,000. And this is where military history comes in. Rather useful because Historians can often make vast claims without actually thinking what does it mean for 50,000 men to go traipsing through a territory the size of Western Europe? You know, how. What impact can they have? You know, and the truth of the matter is where they had impact was on particular sort of urban areas where they military encampments, you know, in the eastern parts and whatever. But actually vast tracks of Iran were not touched by it. It now seems apparent that vast tracks of Iran did not convert to Islam for centuries. Yeah, they just maintained their old Zoroastrian religion, Mithraism, all sorts of other things. Gradually, the conversion came in. But even that conversion, people are saying, was somewhat eclectic. And what you see actually is a much more dynamic interchange between the two cultures. It's actually a successful marriage of different cultures where clearly, you know, Islam and, and the Arabs who bring it have an enormous amount to contribute. But it's not, it's not a conquest in that sense. It's not conquest in the traditional sense.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (15:55)

When does, and I really should know this, I have no idea. When does the schism with the Caliphate effectively take place? When does Persia then break off and re. Establish itself as a separate entity? Is it when the seat of the Caliphate moves west towards Europe?

Professor Ali Ansari (16:12)

Well, what's interesting is a very good colleague of mine always says that the modern Iran begins with the Mongols, which is a bit depressing, I have to say, but he's got a point. And really what happens by the 10th and 11th centuries? You get a huge influx of Turkic tribes and coming in from Central Asia, they start coming in as military mercenaries, and then once they come in, they start take over. So they come in, they settle in, and then they start to take over, basically. But what you find with two particular dynasties, one is the Seljuk Turkish dynasty comes from Central Asia. It basically established itself in an Iranian. It becomes a Persian dynasty. And the ministers, the viziers, are all Persian. It takes place in the 11th century. And then so 200 years later, you get the Mongol onslaught.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (16:55)

Were the Mongols a terminal event for Iranian civilization from which that entire part of the world has never recovered? How did it give birth to modern Iran?

Professor Ali Ansari (17:02)

Well, yes, I mean, there is certainly in the Arab. In the Arab histories, they say this is such a catastrophe. And had the Mongols not come and sack Baghdad, you know, the Arab world would now be ahead of the Europeans. This is, you know, fanciful, to be honest, partly because Baghdad at this stage was really a bit of a provincial town. I mean, the power had shifted elsewhere. Moreover, as a number of Historians reported pointed out we cannot on the one hand underestimate the damage that the Mongols did to the area. I mean they, they slaughtered on an uncomfortably, you know, indulgent scale, I have to say. And the tales, I mean, you read the histories by Persian historians at the time and they, they talk about it in the most gruesome ways of, you know, wandering over fields where they realize they're just mulching through dead bodies, you know, and they hadn't occurred to them. And the Mongols obviously didn't like cities, they didn't like urban door. They thought they're very decadent and all that and frankly, you know, the sooner we get rid of them the better. But once they settled down and adapted, whatever. I mean what someone was saying is that the, the damage to the agricultural sort of, the sedentary lifestyle was devastating, but it could recover. For me, the real damage in a sense of the Mongol, Turkic, Mongol invasion is not the immediate consequence. It's the fact that they actually altered the nature of the political economy of the country. By which I mean that from the 13th century onwards, Iran becomes less of a sedentary urban agricultural economy. It becomes much more of a nomadic economy. And you know, these tribal sort of setups in the northern parts of the country become very heavily pastoral and the sort of the, you know, the large scale farming enterprises and irrigation in particular were largely neglected, not entirely, but largely neglect. What the Mongols did effectively is they, it's not that, you know, that things had been declined for many, many years, you know, but they basically confirmed it, they basically put a seal on it. And the thing with the Mongols really is that the devastation really to the political economy in that sense or the transformation, I think a better way of putting it is that following on from the Mongols you get Tamerlane. Now, you know, you can take a good beating once. But Tamerlane really does really sort of, I mean he particularly because his form of conquest was just to repeatedly plunder the same area several times over. You know, he never got tired of it. So Taymor or Tamerlane as we know in the West, I think was in many ways really the most destructive element to the political economy. And what it does do is it does change the nature and I think it's that long term consequence. So you get much more tribal elements, much more pastoral elements. You get a distinction between the urban and, and the tribal which you didn't really have quite so much previously. And obviously the nature of that sort of civilization changes. And Ibn Khaldun makes a statement he says, you know, almost all. He's exaggerating, of course, but, but there's an element of truth in this. He says almost all the leading intellectuals of the Muslim world have been non Arabs. And by which he really means they come from, from Iran. And so, and he lists them, you know, and he says, but, you know, ever since, you know, basically Tamerlane and whatever, that's, that's, that's ended. You know, it's. Now, of course it's an exaggeration to say that, but there's also an element where that high tide of, of scientific intellectualism that you do get in Eastern Iran and you don't get that again really from the 14th, 15th century onwards.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (20:19)

And is that timing a little bit awkward? Because that coincides with the beginnings of European incursions into the Indian Ocean space.

Professor Ali Ansari (20:28)

Actually, European dominance really doesn't come to the late 18th, probably 19th century. And you know, to look at decline going too far back is a bit excessive, but it's certainly, I think there is certainly also a case to be made for the fact the beginning of European sort of exploration and discovery and whatever coincides with the time when empires in China and India and also in the Middle east start to basically turn inwards in a way and, and are really trying to recover. Now. They do obviously recover and one does, as I said, you know, the main thing one doesn't want to exaggerate is of course the Ottoman Empire is extremely powerful and then in the 16th and 17th century does extend very much. But what is interesting, I suppose, is this. It's not matched by level of scientific inquiry in the way that we may have had beforehand. And that, that is interesting. It's one of the great questions that I think of historians of the Middle east is just why that intellectual vibrancy just doesn't seem to pick up again. And certainly in the ir, with the, with the emergence of the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century, the science has become heavily theological, if I can put it that way. Interesting enough, Iran right through to the end of the 17th century was viewed in the west as partly because of the sort of biblical inheritance. You know, the Europe didn't approach Iran without enormous amount of cultural baggage. So they tended to view Iran as extraordinarily powerful and rich and so on and so forth. But it still had a reputation for being one commercially fairly wealthy, but also scientifically fairly advanced. You know, there's a wonderful map that a German cartographer has of persia in the 17th century. It's a beautiful map and it has a cartouche and as friends of mine say, you say, if you look at Western cartographers and they do maps of Russia, for instance, normally the cartouche has a bunch of sort of rather grim looking individuals. You know, they're seen as on the fringes of civilization. You see, the Iranian one is rather good. I mean they look rather dapper. One of them is clearly a carpet salesman of some wealth and the other one is an astrologer. He has a telescope and he's looking for stars, you see. And this is basically this, this view that Iranians are good at stargazing. It's, it's a sort of, you know, has a long pedigree, this imagine. But, but it's interesting that Even in the 17th century they tended to view Iran as a sort of scientifically and commercially advanced, shall we say, even though in practical terms actually that was certainly not the case.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (22:45)

How does Iran then involve the INC version of formal empire? In a way that the great other great empires of the Middle east and, and southern eastern Asia don't.

Professor Ali Ansari (22:55)

At the Beginning of the 18th century, Iran faces yet another of its periodic catastrophes and that is an Afghan invasion. The Safavids, I, I should point out, bring Shiism to, to Iran. Under the Safavids, Shiism becomes the state religion effectively, although I wouldn't want to exaggerate the, the distinctions, but nonetheless it does make Iran then quite distinct from the Sunni Arab world world. But under the Safage, you know, there were Christians, there were, you know, Sunnis, there were Zoroastrians that were, you know, it was quite a multi faith type of empire. Although Shiism was the dominant faith, the Iranian dynasty, the, the king at the time is, is very pious, rather hopeless, makes a complete mess of it. By 1722, the Afghan rebellion sweeps the Safids away. It's a complete fiasco to be honest. Isfahan collapses. What's interesting is this sends shockwaves into Europe. Europe has neck. What the hell has happened? This enormous suddenly collapse of these bunch of vagabonds and the whole thing's a bit of a disaster. What happens is that Iran in the 18th century goes through a period of violent political turmoil with ups and downs on a dramatic scale. The last great Asian conqueror, Nader Shah comes in. This is the chap who goes to Delhi in 1739 and knocks out the Mughal empire just at the time when the British and French are arriving in force on the subcontinent. Interestingly enough, of course, in many European histories this episode is largely sort of washed over, but it's actually quite central. And of course, Nader Shah returns to Iran with something like, in modern terms, $70 billion worth of gems and jewelry and whatever standard operating practice in the period. Obviously, I think this conquest and this triumph in India is the period when I think he loses the, the plot. And as a consequence, you know, to cut a long story short, you know, this great possibility, Nader Shah was not a. A pleasant man by any stretch of imagination, but he was a man, I think, pregnant with all sorts of promise. He was the first person to begin the process of a sort of a military revolution in Iran. He was the first person to actually consider having. Building a navy and in only the way that a despot can do, you know, to encourage people to chop the wood down in the Caspian and take it over land down to the Persian Gulf. Only you can only do that on the pain of death. And Nardashah is assassinated by a number of his. His officials. The empire breaks up. You get another period of, of turmoil. And to. To cut a long story short, basically by the turn of the sort of the. The 19th century, you have a new dynasty in Iran, the Rajas. But it coincides precisely with the moment when you have this great new challenge. And it's a European challenge, which is far more severe, profound, intellectually challenging than the Arabs or the Mongols or anything else. And of course, the Iranians aren't really up to it. They're recovering from 100 years of war and turmoil. And this is the time when the Europeans start to engage with Iran in a serious way during the Napoleonic Wars. And the French come in, Napoleon sends a very nice letter to them, the, the Shah and says, you know, we'd like your support to beat up the Russians and so on and so forth. And the interesting. And of course, the British move in very quickly, you know, to avoid any French alliance. But the point is, is that what's interesting is they both approach Iran as a. As potentially a great power. You know, they sort of say, you know, we'd like your help. It's only in that period where they go to war with the Russians, the Iranians do in 1804, and they get absolutely hammered. It took a long time, actually, for the Iranians to recognize just how far their political power had been up. So in the 19th century, what you. Is actually this greater engagement with the European powers really in the French at a very small level, but then the Russians and the British, so the British in India and the Russians obviously in the north, they always say, you Know, the Russians force Britain politics, I. E. A bit of manipulation just to get your way. And the Americans, when they get their money, you know, they say the Americans where you can get your money from. The British always are a bit conniving. But the interesting thing for me about the Anglo Iranian relationship is that actually what they're dealing with is not Britain, they're dealing with British India. And it makes a certain sort of familiarity, accessibility and it, for me, it begins to explain why there's this love hate relationship with the British. Because in one sense they understand each other perfectly well. And the British officials who go to IRAN in the 19th century, most of them are very fluent in Persian. And in the 19th century, you begin to see Iranian intellectuals certainly absorbing the intellectual achievement of what they see as the West. And for me, what's fascinating about it is that the British in particular are not selling the Iranians this idea that, you know, we have a bigger navy or we have a bigger army, whatever. What they're selling the Iranians is industry. And when you look at Iranian accounts of Britain in the 19th century, that's what they're most impressed about. There was some wonderful account. One Persian ambassador who arrives in 1810 is taken to London. He goes from Plymouth to London and they cross this bridge and he says, this bridge is the most magnificent bridge. He says it's as big as Damavan. Now, Damavand is the highest peak in Iran, right? It's a volcanic. And James Maurier, who's guiding him, says, I think he's talking about Staines Bridge. But they are really impressed by it. You know, for instance, later in the 19th century, when the first Persian shah came to visit Britain, where do they take him? They take him to see the fourth rail bridge. You know, they say this, this is. This is what the modern world is.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (27:59)

But why is Persia successful where so many other imperial entities right across east, southern and west nature succumb to formal imperial control by European power?

Professor Ali Ansari (28:12)

There are several reasons for it in a way. One is that, you know, of the three sort of Middle Eastern powers, Egypt, let's say Egypt formerly anyway, and the Ottoman Empire in Iran. Iran is the least integrated into the Western system. So the Egyptians basically are completely beholden to Western banks and get taken over in 1881. But the Iranians are so, you know, I mean, they're just so disconnected from it in that sense. It's on one level, you know, that that sort of routine isn't really a possibility. The other side of it is because there's this sort of competition between the Russians and the British, and the British view is principally to maintain a sort of an Iranian independence as long as the Russians don't get in. So there's a sort of a balance of power. It's a sort of a weapons of the weak, if I can put it that way. And the Iranians play on that very well. The British were quite reluctant to get involved in Iran, Even though post 1857, which is the end of the first and hopefully last Anglo Persian War, British influence in Iran was in the ascendancy because they had a very lenient treaty, the Treaty of Paris, and the Iranians were sort of like over. Over the moon. But even then, when the Iranians were actively in some way seeking to engage with Britain as a sort of the friendly power, the British India in particular was extremely reluctant. They just didn't want to get involved because, frankly, they've come to an agreement with the Russians and they don't want to annoy the Russians. Our interests are primarily in Europe and we need to keep the Russians on side in Europe. I mean, to my mind, it's one of the great tragedies of British foreign policy there. But it also shows the complexities of that policy, that there were so many diverse interests. And the Iranians, of course, could never really comprehend the complexity of that dynamic, that British India and Whitehall had quite different objectives and quite different aims. And I think the Iranians were able in some ways to play off these diverse pressures. But there was also an element where nobody really wanted to get involved either. I should say, of course, at the end of the day, that in terms of British influence in Iran, from a commercial point of view, certainly, and a sort of informal point of view, it, you know, through the British Imperial bank of Persia that was set up in 1888, I think. Then, of course, the Anglo Persian Oil Company, which was Formerly incorporated in 1908, they were highly influential in the politics of the country really through to the 20th century. But, and this is what I was always saying, I always say also my students never, never forget really that the British were always in many ways on the strategic defensive in that area, vis a vis, they perceive to be Russian threats. So the Iranians were able to play off this in some ways, able to maintain a formal independence, if not a real one, I have to say. And certainly the. The tragedy of the situation is seen in the First World War. If you look in the First World War, as one Iranian historian put very clearly said, Iran declared its neutrality, but nobody paid any attention to this neutrality, including the Iranians themselves. And that's how bad it was, you know, that even the Iranians were busy, you know, mixing it with the Germans and occasionally going off the Ottomans and the Right. You know, but foreign armies were basically traipsing over the country. So BY really, by 1918, 1919, any sort of formal government in Iran, in terms of central government, had really come to an end. And that's when you get the next stage, which is this rise of the. The Pahlavi dynasty that emerges in the 1920s. In 1919, the Iranian Senate delegation to the Paris Peace Conference Conference. And in this peace conference, and they send it as a delegation, as one of the victors in the war, which is all a bit jock killer, isn't it? The British and others probably decided that the Iranians were being a little bit over the top by saying they're among the victors. But it's very interesting, their mentality. See, what they argued is they said, well, look, we're here in 1919, and you know, our great rivals in the area, the Ottomans and the Russians, well, they're gone. You know, the Russians have collapsed and the Ottomans are collapsed and we're here, therefore, ergo, we've won. And. And they issue this thing. They say, we'd like the peace conference to consider giving us all the territories in the Caucasus that we lost to the Russians in 1828, all the territories in Central Asia, up to the Oxus. This is the bit that everyone sort of says, blimey, that's a bit. Plus most of Eastern Anatolia, because the Kurds, after all, are Iranians and they would like to return back to the motherland. We're not particularly interested in the Shia centers down south, but we'd like it if you consulted us when you do something about it. I mean, that's also quite interesting. What they were principally interested was a sort of, you know, this sort of empire of Iran, if I can put it that way, back to the old school. Now, most people sort of say this is just a flight of fancy. And it is in an immediate sense, but it also emanates from exactly what I was talking about earlier, that they sort of have this view of this sort of Greater Iran that stretches from the Oxus to the Euphrates, this and the other, and here it is laid out and there's a map and it draws the boundaries and it sort of says that I think this should all come back. Needless to say, of course, this was all refused. But what's interesting about it is that I think it's fed into a lot of the ideas that continue to this day. And if you look at what the Iranian. Iranians are doing certainly at the moment, since 9 11, since the removal of the Taliban, since the removal of Saddam Hussein is they suddenly realize they have an opportunity. It's like saying, you know, I have this idea of Greater Iran, but wow, it's now become a political reality, you know, and I can do something about it. And so now you find them basically making claims, really, in Mesopotamia, parts of certainly Western Afghanistan. Herat has always been seen as a Persian city. You know, why the hell shouldn't we. We have a bit more now. I don't want to exaggerate the claim of an irredentism because that would, needless say, cause all sorts of anxieties. It's not that so much, but it is basically something where the Iranians say, this is our near abroad. And, you know, this is our. This is the Persian. The Persian world. And of course, we have.

Dan Snow (33:38)

Right.

Professor Ali Ansari (33:38)

In fairness to them, you know, when the Arabs or, or the. The west sort of say, you know, Iran should not interfere in these areas, sort of save them. Well, they are sort of. It's part of their hinterland. And why wouldn't they have an influence in these areas? Of course they would. I mean, if. If the Saudis feel they can have an influence in Afghanistan, in Central Asia, and certainly in Caucasia, you know, where they think they do. So I think that does feed in, and you don't really get the sense of how important that is unless you have an appreciation of the history or how they understand their history.

Dan Snow (34:09)

You listen to history covering the long history of Iran. More after this.

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Dan Snow (Interviewer) (37:39)

The Iranians turned up to Versailles, where the world was going to be reordered well to the peace process following the first war anyway, with a giant map saying this is what we feel Iran should look like.

Professor Ali Ansari (37:50)

They came in with a number of issues that they wanted to address not only territorially, but also they wanted help with the rebuilding of the country. And what's interesting is the way in which they approached the whole peace conference. They went in with a lot of preparation, and above all, what they wanted was legal recognition of the country, which was quite interesting. I mean, they went in, became members of the League of Nations, and they basically said, you know, look, we want the territorial boundaries of the, of the state to be recognized, which is, you know, at the very least, that they did get. And so in that sense, they scored a few positive points. But on the wider issues, obviously, they were completely turned down on all their vast territorial sort of claims. They wanted, you know, most of Central Asia, parts of the Caucasus, back in all these sort of areas that were stripped by the Russians in the 19th century.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (38:36)

It's an interesting moment, isn't it, for Iran, because there are very few non European North American powers present in that process. So it's a moment, on one level of kind of the. It's an indication of the spectacular reach and power of European imperialism. And yet it's also a moment of great crisis for that imperial system. Right, so what does Iran, where does Iran fit into that?

Professor Ali Ansari (38:59)

Well, it's trying basically to sort of exploit the new, new legal framework. The whole thing with Woodrow Wilson's 14 points. I mean, it wants to sort of take advantage of what it considers to be a. A new age in a sense, but at the same time, it comes up against sort of real, sort of practical realities. And that. The practical reality is, is that the British feel that they are basically in the lead position in Iran. The Ottoman Empire's gone, the Russian Empire's gone. So Curzon, who's then Foreign Secretary, sort of comes out with this wizard idea and he sort of says that, look, you know, you want all these people to come and help you, which is fine, but we'd rather they didn't. We'd rather we did it all ourselves. So the British make an offer to the Iranians to say that we will come in to assist with the reconstruction of your. Of your country. And this is viewed, you know, very controversially among Iranian historians because they sort of see this as an attempt by Curzon to establish a protectorate in Iran. And that's, you know, a simplistic understanding of it. It's not entirely correct, but it's certainly true that Curzon had a much, much stronger ambition and desire to get engaged with Iran than almost any other British politician. Most British politicians just wanted to get out. You know, they weren't interested. Yes, they had the mandates in the rest of the Middle East. They were obviously focused on India. They didn't want to really extend it even further into Iran. So you get this period between 1919 and 1921 where this Anglo Persian agreement, as it's known, is still born. It doesn't actually go anywhere, it's not ratified. Curzon gets more and more annoyed. He gets irritated with British officials who are dragging their feet as far as he's concerned. And finally, in 1921, Iranian constitutionalists and others basically decide that they've got to take matters into their own hands. They judge the mood of the British to be quite sympathetic to this because the British, of course, want to leave Iran in a stable but friendly position so they can get out and spend less money. And they find the commander of the Cossack brigade that used to be officered by Russians, but obviously they'd all left after the Russian Revolution, so it was now officered by Iranians. And a gentleman by the name of Reza Khan comes with a Anglophile journalist by the name of Sayedziya and launch what we now know really as a coup in 1921 to overthrow the then sitting Prime Minister, not the monarchy or anything, but just the Prime Minister, and establish a new radically reforming government. And between 1921 and 1925, you see a series of measures brought in to basically restore the central authority in the state. And Reza Khan gradually pushes out all these civil politicians and basically says, I'm going to take control. He's the sore strong man. He's very much supported by all these intellectuals, by the way, because they, and it's quite interesting, they say what we really need in Iran, he said, you know, we'd quite like a Napoleon like figure, but we're not really ready for a Napoleon like figure because our situation is so bad. We tried this constitutional revolution, but what's the point of having a constitution when you don't have a government? What we need is a government. So they come in and they say, what we need is a Peter the Great type figure. Now if you think about Peter the Great, he's not the nicest person. So basically they sort of think, you know, and people sort of bit worried about this, you know, is this the right model to be picking, you know, Peter the Great? But anyway, that's the sort of thing they talk about and they're very explicit about it. And Reza Khan, you know, leader of the Cossack brigade, basically becomes this Peter the Great type of figure and with exactly that sort of type of modernizing zeal, you know, including reforming dress and, you know, making people shave and this.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (42:14)

Sort of thing, not dissimilar to what's going on in Turkey across the border.

Professor Ali Ansari (42:17)

Not dissimilar, actually. Not at all. And of course, his, his soulmate, if you look at it, is, is Mustafa Kemal, you know, and the, the, the radical changes taking place there, of course, we now know. And you know, previously, you know, historians tended to say that Reza Khan emulated Ataturk, as he became known, but actually it was a much more parallel sort of development. Both of them started from different stages. Iran was way behind Turkey really, in terms of its development. And in some ways Iranian revolutionaries were, as a consequence of that, even more radical in their attempts to push the country forward. So eventually 1925, I mean, there's a few sort of tussles. Tussles. This is all an abridgment, by the way, but, you know, but the few tussles and eventually it's decided that the old dynasty that had been ruling Iran since 1797, they're all, you know, washed out, useless then spend most of the time in Europe anyway. So Reza Khan is invited, and I use invited in a very sort of like loose term, to become king and to become the, the new. To found a new dynasty known as the Pahlavi dynasty. He takes a new surname, Pahlavi, yes. He sort of aspires to the pre Islamic dynasties in the pre Islamic. And, and from 1925-41, Reza Shah, as he's then known, with a cohort of ministers, really puts through, I think, one of the most radical transformations and radical projects of state building that certainly we've seen in the Middle east and certainly, you know, in the Iranian case. And many of the things that Reza Shah puts into place, good and bad, are there today. I mean, this is the thing. He's a very controversial figure, the Peter the Great of Iran, you know, so it's not exactly, you know, but at the same time, he's the one that builds up up a judiciary, a whole new legal code. Very famously, he establishes the University of Tehran. He dramatically transforms the educational structure of the country. A lot of this is, you know, it's beginnings. You don't see the fulfillment of some of these until the next 20 or 30 years. But nonetheless, he lays the foundations of a lot of sort of transformation the country, social, economic and political.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (44:15)

And is it European in its inspiration?

Professor Ali Ansari (44:17)

It is European in its inspiration. It's what we would call sort of in the, in the, the language of the time. They're sort of aspiring, bring to a modernization which they sort of acquire from the European. They borrow very heavily from French models of statecraft in terms of the centralization of the state, but they also, in terms of their political system, at least in lip service, you know, borrowing over sort of a constitutional monarchy, as in the British parliamentary system. But in actual fact, really what Reza Shah is, is nothing. I mean, he, interestingly enough, he believes himself to be constitutional, but actually he's an autocrat. I mean, he's an autocrat in every sense, and he's pushing things through. And. And the thing is that he can't do a lot of things he wants without this cohort of sort of intellectuals around him. And eventually they all fall out with him because, you know, as with all these things, you know, the. The autocrat becomes paranoid and they all get fed up with him. But the fact is, when you look at it in the round, there's a huge amount is. Is. Is achieved, but the critical factor that isn't, and this is the thing, is that what he does is he builds the state. He builds, you know, one part of the equation in that sense. But they don't actually get round to finishing off that process of reform by building in sort of the rights of the citizens, citizen D.C. so you have this judiciary, which is very impressive. I mean, they turned this judiciary around in rapid time, and the man who sort of actually did all the work eventually sort of dies of exhaustion, I think. But the point is, is that if you look at legal reforms at the time, it's all about the rights of the state. And, you know, you see Jones and what about the rights of the citizen? And they haven't really got around to that yet. And this is a problem, you see, And I think at the end of the day, and when you look at modern Iranian history, it is the fundamental problem that the reform, reform and the revolution that took place in the early part of the century, and you see this actually broadly in the Middle east, to be honest, what they do is they strengthen the state, but they don't actually get round to really looking at the defense of the rights of the citizen. So, you know, Reza Shah goes through. He's basically his active period is. I mean, very active period is obviously from the period of the coup before he's king, really, till about 36, 37, after which, you know, most of his. His intellectual sort of cheerleaders are either, you know, locked up, some of them die mysteriously in prison, others are in exile, so on and so forth. And finally, interestingly, in 1941, he's basically deposed by an Anglo Soviet invasion of the country. Second World war breaks out. Iran declares neutrality, as is part of the course, and the Nazis invade the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, they're fairly rapid in their sort of, like, descent into the Soviet Union. In 1941, it is then decided that Iran can perform the role of a land bridge to provide supplies to the Soviet Union. So I think in August 1941, the Russians and the British invade from north and south. Reza Shah's army, which was much vaunted, it was quite modern, so on and so forth, basically collapses. Not, it has to be said, because the ordinary soldier was doing such a bad job. But I don't think the officer class did terribly well. But nonetheless, they go. In six days, Reza Shah is deposed. Churchill comes in. Who the hell are we going to replace him with? It's quite interesting, actually. Churchill actually decides, you know, we don't like these Pahlevi people. They're a bit too modern. They're not actually as pro British as we'd like or, you know, supportive. So what we'd like is let's go back and see if we can find an heir from the previous dynasty. And it turns out that the heir to the previous dynasty is actually serving in the Royal Navy and can't speak Persian. So, you know, no chance there. So they then find obviously, the heir apparent, a young Mohammad Reza Shah. 21. I mean, think about it, 21 in 1941, he's 21, he's. He's got, you know, his father's just been kicked out. You know, the officials ring him and they say, right, take the oath in Parliament, you're the new king. But his first five years of his reign are basically doing the Allied occupation. The allied occupation from 1941-46 releases all sorts of political tensions in the country. So there's. There's a period of 20 years when politics is completely repressed. Suddenly the Allies come in and there's a real contest between the Soviets, Soviets and the Anglo Americans, because the Americans come in for the hearts and minds of Iranians. And the key difference here, interestingly, is the Soviets start distributing wireless radios to people. You'd have to be literate. So they send these peasants and they start pumping out Radio Moscow, telling you that, you know, the workers revolution is at hand. So the Anglo Americans then decide they have to counter that by putting out their own propaganda. And the consequence of that, actually, is that Iranian, The Iranian population becomes a lot more politicized, ironically enough. And it's quite interesting. Interesting. So the Allies finally leave in 1946. The Soviets fairly Reluctantly, has to be said, they sort of hang around there trying to seize bits of territory, as is half the cause. Through various diplomatic means, the Iranians, with a bit of help from the Americans, eventually get them out of northern Iran. But it's a febrile atmosphere. I mean, it is a febrile atmosphere. The Iranians are becoming intensely nationalistic. It's become highly politicized. They see that they were able to get the Soviets out of northern Iraq with a bit of help from the Americans. But a lot of it was actually to do with some pretty mean diplomacy by Iranian officials. I mean, they were fairly sort of like elastic, as they said. And then the Iranians turn their attention, they say, well, you know, we've kicked the Soviets out of the north. Let's turn our attention to the Anglo Iranian oil company down in the south. Why is this foreign company got this huge concession for our oil resources in the south? And this leads inexorably to the oil nationalization crisis, which is one of the pivotal and seminal moments obviously in modern Iranian history and sadly in the relationship between Britain and Iran.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (49:37)

Is it also a moment in which Britain's weakness beyond Suez becomes apparent?

Professor Ali Ansari (49:44)

Well, this is the interesting thing. I mean, so, I mean, obviously Iranians always like to claim that everything starts with them. So, you know, one of the things is the Cold War. Most people assume the Cold War basically starts not with the Berlin airlift, but with the Azerbaijan crisis because the Soviets refused to withdraw from Azerbaijan. And there is an element of truth in that. Again, the Iranians will say, well, you know, Suez is a bit of an afterthought. The real crisis comes when this all nationalization crisis. And I know you've had one of your other speakers here, I mean, James Barr in his excellent book, also talks about this. I think he's quite right in saying that normally it's seen as a wonderful example of Anglo American cooperation. I mean, not much to Iran's benefit. But actually he's quite right in saying it's exceptional. It is exceptional that what you find is British Britain after the war. Obviously one of the victors wants to reinstate itself, you know, reposition itself, but finds itself fatally weakened by the war, because much like after the Great War, but worse now, you know, it's financially in a much weaker position. What did the oil resources in Iran mean for Britain? It meant fundamentally that it could source oil in pound sterling, that it had access, in a sense, to a cheap resource that was absolutely essential for the industrialized world. And the Americans were quite keen in some ways to remove that option from the British. So it's much better, I think, to see this crisis not as a sort of a bilateral struggle between the Anglo Americans and the, and the Iranians, but a trilateral struggle between the three of them really for power politics. And ultimately Mossadegh, the Prime Minister, who I think, you know, was a child of the constitutional revolution of 1906, was a powerful believer in the sort of rule of law, law and the Constitution. And I think in any other period would have been really someone that, you know, a lot could have been done with, actually found himself in this sort of power play between the British and the Americans. He, by all accounts, I mean, one could say certainly overplayed his hand. He probably overestimated the ability, you know, the willingness of the Americans to come in and help him. He, by the end of 1953, found himself increasingly isolated. Domestically. People were finding him quite frustrating and became subjected to essentially an MI6, you know, CIA orchestrated coup. But this coup couldn't have succeeded. And here's the very controversial bit, I don't think could have succeeded without a hefty amount of support internally. Now, of course, Iranian nationalists like to negate that period, but put very simply, if you're paying money to people to bribe them, someone has to take it. So there was an element there where there's a whole, whole power play and dynamics going on and ultimately Mossadegh is overthrown.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (52:15)

And what was the status of the oil?

Professor Ali Ansari (52:16)

Well, what happens is, is then relations are re established between Britain and Iran. There's a wonderful phrase. Sir Dennis Wright, who was ambassador, who was later ambassador in Iran, he was sent back to reinstate relations and sought out the oil. And he said Britain and Iran were like estranged lovers. And you know, now we sort of. It was quite a nice metaphor. But what actually happens is, whereas this is a British monopoly, monopoly Anglo Iranian Oil Company, it now becomes a consortium. A new consortium is established in which Britain has 40% of the stake, but the other 60 is in the hand of American oil companies. So the consortium is actually shared much more. I mean, Britain is obviously a dominant player, but not in absolute terms. It's actually the Americans become dominant and the nationalization in that sense is, is, is reversed. But what you find is the Americans playing a much more pivotal role. So from 53 onwards, Britain ceases to be a really dominant player in Iran. The Russians aren't really there in the same way. It's the Americans who, who, who come in and the Shires is, you know, he basically restored in A sense, obviously always been on the throne. But the whole torrid period, he doesn't know how to handle Mossadegh. He goes into exile, he comes back. He claims that people love him. I think, really in actual fact, what he mistakes is a sort of a. A deep and profound affection for the monarchy, Turkey. He interprets that as a deep and profound affection for him, which is not quite the same thing, but he says, oh, my people love me and all this. So in actual, what's quite interesting is the period 1953-60, the Shah is trying to consolidate his power and the Americans become quite bored with him, actually. They don't think he's strong enough. I mean, what the Americans are really keen on, I mean, if you look at the pattern of politics in the Middle east, the French are always going around setting up republics of some one sort or another. The. The British like to set up constitutional monarchies. I mean, all this is sort of superficial, but you know what I mean, they all drive. And the Americans, for some one reason or other, are really into strong men. I mean, what, they want a military strongman, so they sort of looking for a military leader. The Shah, they sort of think is pretty weak. And actually, by the end of the 1950s, there is a rumor, a fairly strong rumor has to be said, that the Americans are actually behind another coup to try and unseat the Shah and bring a sort of a military leader in place. And that fails. And the Americans are very, you know, sheepish about it and whatever, but it. It shows really, in that period that the sort of. Of view we have today, that the Shah was America's man in this sort of thing, it wasn't quite so smooth, you know. So really by the 1960s, there's a strong argument there that the. The regime is still very unstable. You get the revolution in Iraq, you know, the Iraqi monarchy's overthrown. You get a coup in Turkey in 1960. So 1958, 1960, there's this argument in Iran that unless we take some serious measures, we're going to be very weak and frustrated, too. So the Shah is persuaded to lead what equals a white revolution, bloodless from the top, land reform, votes for women, so on and so forth. And this white revolution, which is really officially launched in 1963 by referendum, this referendum is sort of 98% or something. Other people sort of say it's all jolly good, but, you know, it is actually quite transformative, but not in the way the show expected. So the land reform basically is meant to sort of disenfranchise a lot of land aristocracy. Re redistribute the land to peasants and others. What actually happens is a lot of pension. Well, because the land that's distributed is all done on a sort of political basis or on the economic basis. So the land that they get isn't enough for subsistence. So what they do is they resell the land back, you know, and then off they go to the cities. What you find is a burging the cities. Now, interestingly enough, the first 10 years of the White Revolution, 63 to 73, is massively successful in economic terms. Not necessarily in social, but in economic terms. Economic growth is 10% annually. It's pretty dramatic. Iran is seen as the coming place oil money has been. Hasn't quite made such a distinct difference yet, but it's. It's building up. And, you know, everyone thinks the Shah's doing a jolly good job. Now. It masks a certain number of problems, social problems that are clearly coming. One, as I said, the migration. Rural urban migration, but also unbalanced economic growth. You know, some people are becoming extremely wealthy in others. The Shah then has this marvelous. Which I'm sure you've seen sort of films of. This is marvelous. Sort of like celebration of 2, 500 years of Persian monarchy and Persepolis. It's all great. So stuff you interesting. My grandfather loved it, my father hated it. So it was that sort of thing, you know, they sort of thought it was a. A lot of money was being spent on this. Iranians were invited.

Dan Snow (56:35)

Don't go away. Crucial part of the story, folks, coming.

Professor Ali Ansari (56:37)

Up just after this.

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Dan Snow (Interviewer) (58:02)

I'm very struck by the tolerance of these societies like Iran to absorb European Western ideas of political, social, economic reform whilst having very clear examples of fantastically malign interference by Western powers. And is that a sort of.

Professor Ali Ansari (58:21)

Absolutely a friction between the two. And what you find actually is a lot of Iranian thinkers will tend to aspire to and adapt and adopt Western ideas. Now Western ideas can be Western liberal ideas or they can be Western Marxist ideas. I mean, you know, the whole range, the whole gamut, what they have less truck for really is Western policy. Western policy and politics and the pragmatism of politics often contradicts the high ideals. But that's a sort of a standard narrative of US or British politics around the world. In some ways. You know, there is this sort of essence that, you know, there's a lot of synergy, there's a lot of appeal. And there was a, quite a, an interesting case of a Iranian left wing thinker who basically, you know, if you think about it, his encounter with Britain is either the oil company or the embassy. I mean there's a very limited. Right. He then travels, he's given a visa and he goes off to Manchester for some reason, but Manchester in the 1940s. And he visits, you know, working men's clubs and he comes away and actually the report he writes from his visit is very striking. He sort of said, I never realized, you know, in a sense that actually ordinary people in this country are actually arguing for the same things we're arguing for. You know, I mean, he's suddenly gelled. And so you see that at all sort of different levels. And I think it goes back to this 19th century absorption of these ideas. They saw these ideas as much more attractive. They really were taken by, for want of a better word, the Whig narrative of history. I mean that's. It was about progress. You know, it was about. They weren't really taken in by the Soviet model. The Soviet model didn't give them that, you know, but the angry American model did. But they were constantly frustrated by the fact that they think that why don't you live up to the ideals, you know, why don't you. And I think that's, and, and that, that failure, that gap in a sense is something that the Soviets and the Russians and over were able to exploit. Which is, which is what happened what, what the White Revolution was in a sense was an attempt to try and, to try and ma. You know what, the Shah had this idea and it was, you know, flawed idea, obviously, but the idea was, I'm going to push through these ideas of a welfare state, a massive welfare system, a proper economic development. The Americans were very keen, obviously on economic as opposed to political development, interesting enough, partly because their own inheritance, but they pushed this sort of stuff through. And he said, but we're going to marry it to very keen sense of political ideas that are Persian. And of course, his idea of that was monarchy. You see what I mean? He said, monarchy is the way. We don't want all this democracy stuff now because of the economic growth. He sort of fed this idea and he started to believe it. Of course, many people weren't really that keen on it, you know, because they said, what happened to constitutional monarchy? You know, what happened to this 1906. Now, in 1973, you get a very pivotal moment for me, the apogee of the shah's power of 73. And why? Because that's when he's absolutely crucial in the exponential increase in the price of oil. So there's yon Kapur war, the Arab boycott of the West. The oil price goes up from something like, I think $1 a barrel to about $3. I don't know, 14, whatever. Major shock, Western sort of reeling and pain, whatever Shah doesn't get involved in that, interestingly, says quite. He says oil should not be used as a weapon. He says, very sort of high and mighty. By December, he goes, he gives a very famous press conference in the palace. And he says, right, I've decided it's dishonest and not fair that the price of a barrel of oil should, should be cheaper than the price of a barrel of Perrier water. So he says, so I'm going to increase the price. And he increases the price overnight from $3. So in a barrel to 11. This makes a bit of a mess, what it does, of course, for Iran. And this is the interesting thing, and I've talked to people about this, people who were actually in the plan and budget organization. The amount of investment, oil investment going into the Iranian economy between in the fourth development plan was $7 billion. So they had $7 billion of, of oil revenue to inject into the economy to increase infrastructure and so on. They had planned in the fifth development plan to start in 1974, to inject $21 billion. So threefold increase. The Shah with his price rise said, scrap that plan, $70 billion. Now think about it, 10 times the amount of extra capital, liquidity. What happens when the economy can't absorb it? Inflation, corruption, and that's basically the story of the 1970s. So Iran becomes the place to be. It's. It's just, you know, you go back, if you look on YouTube, you find some fantastic adverts from the period, you know, all these airlines flying to Iran. And Iran is basically a. The sort of destination of choice. But there are serious problems, and the problem is the economy begins to overheat and the Shah doesn't democratize. So what he does is he takes all this and he says, because I'm just the most successful king ever, you know, I am the new Cyrus the Great and I'm doing very well. I've given more welfare, I've given more material benefits to my people than anyone else, which, to be honest, in some ways was probably true, actually. But the fact is, if you're going to educate your public, and there were hundreds and thousands of young Iranians going through university in Iran abroad, many of them on scholarships, full scholarships, I mean, halcyon days, you know, full scholarships. Of course, what they want are jobs. And what they want is to get involved in politics. They want to share in the political process. And the Shah said, no, no, no, no, you know, you don't get involved. So I think these created really, really critical tensions which effectively unraveled in 1978 and 1978. A whole coalition of sort of opposition to the Shah builds up ahead of steam. Revolutions are never predictable. It could have happened earlier, it could have happened later. It may never happen to at all. But what happens is coalition of left, the religious sort of right in a sense, plus secular nationalists. The secular nationalists from 1906, who are now, frankly, just a fraction of their, you know, their old self. They're not really numerous, but they've seen as sort of the intellectual powers. On the one side, Khomeini. Ayatollah Khomeini had been sent into exile during the period of the White Revolution, comes back as leader of the sort of religious sort of right, if you put it that way, but basically as the symbolic leader of the entire revolution. Then there's a whole left, massive, massive amounts of people on what we might call the Islamic left or the secular left as well. They all push really to force the Shah at once to sort of reform, but really for the overthrow of the monarchy. I mean, that's basically what happens. And ultimately the reason why, in an interesting way, the Shah falls is because he is so shocked, I mean, honestly, so shocked by the fact that the people don't love him that he basically fails to act. He Stalls, I mean, the whole machinery of government stalls. And in 1978, and as one person put very rightly, he said, there's only one thing worse than being a dictator, and that is to pretend to be a dictator. One of the reasons is because he didn't actually like bloodshed. He wasn't keen on it. It's quite interesting when you look at it, if you compare it with Assad today and the Shah that then the Shah to his eternal credit in some ways wasn't interested in shooting. You know, he actually said I, you cannot build a throne on, on the blood of your people. And people would say, well, you know, that's very idealistic, your majesty, but I think we need to deal with the problem. You know, I mean, the point was by 1978, really it was too late. There was such a swelling of opposition to him, so that by January he goes on holiday, which is one of those lovely metaphors for autocrats going off. And off he goes. Well, there is an interesting thing about that, you know, and I mean one of the things about, about when you look at the monarchy in that sense, it's, it's absolutely right that there was this sort of sense that being a monarch put certain restrictions on you, that you were bound by certain moral codes, whereas the republic, you know, it's much more so. I mean, if you actually look at the French revolution itself, you know, in terms of what it was doing at the time, it has much more room for maneuver because the revolution is itself so important, so massive, such a historic event that you can take sort of historic action. Exactly what you see in the revolution in Iran, it's itself so the amount of blood, you know, people talk about the, the casualties and the lead up the revolution. We now have the figures of the people who were killed in the run up to the revolution. And it comes to in total 3,183, I think the figure is, and that is from 1963 to the date the Shah left. And the vast majority, obviously about 2000 in the year 1978-79, with the vast majority in Tehran, it wasn't really along. Now think about that. In comparison with the number of casualties that occurred after the Shah left, sort of unifying figure for the revolutionary movement goes. And left and right really go at it. They pile into a sort of civil war and you get mass executions. I mean you, you get a lot of bloodshed. To be fair to the Iranian revolution, it's not as bloody as the French or the Russian revolutions. The difference is it's on television, though, so everyone sort of watches it. And one of the critical factors in being on television is when they seize the American empire embassy on November 4, 1979, it becomes a global event. And as I say to people, you know, the Islamic revolution in Iran was the first revolution, in a sense, to be televised. And it obviously magnifies the effect of it. And it was a traumatic event for many, many people. It overturned sort of established order, but in a curious way as well, my arguments, it didn't actually remove the state. The. The Pahlavi state, as built by Reza Shah, is still there there. What they did is they replaced all the personnel and sort of developed it in different ways. But if you look at it, you have this new republic based on the French Fifth Republic, but on top of that, you then have this. This religious structure known as the Guardianship of the Jurist, which is a supreme leader. But that's what gives the game away, really, doesn't it? So it's the supreme leader, so you have a president, prime minister, you've got your judiciary, your parliament, whatever. And then on top of that, they added this layer of the supreme leader. And ultimately this Islamic supreme leader leader had ultimate authority over everything. So, you know, when people say it was the turban replaced the crown, in a way, it did. But the first eight years of that revolution were devoted to war. So the war with Iraq took up a huge amount of time. It was a very bloody conflict. They estimate188 or maybe 200, 000 Iranians died. That's in eight years. But it was the first time the Iranians were involved in what, you know, we might call a total war. I mean, the cities were involved. So, you know, and again, it's one of the founding myths of the Islamic revolution and the Islamic Republic. And so that sort of goes, you know, that goes through to 1988. What it does mean is that the political debate never gets settled. Khomeini is in charge, you know, Ayatollah Khomeini, he's very charismatic. He keeps things together. The war continues, the war ends. A year later, Khomeini dies. Not before sending a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, of course, just to keep things on a bit of a tenterhooks. And. And the real story of the Islamic public and the Islamic revolution from that time onwards is this contest between the republic on one side and the Islamic elements on the other side. And in my view, the high tide of the republican element was between 1997 and 2005, when Khatami was president. And since that time, we've really, unfortunately, I regret to say, have been slipping and sliding into this fight. Far more autocratic, revolutionary Islamic system, which, you know, I've written in places, has really returned the country, I'm sorry to say, to a sort of autocracy that the 19th century rajas would have been more familiar with, because the supreme leader has a sort of absolute authority that is divinely ordained. And whereas previous monarchs may have reigned by divine right, they never claim to be actually, in a sense, you know, the representative of. They might be legitimized by divine authority, but they didn't claim to exercise divine power. You know, I mean, that's the difference. And I think what you're seeing in Iran today is unfortunately the, the democratic elements that were fought for in the revolution being quashed under the weight of this revolutionary Islamist narrative, aided and abetted. I have to say, although I want to be very clear on this, I think the west in many ways has mishandled its relationships with Iran. I mean, plus sachange. But I think the central cause of this is internal, not external.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (70:11)

There's so much we could talk about, but let's talk about that sort of the strategic, the standoff with Iran at the moment. When you look at direction, strategic thinking in Iran before and after the revolution of the late 70s, is what strikes you continuity or, or was there an abrupt change?

Professor Ali Ansari (70:31)

Well, all revolutionaries want to claim that there's an abrupt change. You know, they all want to say, well, and, and there are elements of change. I mean, obviously there's a much stronger Islamist ideology. If you look at the regional scope they have now, you know, they're in Syria, they're in elements of Yemen, they have obviously Lebanon, they. And a lot of the way in which they try to justify themselves is justified on certain aspects of revolutionary ideology. On the other hand, if you look at, for instance, the Persian claims that the peace conference at Versailles in 1919 and what the Iranians are sort of playing around now in terms of where they consider to be their near abroad and where they consider to be legitimate areas of interest, there's a lot of continuity. They are the granddaddies of the region. They see themselves as having a particular role to play. They always say, we've been here here longer than anyone else and we'll be here longer than anyone else. And so they sort of feel they have certain rights. So there are strong elements of continuity, by the way. And, and if you look at, for instance, even in terms of ideology, there's a strong nationalist ideology reemerging also they tend to mix and match it with religious ideology. But the Shah was severely criticized, for instance, the last Shah for, you know, all this praise for Cyrus the Great. Well, I mean, Cyrus the Great's very popular now in Iran, you know, and you know, they try and obviously claim that he's got some sort of religious aura about him to make him legitimate. But nonetheless, you know, in Iran today, not only are these ancient figures much more popular, but because of the way in which societies develop mass communication, social media, so on and so forth, it's got a much more social base. I mean, that's what's interesting about it. Every year at the Persian New Year, March 21, Iranians gather. Iranians gather the two Messiahs, the Great, to celebrate the new year. The two message, the Great some four hours, you know, out of the year. It's a bit of a drive. They go there and thousands of people gather. You would have never had that 50 years ago, but now today, because that sort of passion for Iranian identity in that sense and nationalism, good and bad, but nonetheless that passion for that distinct identity has, is sort of grounded. It's social rather than political.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (72:29)

What do you want? Western policymakers want a better word to understand about Iranian history?

Professor Ali Ansari (72:34)

Well, it's in here. First of all, the west needs a clear strategy. And what I've always argued is it needs a long term strategy. It doesn't. You can't keep reacting to the, the Iranians. You know, you need to have an end game in sight. You need to know what you want and you need to know how to, you know, plan it, you know, carefully how to get there. And you need to understand the way in which history plays a role in everyday Iranians attitudes. And that doesn't mean, as I'm sorry to say, a number of US Presidents have done, is say the Iranians are the heirs to the great culture and then leave it at that. You know, they're a great civilization and then leave it at that. I mean, you've got to actually say, well, what does that mean? And what I've often said to them, I said, yes, you're right to sort of acknowledge and respect this. But you should also say in some ways, and I think a number of people here have done that, is say that, you know, Iranian culture and civilization has got a very, very strong strand of what we would call humanism in it. Very clear. You know, if you look at classical Persian poetry, if you look at books of government, mirrors of princes, what they're talking about a lot is, is the way in which you look after you treat people, you. You manage society, you govern for the welfare of all, and so on and so forth. Sadly, many, you know, rulers in Iran have ignored all this. There's a famous poem that I think Obama quoted. It's a poem by the, the classical poet Sadi where he says, you know, we are all branches of. All of us are from the bani Adam. We are all sons of Adam. Now, what I think Obama said is he sort of stopped there. He said, we're all sons of Adam, you know, so we're all part of one big habit. What actually the poem says is very interesting. And it's basically, it's a admonishing, you know, kings. He's basically saying, we're all sons of Adam. And because we're all sons of Adam, when one part hurts, the other cannot but feel the pain. Therefore, you know, take care in what you do, you know, and be sure to treat each side, you know, well. So, you know, my point, it's actually, in some ways, it's the perfect, perfect poem for humanitarian intervention. Actually, you know, it's not a poem saying, oh, we're all, you know, part of one happy family and we all need to live together. It's actually a much, much more pointed comment. Now, Iranians know all this. They know their literature. They're well versed in their culture. They know their history. And if you look at the earlier British diplomats, politicians who operated in Iran, they were well versed in that. They really got in under the skin and they began to understand, understand it. And I think today one of the problems we have is that we don't have the time anymore to actually really get under the skin and understand that cultural sort of context. We don't have enough linguists and we don't have enough people who understand the cultural context of that language.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (75:12)

Well, we're lucky to have you. Thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. What remind the book is.

Professor Ali Ansari (75:17)

The book is now is modern Iran since 1797. And you'll get 200 years of history in very, very brief time. It's an easy read, I assure you.

Dan Snow (Interviewer) (75:28)

Excellent. Well, thank you very much.

Professor Ali Ansari (75:29)

Come on.

Dan Snow (75:31)

Well, everyone, that's it. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much to Professor Al Ansari for coming on this podcast and being such a great friend. As I've said in other podcasts, please let me know if you need any more on the historical context for all the events that we're seeing, seeing in 2026. Hard to believe we're only two weeks in. It's certainly all happening. So watch this space folks, or listen to this space folks, and we're going to make sure you get all the history you need. Make sure to subscribe and share with your friends. If you think this could help someone else make sense of it all. Goodbye for now.

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