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Hayden's History Hour Ep. 4: A Quick And Dirty History of Iran
00:59:53
On this edition of Hayden's History Hour, Federalist Staff Editor Hayden Daniel traces the evolution of Iran from its inception through the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which produced the regime the world knows today. Join Daniel as he explores the...
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This is Julian Edelman from Games With Names. I want to take a second to talk about something that's personal to me. I've had the privilege of working closely with Robert Kraft for a long time, and one thing I've always respected is how seriously he takes up standing up to hate. As a Jewish athlete, my identity is something I am proud of, but I also know what it feels like to be singled out for it. That's why this new commercial for the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate that aired during the Big Game really hit home. It's about showing up for someone when they're targeted, even if you don't have the perfect words. And sometimes standing next to someone is enough. And you can show support by sharing the Blue Square
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Foreign. Welcome back to another edition of Hayden's History Hour. I'm your host, Hayden Daniel, editor of the Federalist. As always, you can email the show at RadioThe Federalist.com and follow us on Twitter Federalist FDRLST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast and of course, to the premium version of our website as well. Today we're going to be talking about the history of Iran. Now, it's quite an expansive subject, but you may have noticed on social media, I certainly have, that there's been a lot of, I hesitate to say misinformation, but a lot of falsehoods and sort of half truths about the history of Iran, given the war going on right now. And I just wanted to make this episode to sort of clear up a lot of that and to explain some things. Some of the more popular myths that have been spread around that I've seen at least include that Islam didn't come to Iran, but for, you know, maybe 100 years ago, certainly not true. If you know anything about the Middle east or that Iran has been a peaceful place for centuries and centuries. In this attack by the by the United States has sort of broken that sort of tranquility in the area, which again, is totally ridiculous and we'll, you'll get a pretty clear picture of that throughout this episode. So I just want to start from the beginning and go until the revolution in 1979, the sort of the birth of the regime that we see today. Now that's 2600 years of history. And we've only got about an hour to cram it in, so I'm going to space it out a little bit. There are some very important points that we are going to sort of drill into. But overall, I'm not going to spend super long time on, say, a lot of the medieval Persian history because it's, it's less relevant to the story that we're trying to tell. And this can't be a three, four hour podcast. It very could easily be. But for brevity's sake, we are going to stick to the major points for any people who are inclined to, to say in the comments, oh, well, you missed this. Or missed this. We're just hitting the greatest hits, if you will, so bear with me on that. So for all intents and purposes, our story starts with Persia. Now, of course, Iran today is not called Persia. It's called, well, Iran. And we will explain why it's no longer called Persia. It was called Persia for almost its entire history up until the early 20th century. But we will get to that near the end. But we are talking now about the peoples who are called the Persians, who originate from southern. But we are starting with the Persians, the successors of the Medes, if you will. And the Persians really are the true genesis of Iran as a civilization. They're the first people to really sort of put their stamp permanently on history from Iran. And that's all thanks to a guy named Cyrus the Great. He lived in the early 6th century and he builds the largest empire the world had ever seen up to that point in the mid 6th century B.C. so the 500 B.C. again, to sort of orient you in this period of history. This is before classical Greece as we know it, and this is just after the, the exile of the Hebrews to Babylon and then their return. They actually returned during the, during the Persian Empire. But Cyrus defeats multiple established empires like the Medes, who had established their own empire, the Babylonians again, and the Lydians, who live in what is today Turkey. His successors then built on that success conquering land in Central Asia. So Turkmenistan, parts of Pakistan and so forth. Egypt and into the Balkans. Actually. They actually do hold land in Europe. Not a very large portion of land, but land nonetheless. What the Persians do once they've conquered this gigantic empire for the time is they begin to create innovations that would be, that would be emulated by basically every other empire that came after it. From Alexander's empire, which we're going to talk about here in a minute, to the Romans, to all the successors of the Romans. Basically they're the people who sort of invent, at least for the Western world, the, the, the building blocks of a multinational continent spanning empire. And that includes a sophisticated tax system, mostly run in sort of very similar to feudal lines in that they have, they have local lords who pay tax to the central government. And they are one of the first major centralized states in the world, at least the Western world. And to run that empire, they have a dedicated bureaucracy which is again relatively new. They establish a postal system. This was actually one of the best innovations of the Persian Empire. They had this very sophisticated sort of courier and pony express type postal system, if you're familiar with the pony express from American history. And they spread the use of coinage as a currency system. Before this, coinage was relatively rare. It was still mostly barter, a barter economy in most places. And currency had really been sort of innovated by the Lydians again in Turkey before this. But Persians then take that idea and then spread it around the entire ancient Middle East. And then of course everybody uses it. And that includes bimetallism. This is actually a new thing that they invent is bimetallism using both silver and gold coins. And of course, basically all societies after that use silver and gold until we get to fiat currency. And almost all these innovations become universal after the, after the Persians adopt them. The Persian Empire, this empire established by Cyrus the Great is ruled by a dynasty called the Achaemenids. And it's important to point out that because there are multiple different states referred to as Persia throughout history and they're slightly different states and they're usually among historians referred to by their ruling dynasty just to not cause confusion. And we're going to do that here today just, just so it doesn't solve, cause confusion and have, you know, you might think that, oh, this is a very long continuous state. And in fact it's, it's really not. There are very important differences between each of these ancient and then medieval and then modern states. It's not like the country established by cyrus in the mid 6th century is the same one that's around in 1100 A.D. so I just want to make that clear there. But what most people probably know the Persians from is their interactions with the Greeks and almost Everyone knows about this because of pop culture and the two invasions that happened in the early 5th century BC. The Greeks had set up colonies on the western coast of what is today Turkey. And once those became part of the Persian Empire after the conquests of Cyrus the Great, those Greek citizens remained there and were citizens until they revolted and they revolted against the Persians. And the main city states like Athens provided aid to those rebels. And once those rebels were crushed by the Persians, the Persian kings were not particularly happy that the Greeks had helped out these rebels. So they decided to get revenge on them by invading and then bringing them under under the Persian heel. The first invasion takes place under Darius I. And that is beaten back at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC. And yes, that is where the notion of a marathon race comes from. After the battle, a courier was sent to Athens to proclaim the victory. And he ran the exact number of miles that is one of today's marathons. And then he shouts victory, victory. And falls over dead. And that's the story of how a marathon came to be. But I digress. And then the second invasion come much more today. Famous invasion comes under the Persian king Xerxes in 480 BC. And that of course includes the extremely famous last stand of the Spartans and all the other Greek soldiers there. There are about, you know, several thousand other Greek soldiers there, but nobody ever talks about that at Thermopylae. And then the sea battle in which the Persians are finally defeated at Salamis and the burning of Athens. Athens is actually burned down by the Persians after they win the battle of Thermopylae. But Greeks don't give in. They keep fighting. They win the land battle at Plataea and then when the sea battle at Salamis and are able to push the Persians out of Greece. And that is sort of the beginning of the Greek golden age. The flowering of Greek civilization really starts after those two victories at Marathon and then in the invasion of 480. Now though the Persians are defeated in those two, those two invasions, they're not particularly weakened. Persians are still basically the sole superpower in the world for another 150 years. But the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia is eventually defeated and conquered by Alexander the Great in his great campaigns from 336 to 330 BC. And of course he has a string of incredible victories against gigantic odds. You know, armies of hundred thousand, two hundred thousand Persians against his tiny little Macedonian force of maybe 30 to 40,000. And he pulls off these Fantastic victories and wipes away the great Persian Empire and takes it all for himself. But of course, Alexander was mortal and he dies in 323 BC and he has no adult male heirs. Important to note, he did have an infant son. But Alexander's generals begin to squabble over who will be the regent and who will govern each of these provinces of the former Persian empire that Alexander has conquered.
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This is Julian Edelman from Games with Names. I want to take a second to talk about something that's personal to me. I've had the privilege of working closely with Robert Kraft for a long time and one thing I've always respected is how seriously he takes up standing up to hate. As a Jewish athlete, my identity is something I am proud of. But I also know what it feels like to be singled out for it. That's why this new commercial for the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate that aired during the Big Game really hit home. It's about showing up for someone when they're targeted, even if you don't have the perfect words. And sometimes standing next to someone is enough and you can show support by sharing the Blue Square.
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The part of the empire that we consider today as Iran falls under the control of Seleucus, who is one of Alexander's top generals. This Seleucid dynasty, which is Greek, it is not Persian, rules the lands that again we think of of Iran, plus Syria and Iraq and parts of Turkey really until the mid second century B.C. so about 170 years of Greek rule in what we today consider Iran. You might know the Seleucids from the Maccabee revolt in Judea, from the book of first and Second Maccabees in the Bible. If you're Catholic, Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox Protestants don't have those books in their Bibles. That's a different story about why they don't. So we will move on. But that's just some context for those who are Catholic or Orthodox. The Seleucids lose Persia to the Parthians, who are an Iranian ethnic group from northeastern Iran. These are mostly semi nomadic people. They are a very cavalry and horse culture type of people and they are able to conquer the weakening Seleucid state relatively quickly and form their own empire in what is today Iran is Iran, Iraq, parts of Azerbaijan and Armenia, parts of eastern Syria, and then Pakistan, Afghanistan and other parts of Central Asia. So it's another very large sort of empire there in the, in the central Middle east that they're able to, to control. And the Parthians would become one of the main enemies of the late Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. And they, their specific dynasty basically is, is the main rival to rome for about 300 years. Long standing rivalry here and Parthia is actually somewhat responsible for the downfall of the first Triumvirate and therefore the, the republic itself. The first triumvirate was between Julius Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. And Crassus is very jealous about all the, the glory that was won by Pompey and his military campaigns and Caesar in his accomplishment. So Crassus wants some military glory. So he arranges for himself to become governor of Syria. And once he is in that office he raises an army and then invades, picks a fight with Parthians and then he is, he and his army are basically annihilated by the Parthians. And the death of Crassus of course ends the first Triumvirate and sets Caesar and Pompey on sort of a core, an inevitable course towards, towards an inevitable showdown really that results in the Roman civil war that ends with the death of Julius Caesar and the death of the republic itself. Multiple emperors, multiple, multiple important people. Mark Antony planned on a campaign against the Parthians. It never came to be multiple emperors tried to defeat the Parthians. None of them were permanent. The Emperor Trajan in the early second century AD was able actually to capture the Parthian capital and hold what is today Iraq for some time. But ultimately that was untenable and the Parthians proved extremely resilient to the Roman advances. And there really are the only major organized state that is able to resist the Romans. Like all the other people you think of as, as resisting the Roman conquests are mostly tribal peoples either in northern Scotland or in the Sahara or in Germany. Those aren't really like big complex states with cities and infrastructure and things like that. They're, they're mostly tribal esque people. But the Parthians are the only major state that was able to resist Roman conquest. Whereas you know, the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Seleucids themselves, those were all very complex, sophisticated ancient states and they were all conquered and incorporated into the Roman Empire. But the Parthians were able to stay independent. Now the Parthian dynasty comes to an end in 224 AD when it's overthrown by another dynasty called the Sassanids. And they're even more formidable as an enemy to the Romans. And they inflict some extremely costly defeats on the Roman Empire during their rule almost for over 400 years of rule over the their Persian, their version of the Persian Empire. One Sassanid emperor, Shapur the first, even captured the Roman emperor at the time, Valerian in battle in 260 AD. One account reported that Valerian was made to be Shapur's servant, even being his human footstool, to prop his feet up on the back of this Roman emperor, the man who had once been the most powerful man in the world. Another said that Shapur killed Valyrian by having molten gold poured down his throat and then having Valyrian stuffed and displayed in his palace as a macabre piece of taxidermy. So the Roman Sassanid rivalry came to a head in the early 7th century A.D. when the Sassanid Emperor Khosrow II invades the eastern Roman Empire in 602 AD. His forces gradually capture Syria, Lebanon, what is today Israel, Egypt and large parts of Turkey. They even lay siege to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. And another point here I'm going to be calling the Eastern Roman Empire the Byzantines from now on. They are the same thing. So that's just a little note. The Sassanids also induce barbarian tribes like the Slavs and the Avars, who were nomadic people in the northern Balkans at the time, to attack the Byzantine Empire from the north, since the Byzantines also controlled what is today Bulgaria and Greece. So and Constantinople, which is today Istanbul, is getting attacked basically, but from two sides. From the west, from the European side by the Slavs and Avars, and from the eastern side by the Sassanids. And this is a pretty dire situation for the Byzantines. Almost their entire empire has been conquered by the Sassanids. Their capital is under siege. It all seems hopeless. But then the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, instead of facing the Persians head on and trying to break the siege and taking on the cream of the Persian army, sails around that actually lands in what is today northern Turkey and then marches down through the mountains and into Iraq. If you've got a map with map nearby or if you can pull one up, this is really helpful. Into northern Iraq. This is a very an astonishing basically special operations missions or the ancient world's version of a special operations mission. Taking an entire army all the way around by sea and then landing behind the enemy and going that far into their heartland basically. And there he defeats the Sassanids in the decisive battle of Nineveh in northern Iraq in 627. So this is a 25 year war up to this point, extremely long, extremely costly. And this one basically this one defeat and his subsequent victories reverse all the Persian gains and win the war for the Byzantines by the next year in 628. Now this 26 year war devastated both sides and it's hard not to. It's hard not to exaggerate how devastating this was for both sides. Both sides were basically bankrupt. They had lost the best parts of their military. Their lands had been ravaged and raided and looted. So both empires are extremely exhausted. But the Sassanid Persians got it the worst basically mostly because their Emperor Khosrow II had been deposed and killed by one of his sons near the end of the war for basically because he was losing. And this caused an additional devastating civil war within the empire. By the time the dust settled in 632, the Persian assassinated Persian Empire is on its last legs basically. And this is basically the worst time to be a weak power in the Middle east because a new power was rising to the south in the Arabian Peninsula.
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This is Julian Edelman from Games With Names. I want to take a second to talk about something that's personal to me. I've had the privilege of working closely with Robert Kraft for a long time, and one thing I've always respected is how seriously he takes up standing up to hate. As a Jewish athlete, my identity is something I am proud of, but I also know what it feels like to be singled out for it. That's why this new commercial for the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate that aired during the Big Game really hit home. It's about showing up for someone when they're targeted, even if you don't have the perfect words. And sometimes standing next to someone is enough and you can show support by sharing the Blue Square.
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Well, before we get to that, I'd like to make a note on free Islamic Persian religion because I think that that really combats one of the mate, one of the major sort of fonts of misinformation that's been going around on the Internet since the Time of the Achaemenid Persians. So middle of the 6th century BC 5000 BC the Persians had primarily, up till now 632 AD Persians had primarily followed a religion called Zoroastrianism. Now Zoroastrianism is a religion founded by the Iranian prophet Zoroaster. There's some debate on when exactly it was founded. Some scholars believe it was created between 1500 and 1100 BC, which for context is within the window of the siege of Troy in Greece or the book of Genesis in the Bible or not Genesis, exodus, sorry. While others argue it was founded much later, in between 700 and 600 BC. So right before Cyrus's conquest. Zoroastrianism is a proto monotheistic religion. There is a supreme God called Uhura Mazda and there's a Satan like figure of evil that is opposed to their supreme God. But there are also different spirits and little local deities and things that sort of get integrated into it. They had fire temples and fire was seen as an especially sacred element, kind of similar to water. With Christianity and Judaism, fire is seen as sort of this purifying element, the same way water is through baptism and Christianity. The thing about Zoroastrianism, it never really spreads outside of Persia. It's not a particularly evangelizing or proselytizing religion. It really just stays in one little geographic area. There are still Zoroastrians today, there are about a hundred thousand today, mostly in India. Now there were other religions that came out of Persia that did spread and were actually somewhat competitors with Christianity in the middle to late Roman Empire for dominance. One of them was Mithraism, which was very popular with the Roman army in the late empire and was sort of this mystery cult kind of religion with very selective membership and secret rituals that were done behind closed doors. And people who were not part of the religion really didn't know what exactly they believed or what their, their rights were and things like that. And we still really don't know that much about it. Because of that. They didn't really write anything down. The other major faith is Manichaeism. It came out of Persia in the third century AD. And it believed in an internal struggle between light and darkness, between spiritualism and materialism. And a bit of a synthesis of all the major religions around at the time and was more kind of based on vibes than any actual kind of doctrine from my research. That's the best way to kind of describe it in today's, in today's parlance. But all of these religions would be swept away by Islam, which comes out of Arabia in, in 632 AD. By the time of the death of Muhammad in 632, most of the Arabian peninsula had come under the control of Islam. Muhammad's successor was the first caliph, Abu Bakr, and he launched the invasion of the weakened Sassanid Empire in 633 AD. The Muslims scored multiple decisive victories over the Sassanids and over the course of 18 years conquered all of their territories. All of Iraq and Iran and large chunks of Central Asia are conquered in that campaign. At the same time, the Caliphate is also conquering most of the Byzantine's territory that had just been reconquered from the Sassanids. The Byzantines had just retaken Syria, Judea, Egypt, and almost immediately the Muslims come in and retake it, or not retake it, but take it for themselves and it's basically lost forever to the Byzantines. And that really begins the slide of the Byzantines toward for their eventual destruction. This caliphate is replaced. It's known as the Rashidun Caliphate and it's replaced by the umayyad caliphate in 661 AD. They're based in Damascus and they continue the expansion of Islam into Central Asia, India and across North Africa. And they're the ones who invade Spain very famously and they also siege Constantinople, but are ultimately unsuccessful. They're then replaced less than 90 years later by the Abbasids. In the meantime, Iran is slowly being Islamified through tax incentives and proselytization efforts. Under the first few centuries of Muslim rule. Iran actually does pretty well despite being a conquered people. The Persians make significant contributions to math, science, poetry and art. Perhaps most famously is the beginnings of the Thousand and One Nights, the sort of deck of fairy tales that are, that are sort of first compiled during this time. Of course you have very famous stories like Ali baba and the 40 thieves and what will become the story of Aladdin within those, within those stories. But that comes about during this portion of Iranian history. The Abbasid Caliphate gradually becomes decentralized and different dynasties, sort of regional powers within Iran sort of struggle for power. And until the Seljuk Turks come out of Central Asia and create their own empire that is also extremely decentralized. And these sort of local dynasties continue their infighting. And Iran is definitely not a unified place. Even though if you look at a map of the time period, it looks like, oh well, it's under the control of a giant empire. But in reality this empire has almost zero centralized control and it's just a bunch of local warlords kind of fighting amongst themselves and ruling their own little pet kingdoms, if you will. Eventually, another Central Asian empire, the Khwarezmian Empire, takes control briefly over Persia. And then the Mongols come. The Khwarezmians insult Mongol dignitaries to say the least. And in retaliation, Genghis Khan launches a full invasion in 1219 AD conquering the entirety of the Khwarezmian Empire in just two years. The Mongols are exceptionally brutal, as they are everywhere. They conquered to any cities that dared to resist them. And it's estimated even by modern scholars that they kill millions of people in their conquest of this empire. Millions of people in Central Asia and Iran were killed by the Mongols, which of course devastates the country and sets it back probably centuries. A sequence of successor Mongol Khanates after Genghis Khan dies, his relatives, much like Alexander, squabble over his empire and it eventually slowly breaks apart into. Into smaller kingdoms. And so the sort of sequence of Mongol kingdoms and native rulers kind of vie for control of Iran for the next couple of centuries. And we're not really going to go into each dynasty because it get, it would get kind of repetitive. It would just be, well, this dynasty took over for a little bit and then this dynasty did in this dynasty and so on and so forth. So we're going to fast forward just a little bit until the Safavid dynast comes to power in 1501. And they're the first people, first native Persian people, to really unify what we call today as Iran in quite a while, probably since the, since the destruction of the Sassanid Empire in 633. The Safavids are able to create a powerful state that serves as a primary rival to the Ottomans in the Middle east in the 16th century. We often think of Europe as being sort of bulwark against the ottomans in the 16th century. But the Safavids also gave the Ottomans quite a bit of trouble on the opposite end of the Ottoman Empire. And it took quite a bit of time and energy for the Ottomans to really sort of suppress the Safavids and push them back to what we today consider Iran.
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This is Julian Edelman from Games With Names. I want to take a second to talk about something that's personal to me. I've had the privilege of working closely with Robert Kraft for a long time, and one thing I've always respected is how seriously he takes up standing up to hate. As a Jewish athlete, my identity is something I am proud of. But I also know what it feels like to be singled out for it. That's why this new commercial for the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate that aired during the big game really hit home. It's about showing up for someone when they're targeted, even if you don't have the perfect words. And sometimes standing next to someone is enough and you can show support by sharing the Blue Square.
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Probably the most important event during the Safavid dynasty that we really need to talk about is that the first Shah Ismail, the first, makes Shia Islam the official religion of the country. Now I don't have, I don't have a whole lot of time to explain the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam. And it's really complicated and it's not super duper relevant to what we're talking about today. But it's important to know that the vast majority of Muslims on the planet are Sunni. The only countries that are majority Shia are Iran, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan. So only four out of several dozen countries that are majority Muslim. Sunnis and Shiites don't particularly like each other and are often in conflict. It's for simplifying it very, very matter of factly and, and probably oversimplifying it maybe a little bit too much. Think of it as the relations between Catholics and Protestants a couple centuries go back when we had our wars of religion in Europe in the 17th, 16th and 17th century. It' kind of hostility that the Sunnis and Shiites had or and in some cases still have. Much of the violence in Iraq during the Iraq war was caused due to tensions between Sunnis and Shia Muslims in Iraq. And Iran of course was was supporting the Shia militias in Iran in Iraq to do a lot of terrible things to Sunnis. The Safavids are able to restabilize Iran after the chaos of the medieval period overall. And they're sort of the beginning of the modern Iranian state as we know it. They rule for almost 300 years. They're replaced by the Qajar dynasty. In 1789, the Qajars move the capital to Tehran. And this is where Europeans start to enter the picture. Note the Qajars are not ethnically Persian, they are Turkic. So they are originally from Central Asia. Now this is very interesting. In this period in history, in the late 18th century and into the 19th century, you have this pattern of non native rulers ruling over certain ethnic groups. Probably the most famous is the Qing dynasty in China. They were ruled by Manchus from Manchuria, not actually ethnic Chinese emperors. And Then in the 19th century, multiple European states are ruled by German nobles, most notably Greece Romania, Bulgaria, and the royal family of Sweden is actually French, thanks to Napoleon. So that's just a little quirky thing that happens in this period in history. Qajara, Persia, which really sort of cements sort of modern Iran's borders. During its rule was one of the states caught in the middle of what is now known as the Great Game. Now, the Great Game is a competition for influence in Central Asia and Iran between Britain, which has control of British India, which is India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and Burma, and the Russian Empire, which is looking to expand south. It loses most of Azerbaijan and Armenia to the Russians in the early 19th century. And this, like I said, this is when Iran basically takes on the borders that we know today. Russia wanted to expand its territory south into Central Asia, where it takes Kazakhstan, it takes what is today Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, et cetera. These weren't actual states at the time, but it takes the land that would become those, and they start to push into what is today northeastern Iran and into Afghanistan. While the British wanted to limit Russian influence in the region so that it would not be so close to the crown jewel of the British Empire, which is India. India is by far most valuable colony Britain had in its entire history. India made British so much money. It's. It's an episode all within itself. It might be a future episode. So, and as a reminder, again, Pakistan is part of British India. So if you look at a map of, of Central Asia and the Middle east, if you. If you take into account that Pakistan was part of British India and what was owned by Russia and then the Soviet Union, they're a lot closer than, than you would think by today's borders. If you look at a map of Afghanistan, you'll notice that there's like a little strip of land that, that extends between it and China and it separates Central Asia with. With Pakistan. And that little strip of land there is there because of the Great game. It is there to have Afghanistan be a little buffer state between British India and the Russian Empire. And they had that little. That little strip of land there. They gave it to Afghanistan so that British India and the Russian Empire wouldn't touch. They didn't want the borders to touch because that increases the chances for a border incident and that increases the chances for war breaking out. The British definitely did not want that to happen. They did not want Russians invading the crown jewel of their empire. Tensions between Russia and Britain continue to mount over their influence in Afghanistan and Iran, especially until the early 20th century, in which you get the. They come to a deal in 1907 called the Anglo Russian Convention. And that's when the two powers sit down and try to hash out their grievances in the region and try to come to a peaceable settlement to avoid war. Of course, Persia is not invited to this, even though the things being decided are extremely important to to Persia's future. Persia remains independent at the end of this agreement, but all of northern Iran, including capital Tehran, now fell into a Russian sphere of influence. That means Russia has both economic and political power within those within those regions. Meanwhile, southeast Persia becomes a British sphere of influence. So over half the country basically gets absorbed into either Russian or British spheres of influence. And Persians really just can't do anything about it because their military compared to Britain and Russia are extremely weak and they would lose an actual war. So they just kind of have to accept it. Russia also promised not to meddle in Afghanistan and Tibet based de facto bringing those two regions into the British sphere of influence and securing the northern border of British India. The next year, in 1908, the Anglo Persian Oil Company is established and begins operations in Persia. This is extremely important that we'll come back in just a few minutes. Today that company is known as BP British Petroleum. Now, internally, Persia is also going through a lot of changes independent of the foreign policy situation. From 1905 to 1911, Persia attempted to establish a modern parliamentary state in keeping with European trends. And trying to really trying to court public opinion in Britain to sort of protect them from the Russians is one of the more cynical reasons for trying to do this. The Resulting Constitution of 1906 was very liberal for the time, especially very liberal for a Muslim majority country. It established a bicameral legislature, it established equality before the law, guaranteed the right to personal property, guaranteed a very limited amount of free speech. You couldn't blaspheme against Islam other than that you could speak freely on general political matters. And it gave people the right to a trial. The Shah at the time signed the new constitution, but his son, who took the throne the next year after the old Shah died, abolished the constitution because he didn't like how it impugned upon his power. The British initially supported the constitutionalists because again, the Persian liberals had kind of appealed to Britain as a, as a potential benefactor for oh look, we're reforming and becoming more Western and more enlightened. Please help us. But the British eventually give way to pragmatism and side with the Shah. And the Russians started out supporting the Shah. They did not want a liberal state right next to them that they couldn't push around and the Russians provided troops in support of the monarchy. Russian troops then helped the Shah bombard the Persian Parliament which caused them to disperse and flee the capital. And they pushed the constitutionalists out of Iran in 1908 or Tehran, not Iran itself. Pro constitution forces regrouped in the northwest of the country and in 1909 were able to mass enough strength to march on the capital again and force the Shah's abdication in favor of his young son. So in four years we've had three different rulers not great for realm stability. The new Shah's ministers once again enlisted the help of Russian troops and in 1911 forcibly disbanded the parliament and de facto overruled the constitution for the next 30 years. The 1906 Constitution is technically still the law of the land, but in reality it's just a scrap of paper. But it would officially remain the Persian constitution until 1979. While officially neutral in World War I, the British and Russian zones of influence caused Persia to be basically dragged into the war against its will to devastating effects. The Ottomans invaded the eastern part of the country early in the war and stick around for quite a long time up until almost till the war's end. The war causes a devastating famine to break out in Persia in 1917 that basically no one ever talks about or mentions. It's very understudied and underappreciated part of World War I, especially even in the Middle Eastern theater, which is itself very unappreciated. Apart from Gallipoli and Lawrence of Arabia, estimates vary. But up to 2 million people may have died in this famine in Iran in 1917. And the natural instability that comes from that badly shook the Qajar regime and sort of set them up to be supplanted. And that eventually comes in a coup in 1921 by the Persian Cossack Brigade, which was supported by the Russians. It was then led by a certain Reza Pahlavi. The British backed the coup, but their level of involvement is heavily disputed by historians. Cannot find a really consensus about how involved the British were in this plot. Reza had been appointed to lead the Cossack brigade by British General Edmund Ironside, very famous British general in World War I. And Ironside is believed to have given advice to the plotters. Again, how much and how involved he was personally in this plot specifically is a subject of intense debate. Pahlavi is able to take full control of the country in 1925. Reza then begins to modernize the country in the 1930s. Reza also formally asked that all foreign governments begin referring to the country as Iran in 1935. And this is where we get the transition from calling the country Persia to Iran.
- [49:08]
A
This is Julian Edelman from Games With Names. I want to take a second to talk about something that's personal to me. I've had the privilege of working closely with Robert Kraft for a long time, and one thing I've always respected is how seriously he takes up standing up to hate. As a Jewish athlete, my identity is something I am proud of. But I also know what it feels like to be singled out for it. That's why this new commercial for the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate that aired during the big game really hit home. It's about showing up for someone when they're targeted, even if you don't have the perfect words. And sometimes standing next to someone is enough and you can show support by sharing the Blue Square.
- [49:53]
C
Persia is what had been referred to by, again, Orvin, 2500 years at this point by basically every other country, mostly because that's what the Greeks called it and everybody just went off of the Greek term. And because of that, because it was associated so much with the Greeks and the Greek understanding of Persia, it was seen changing the name to Iran, which means the land of the Aryans, not the Nazi Aryans, but different people. So the move towards Iran was seen as sort of reclaiming their national identity. Like this name is now our name for our own people, not the name for us that was. That was used by others. And Iran is an old Persian word that means, as I said, the land of the Aryans, not the Nazi Aryans. Speaking of Nazis, the British and Soviets invade in 1941, even though, again, Iran is officially neutral. The invasion took place only two months after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. And one of the primary objectives for this British and Soviet invasion was to keep a supply, supply line open between the Soviets and the British from British India to the Soviet Union. Kind of ironic there that now they want to be even more connected, whereas 40 years before they wanted to be separate. The Allies also wanted to make sure the Persian oil fields were secured and prevent any German influence in the area. The Iranians, of course, were faced with overwhelming force on two sides and saw how futile that was and didn't even put up a fight. Reza Pahlavi was forced to abdicate after he refused to hand over German diplomatic officials in the country over to Allied forces. German officials have been trying to subtly influence Iran. Of course, it wasn't particularly successful, but it was enough to spook the British and the Russians. The British initially wanted to put the Qajars back in power, but Reza's son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi took the throne instead. After Reza's departure, the country returns to the semblance of constitutional monarchy. They kind of say, all right, we're gonna reintroduce the old constitution and try to make Iran at least somewhat like a Western style constitutional monarchy, not so much different from Britain. And because of that, a certain Mohammad Mosaddegh becomes prime minister in 1951. Now he unleashes a package of reforms that are designed to modernize Iran and bring it more under the control of the Iranian people and sort of push back on foreign influence within Iran, mostly British influence and to some extent Soviet influence. Some of his reforms include land and tax reform. But his biggest move was the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry which had been developed and mostly controlled by the Anglo Persian Oil Company. Again, that is today's BP. In response to the threat to British oil interests, MI6 and the CIA plotted a coup against Mosaddegh. The British and Americans also feared the growing influence of communism in Iran, especially in northern Iran that was still under that sort of de facto Russian sphere of influence. Supporters of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, supported by the British and the Americans, launched the coup in December of 1953. It should also be noted that the radical mullahs in Iran also supported the overthrow of Mosaddegh because of his liberal reforms, especially his land and tax reforms. Mossadegh's party was effectively shut out of the 1954 election. And the British and US empowered Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to rule as a monarch largely independent of the Parliament. This is basically the final death of that 1906 constitution. It will not come back in any real form. The US also began to financially support the Shah's reign, helping to prop up his government for the next 26 years. And the US starts being sort of supplant Britain as the main benefactor of Iran during this time, mostly to counteract Soviet influence in Iran and in larger Middle East Iran agreed to the consortium agreement of 1954, which gave 50% of Iran's oil shares to a group of Western oil companies which included bp, Royal Dutch Shell, which is the Netherlands state oil company and five major American oil companies like Exxon and Texco. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's reign continues until he decides to launch the white revolution in 1963 in an effort once again another effort to modernize the country. These very rarely go well if you haven't picked up on that. The reforms included land reform to break down Iran's basically feudal style agricultural system. They're still living in the Middle Ages when it comes to agricultural production. It aimed to create bridges and dams, basically build up the nation's infrastructure. It included a concerted effort to eliminate diseases like malaria in the rural parts of the country. It tried to boost literacy, especially again in the rural parts of the country. And it introduced secular education, the enfranchisement of women, very important judicial reform that basically moved it towards a more secular judicial system and a general industrial expansion. And this resulted, especially that last one, resulted in high economic growth for the country throughout the 60s and into the 70s. And literacy and school enrollment both boomed in the 60s and 70s. That's why you see those old pictures of pre revolution Iran with all these people going to college and school and all that kind of stuff and adopting more Western habits and dress and things like that. This is where that comes about from the white revolution of 1963. But critically the oil crisis of the early 1970s. Some of you may remember that gas lines and things. Iran was a member of opec and OPEC was primarily responsible for that oil shortage. Now this heavily strained US Iran relations and kind of cripples it and lays the groundwork for the regimes poppling in the 1979 revolution. Like this fracture that happens over the oil crisis loses Pahlavi quite a bit of support in America. The rural landlords of Iran opposed the reforms of the White Revolution and so did the hyper conservative Shia clergy. The education and legal reforms threatened their power in rural areas. Before this, the Shia Islamic clergy had basically had a monopoly on education and had mostly been they were the judicial system, especially in rural areas. And these new reforms basically threatened to cripple their power. And of course they also oppose women's suffrage and the continuing influence, the rising influence of the west in Iran overall. Now of course the most vocal critic of the White Revolution was Ruhollah Khomeini. He left Iran in 1964, right after the White Revolution begins and he lived in Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Turkey and France. As is often the case, these rapid reforms caused quite a bit of tension within Iranian society. Again, the more the young and the more liberal minded were all forum and very supportive, while the vast majority, the more religious conservative population were skeptical at best and outright hostile at worst and were a fertile ground for these, these hyper conservative Shia clergy to sort of whip them up into an anti Pahlavi frenzy by 1977, disparate groups, including liberals and communists had allied together with the, with the hyper conservative Shia clergy to oppose the Pahlavi regime. Very strange bedfellows in this, in this opposition to Pahlavi's reforms. Liberals thought he wasn't going enough. The communists, of course, really thought he wasn't going far enough. Of course wanted to inaugurate in total communist revolution. While of course the hyper conservatives think he's gone way too far. We need to dial the clock back. But they're all united in their opposition to Halawi. Overall. Mass demonstrations took place in 1977 and continue into 1978. And the critical event of these, these protests and riots is a fire in a movie theater that killed 400 people in August 1978. Now we basically know for sure that it was set by Islamic militants who were, who were allied to the radical mullahs. However, most people at the time believed that the operation had been a false flag by the Shah's secret police force. And this police force was very shady, very ruthless, very, could be very brutal. So at the time it was somewhat believable that they had, that the secret police force had sort of set the fire, killed all these people to try and drum up support against the Islamists. But today we basically know that, no, it really, it was a legitimate attack, but this was really the turning point in the revolution and basically irrevocably turned normal Iranians against the Shah and his regime. By January 1979, the Shah's position was untenable and he left Iran for exile. Khomeini returned to Iran next month. In February 1979, while the rebels overcame what was left of the crumbling Pahlavi resistance, the few army units that decided to stand and fight were easily overcome. By March 1979, the country has a referendum and the referendum for the formation of an Islamic Republic passes with 98% approval from the voters. And this is basically the end of legitimate voting in Iran. And of course, those liberals and communists get purged almost immediately. In December of that year, Khomeini officially becomes the supreme leader of Iran. And that begins truly the modern regime of Iran and all the terror and brutality that they've unleashed since then stems from that. And that's the history, very quick and dirty history of Iran. I just want with this episode, I just kind of wanted to offer some context and maybe dispel some myths that are, that are floating around right now and like I said, really give context to this whole thing because that's how history works. It's, it's, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. I've heard that quote several times. Everything builds off of what happened before. And that's sort of the evolving story of history, is that everything is influenced by what happened before. And if you can sort of understand the whole story, it's far easier to understand what's happening right now. This is the culmination of thousands of years of conflict, of ambition, of instability and fundamentalism and all sorts of things. And this, this is it just didn't happen out of nowhere is my is my broader point. And I hope that that this story of Iran from circa 600 BC to 1979 helps put the current conflict in, in perspective for you and help and I hope you learned quite a few things that you didn't already know. Thank you so much for joining me once again for another episode of the History Hour. I'm your host Hayden Daniel, editor of the Federalist. We will be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for free.
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