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- [00:00]
Alan
Hey, it's Alan. And I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music, early and ad free on Amazon music included with Prime. Hey, it's Alan. And today I want to share with you a new show from Curious Cast that I think you'll really like. It's called Hostile History and it's hosted by military historian David Boris from the University of British Columbia. Every other week, he will bring you some of the brightest minds in the world to take you inside the defining conflicts and rebellions. We're talking Genghis Khan, the Crusades, Vietnam. In this first episode of a four part series, David and his guests from the London School of Economics and Political Science journey through Iran's relationship with the United States in the hopes of understanding the world today. This is because history just doesn't repeat itself. It echoes. If you like what you hear, make sure you search for and follow hostile history wherever you're listening right now.
- [00:57]
David Boris
Before the revolution had a name, it had a pulse. It was winter in Tehran and the city hummed with traffic as the neon from storefronts glowed and cranes clawed at the skyline. Oil money had remade the capital. It was modern, fast, and unrecognizable to the previous generation. But underneath the engines and ambition, there is something else. Tension. Everything felt in motion. This was supposed to be the prize of progress. The Shah said Iran was becoming modern, strong, untouchable. But at what cost? He had centralized power and expanded the security state. His intelligence service monitored, imprisoned and tortured dissidents. And then the whispers started. You'd hear a name said quietly, like it mattered who was listening. He wasn't even in the country because he had been exiled years earlier. But somehow he was everywhere. On tapes, in mosques, in conversations that stopped when someone walked in among students, merchants, clerics, and all of those who agree on almost nothing, except they agree on the Shah must go.
- [02:18]
Rohan Alvandi
So you have half of society that resents the Shah for the impact he's having on Iranian culture and society and their identity. And you have the other half of Iran who, even though they're on board with those kind of modernizing changes, resent the fact that the Shah wants to modernize every aspect of Iranian society except the political one. As far as politics is concerned, Iran's going to stay in its kind of medieval state. This is the way in which the Shah basically ends up alienating everyone. He alienates everyone in society.
- [02:52]
David Boris
I'm David Boris. I'm a military historian and this is Hostile History, a podcast where we go Inside defining conflicts and rebellions Today, I'm joined by historian Rohan Alvandi from the London School of Economics and Political Science as we travel back in time to chart how a modern monarchy, which was armed, wealthy and globally backed, lost control. This is Iran. Oil Power and Protest, part one in the Shadow of the Shah. Iran is a nation with a vast epic history, and today it dominates the headlines. But whether you hear about protests in Tehran, negotiations over nuclear programs, or even oil prices in the Hormuz, those issues are not just contemporary events. They can be traced back to a story that began long ago. So let's start there.
- [03:49]
Rohan Alvandi
The first thing to understand about Iran is that it's a very unusual country in the post colonial kind of global south, because it's not a post colonial country. Iran was one of a handful of countries in Asia that were never colonized by Britain or France. It was itself an empire that basically went through the process of transition from an empire to a nation state. So think of it in similar terms to, say, Turkey or China or Japan. It has a lot more in common with those countries in terms of its historical trajectory than actually than it does with many of its neighbors in the Middle East. And that really impacts how Iranians see themselves and their place in the world.
- [04:45]
David Boris
That's Rohan Alvandi. He is an associate professor at the London School of Economics and has written extensively on Iran's modern history and the history of U. S. Iranian relations. He has worked for the UN and even was a visiting professor at the University of Tehran. He said that even though the country never lost its independence, at least on paper, it basically experienced a long period
- [05:07]
Rohan Alvandi
of historical decline in the 18th century and the 19th century, as it was kind of wedged in between the encroaching Russian Empire to the north and the British Empire to the south in Arabia, the Persian Gulf stretching through to India. So, you know, the Iranians were these people with a memory of their glorious past, of the ancient Persian Empire. But they found their domains shrinking and shrinking and found themselves losing kind of one war after another to the British and the Russians, and also found themselves subject to kind of imperial intervention by the British and the Russians in their internal affairs. And that over the centuries has kind of bred a mentality that is very conspiratorial, a kind of point of view, particularly when it comes to foreign powers, that everything is not as it appears, that there is always something going on behind the curtain that we're not aware of. And that sort of experience carries through into the 20th century,
- [06:24]
David Boris
as Rohan said. Iran was once the center of the most powerful empire on the planet, the Persian Empire. Its history has unfolded across a dramatic and unforgiving landscape.
- [06:36]
Rohan Alvandi
So Iran is a huge country, okay? It's about three times the size of France in terms of geography, and it has a population today of around 90 plus million. So this is an enormous country, and its topography is very diverse. So the center of the country is very arid and dry. You know, if you imagine those old Western Hollywood Western movies that were filmed in places like Arizona and Utah, you know, that's the kind of landscape, you know, in central Iran. But then if you go towards the north of the country, along the Caspian coast, it's very fertile, there's a lot more rainfall. It's mountainous, so it's a lot greener. And then you have a kind of ring around the Iranian plateau of essentially mountain ranges, the Zagros mountain range on the eastern side of Iran, that provide most of the water for Iran. So if you can imagine, there's enormous rainfall in the mountain ranges. That water kind of filters down into the valleys. And over the centuries, the Iranians developed these really sophisticated irrigation networks to basically be able to farm and have agriculture. So the main issue in Iran basically is water, the absence of water and the scarcity of water, and also a very, very arid and mountainous sort of topography, which makes it very difficult actually to historically to have a central government that could control the whole country. It's only really in the modern period that because of technological changes, that central government is able to effectively exercise its writ throughout the whole country. So you have these issues of geography and climate.
- [08:37]
David Boris
He said that the towering Zagros Mountains in the west and the Alborz Mountains in the north surround the Iranian Plateau, which forms a natural fortress of rock and desert. This geography has always shaped power. Within it lie vast salt wastes like the Dash de Kavir and the Dash de Lut, isolating communities, yet fostering resilience. From these harsh conditions emerged one of the world's earliest civilizations. Ancient people settled along mountain foothills and fertile valleys, eventually giving rise to empires like the Achaemenids, who forged a vast imperial network stretching from Egypt to India. The geography protected it, but also funneled invasions through narrow corridors, bringing Greeks, Arabs, Mongols, and many others into its orbit. The spread of Islam in the seventh century transformed its religious and cultural identity, while Persian language and traditions endured and radiated across the region. Roham Alvandi said that Iran was never merely conquered. It absorbed and reshaped influences into something uniquely its own.
- [09:44]
Rohan Alvandi
Those 90 million Iranian people are fairly diverse. About 51, 52% of them are Persian speaking. So Persian is their first language. But you have significant populations for whom Persian is their second language. They might be primarily Azeris who speak a Turkic language. They might be Kurds, they might be Baluchis. They might, you know, so they are all. I think the thing that kind of homogenizes Iran to some extent is that the A. About 95% of Iranians are Shia Muslims. So that plays a big role in kind of unifying the country. And I think also there is a sense of Iranian ness, of Iranian high culture that really transcends kind of ethnicity in Iran, particularly in sort of urban areas and amongst the kind of Iranian middle class, regardless of their ethnicity or religion and so on. It's something like, if you can imagine the role that, say, Greek culture played in the ancient world or sort of Greek and Latin culture played in medieval Europe, there is this sense of Iranian ness that's not really rooted in race or ethnicity or anything like that. It's rooted in culture that has kind of survived and adapted over the centuries, regardless of what's happened sort of politically in the country. You know, dynasties have come and gone and conquerors have invaded and been conquered, but that memory of. And that sort of understanding of Iranian culture has survived and is really the basis for Iranian nationalism that is very, very strong.
- [11:46]
Katie Ring
Some crimes are so shocking. They don't just make headlines. They forever change our society. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes released every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong to the moment the truth came, came out, or didn't. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. To some, AI chatbots are helpful tools. To others, an existential threat. But what happens when someone falls in love with one?
- [12:24]
Rohan Alvandi
I can't believe I'm doing this with somebody that's not a human.
- [12:28]
Katie Ring
What if a chatbot makes you lose your grip on reality?
- [12:31]
David Boris
She said that her life work was advocating for AI rights because they're sentient and they're enslaved.
- [12:37]
Katie Ring
From CBC Podcasts, this is artificial intimacy available now.
- [12:48]
David Boris
We then jump to the beginning of the 20th century, where we find a divided Iran. On the one hand, Iranians struggled to maintain their national independence in the face of growing colonial pressures. Iran's geopolitical importance made it a central focus of the colonial great game between Russia and Great Britain. Presiding over these foreign pressures is the Qajar dynasty, which had been in power since 1785. And they were struggling to centralize power and modernize against local tribal and religious forces. These tensions were the perfect backdrop for the constitutional revolution, which began in 1905. And in response to growing dissatisfaction with this dynasty, it led to the creation of a parliament and a constitution in 1906 and established Iran as a constitutional monarchy. But progress would be rocky as internal differences amongst revolutionaries, the Qajar's reluctance to relinquish power and colonial interests severely hampered Iran. And then in 1907, Britain and Russia effectively divided the country into spheres of influence, undermining the new constitutional government. By the early 1910s, Iran was in a difficult situation with a broken economy and a power vacuum. It set the stage for further instability and the rise of a new military leadership.
- [14:11]
Rohan Alvandi
To understand the Shah and the Pahlavi dynasty, you have to sort of understand the context in which they came to power. So imagine what Iran must have been like after the First World War. Essentially, this was a country that was devastated. Before that, you had the influenza pandemic that had ravaged the whole world, including Iran. Then you had the First World War where Iran is occupied. So the country is in pretty devastating condition by the time the war is over. It has a national kind of reform movement in the country that led a constitutional revolution between 1905 and 1911. So there's this kind of small group of patriotic Iranian reformers and nationalists who want to kind of rescue the country from this terrible state that it finds itself in. But they're looking for a figure, somebody who can sort of reunify the country, who can act as a kind of agent of nation building in Iran. This crumbling empire needs to be saved somehow. And the person that basically emerges into that, to play that role is Reza Khan. Reza Khan was a Cossack officer. He was an Iranian officer in the Cossack Brigade, which was a military unit created by the Russians in Iran as a personal bodyguard for the previous dynasty, the Qajar dynasty. And he was a formidable officer. I mean, he was this kind of Napoleon type figure who rides into Iranian history and manages to essentially carry out a plan, bloodless military coup in 1921 with a sort of nod and a wink from the British as well, who were, you know, only too happy for somebody to come along and put this country in order because they didn't want to have to occupy Iran or govern Iran.
- [16:24]
David Boris
Post World War I era instability brought to power Reza Shah, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, who eroded the constitutional powers and, and centralized his own authority.
- [16:36]
Rohan Alvandi
So Reza Khan was a great solution. Here was a guy who had the charisma and the authority, this kind of man on horseback who could reunify the country. And he very much modeled himself on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in neighboring Turkey. That was the model, if you can imagine, in the 1920s, 30s, these kind of strong men. You know, you got Mussolini in Italy. This was the kind of modernizing, authoritarian figure that was going to kind of be the wave of the future. And initially he wants to create a republic in Iran, much like Mustafa Kemal in Turkey. But the Shia clergy in Iran, the Muslim clerics, talk him out of it because they associate a republic with secularism, you know, much like as in Turkey. And so they much prefer a monarchy because they see the monarch as the defender of the faith. You know, Iran is the only Shia majority country in the world. And the Shah of Iran historically was the kind of defender of the Shia throughout the world. So, yeah, they convince him to essentially take the crown. And so he's crowned in 1925. He chooses the name Pahlavi for his dynasty, which is an ancient Iranian language. So it's again harking back to that sense of Iranian ness, that sense of Persian grandeur, kingship, all of that. And he sets about essentially transforming this crumbling Persian empire into a modern nation state, starting with the creation of a modern Iranian army, which he uses to put down revolts and rebellions all throughout the country, but also building pretty much all the major modern institutions that exist up until today in Iran. You know, everything from Tehran University to Trans Iranian Railway to, I mean, you name it, the national bank of Iran, the Ban Khameli. You know, all these institutions basically are created in this early Pahlavi period. But his project is essentially cut short by the Second World War.
- [18:51]
David Boris
The war would be a catalyst for further change in Iran.
- [18:55]
Rohan Alvandi
Reza Shah, as he's now known, is a little too friendly with Hitler's Germany. For the likes of Britain and the Soviet Union, Iran is neutral. But as you can imagine from an Iranian point of view, a German victory in the Second World War would not necessarily be a bad thing. This if the British Empire and the Soviet Union, who are the two big imperial powers close to Iran's borders, if they're defeated, and the distant country, Germany, which has no colonial interests in the Middle east or no colonies or possessions in the Middle east, if they were victorious, it's not necessarily a Bad thing from an Iranian point of view. So because of these kind of German sympathies, Britain and the Soviet Union invade Iran and force Reza Shah to abdicate. And that's when his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi comes to the throne. Very young, 20 years old, no real political experience, his country under occupation, terrible conditions. I mean, if you'd been abetting person in 1941 when Reza Shah abdicated, you wouldn't have bet that this dynasty is going to survive. You wouldn't even necessarily have bet that this country would survive intact. You know, think about what happened to the Ottoman Empire, you know, what happened to the German Empire, what happened to the Austro Hungarian Empire, you know, but they do, I mean, remarkably, they do survive.
- [20:33]
David Boris
As Rohan said, the Anglo Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 forced Reza Shah to abdicate. To his son Mohammad Reza Shah, a
- [20:43]
Rohan Alvandi
very astute group of Iranian statesmen play the politics of the Cold War, managed to secure guarantees from the United States that these occupying powers will leave Iran after the end of the war. War. And pretty much by the skin of their teeth, they managed to survive the Second World War, you know, intact. But. But they had to contend with and convince him to, you know, essentially withdraw the Red army from northern Iran, thanks to very strong support from President Truman. So this is the situation that basically the Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlevi inherits.
- [21:26]
David Boris
But wartime occupation had weakened central authority and fueled nationalist sentiment, and the constitutionalists began to claw back power against the authoritative shah.
- [21:37]
Rohan Alvandi
So Iran has to build a very strong military force and has to work on essentially strengthening and unifying itself so that it can resist the inevitable pressure that, that it's going to be under, given its oil resources, given its strategic location. And he sees essentially the United States as Iran's best ally in that endeavor. Again, the United States is the distant superpower. It's oceans away. It's unlikely that it's going to try and come and colonize Iran. Whereas the Soviet Union is right across the border, the British Empire is still intact in the Middle East. So, so the Shah is very much looking to the Americans and he tries very hard to, you know, he and his various prime ministers try very hard to kind of entice the Americans into Iran. But the, you know, it's a sort of. There's great reluctance because the Roosevelt administration, the Truman administration, you know, they see Iran and the Middle east largely as a British sphere of influence. So they don't want to tread on the toes of the British. They're also not of this kind of Colonial imperial mentality. I mean, you know, it's not to say the United States doesn't have its own imperial history. It certainly does in Latin America and Philippines and Cuba and other places, but not in the Middle East. You know, there was no sort of experience. In fact, Americans had a very positive kind of image in Iran. You know, the only Americans that Iranians had seen really were Protestant missionaries who'd come to Iran since the 1830s and had done a lot of good things. You know, they built schools and hospitals. And so there was a great amount of goodwill on the part of Iranian nationalists, Iranian reformers, towards America. This kind of hope that maybe the 20th, you know, the American century, the post Second World War era would be better for countries like Iran that had been subjected to this kind of British and Soviet and Russian imperial influence. So that was essentially the agenda of the Shah. Try to assert Iran's independence, build the country's strength, modernize it.
- [24:01]
David Boris
By 1951, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized Iran's oil industry, challenging British control and, and effectively cementing the reestablishment of the constitutional monarchy that had once existed.
- [24:15]
Rohan Alvandi
The government of Mohammad Mossadegh. Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, which had come to power in 1951 on the back of a kind of wave of nationalism which wasn't unusual, I mean, this was what was going on throughout the region, decided to nationalize Iran's British owned oil industry, which was the major industry in Iran, most important source of wealth in the country. And this of course brought Iran into conflict with Britain. And you can imagine post war Britain, the economy devastated. The idea of losing Iranian oil was totally unacceptable even to the Labour government in England, Clement Attlee's labor government which had overseen the decolonization of India. But when it came to Iran, Iranian oil was just far too valuable. I mean, the Royal Navy ran on Iranian oil. So having access to cheap Iranian oil was absolutely vital. And just the revenues that the British Exchequer got from the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, what is today BP British Petroleum, was invaluable. I mean, to give you a sense of how important it was, just the taxes that the British government collected from AIOC was larger than the royalties that the Iranian government got from its concession agreement with the British. So you can think of kind of Mossadegh's era and the oil crisis with Britain as the kind of founding kind of moment for our sort of present day moment. If you want to understand how far back the memory stretches, it certainly goes back to 1953, if not longer. And all Iranians know that Britain and the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's secret intelligence service conspired essentially to carry out a military coup in Iran to topple Mossadegh's government. And what that did essentially is that it transformed Iran from a constitutional monarchy to an absolute monarchy. As I say, after 1953, the Cold War begins to become so intertwined with this ambition of the Shah that the country gradually morphs into the kind of, you know, right wing dictatorship that you would have found in a lot of other places. You know, think of countries like Brazil or Chile or Indonesia or, you know, I mean, it became one of these kind of American client states essentially, you know, after the 1953 coup, where you had a government that used the excuse of the communist threat to justify a kind of authoritarian modernization. Cold War concerns really led the United States to kind of look the other way as far as liberty and democracy and human rights and these sorts of issues were concerned in Iran. You know, I think for most people, their image of the Shah's Iran is kind of frozen in 1953 with the coup and the Shah as a client state. And that was certainly true in 1950s. But things begin to change slowly in a world where swords were sharp and
- [27:49]
David Boris
hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is.
- [27:53]
Rohan Alvandi
Two fearless historians, me, Matt Lewis, and me, Dr. Eleanor Yanaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades and Viking raids and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.
- [28:19]
David Boris
As Prime Minister, Mosaddegh sought to erode the authoritarian rule of the Shah and nationalized oil, which Britain and the US relied on. He became a major threat to both powers. In 1953, a US and British backed coup overthrew the Prime Minister and strengthened the autocratic rule of the Shah, which continued to become more and more autocratic into the 60s and 70s.
- [28:44]
Rohan Alvandi
If you think of the 1960s, you know, globally, it is this era of counterculture, particularly because of the Vietnam War, opposition to the Vietnam War. You have the rise of the new left all over the world, including in the west itself. There is no longer this kind of Cold War consensus in Western societies. And also geopolitically, you have the breakdown of bipolarity. The Soviet Union and the United States are no longer the only great powers controlling international relations. You have the rise of Communist China, the emergence of, or I should say the re emergence of Western Europe, and then eventually the rise of Japan as a major kind of economic power. So that kind of beginnings of kind of multipolarity combined with the end of the kind of Cold War consensus within Western societies itself loosens up the system. And it creates space for actors like the Shah who want to kind of assert their independence a lot more, who don't just want to be a client of some superpower. I think the Shah's kind of role model basically was Charles de Gaulle, who was in the Western camp more or less, but was an independent actor. France had its own nuclear deterrent, pursued its own foreign policy, sort of independently of NATO, was pursuing detente with the Soviet Union long before the United States was. Was looking to have normal relations with communist China, et cetera. You know, so this was the model, you know, I think, that the Shah was pursuing. And he could do it because of the oil wealth. You know, the rise, the gradual increase in oil revenues for Iran allow, afforded the country the economic and military power to start putting some distance between itself and the United States, normalize relations with the Soviet Union and the communist bloc, and begin carving out a space for itself as an independent actor. And that was really the Shah's ambition, and he was pretty successful in doing that.
- [31:10]
David Boris
That's because the thing that helped Iran secure its place in the world and cement its independence was oil. Oil is always key to understanding Iran because it has seen dynasties rise and fall. And out of the ashes, a modern nation state was formed. A nation state of people who are proud of their culture, their heritage and their identity. Oil is the linchpin to Iran being allied with the United States until it wasn't.
- [31:42]
Rohan Alvandi
By the time you get to the 1970s, Iran is a fairly formidable actor in its own right in international relations. It's one of the price hawks in opec. It's playing a key role in driving up oil prices. It has good relations with both the Communist bloc, the west, and also with the newly emerging kind of global South. Iran is one of the co sponsors in 1974 of what's called the New International Economic Order, which was basically the precursor to the whole kind of group of 77 and the whole sort of third worldist movement. It's carving out a position that's far more independent from the United States on all kinds of issues. Arab, Israeli conflict, nuclear proliferation, human rights. So, yeah, I mean, that was the kind of trajectory that Iran was on in that decade. But underneath that, and what really wasn't very visible to anyone outside of Iran was the social pressure that was building
- [32:55]
David Boris
many Iranians came to associate the monarchy with foreign interference and lost sovereignty. By the early 1960s, the Shah had pushed for a sweeping program of reforms, including land redistribution, women's suffrage, industrial expansion, and education initiatives.
- [33:12]
Rohan Alvandi
In Iran, you had a society that was deeply divided, essentially along cultural lines because of the Shah's reforms and modernization efforts. And the sort of traditional Iranian society, which was a predominantly agricultural society and was fairly religiously conservative, felt very alienated by these Westernizing and secularizing policies of the Shah that was transforming Iran from a sort of traditional, predominantly rural and religious society into a urban, secular, and very Westernized kind of society. So for those people who felt kind of left behind by this process, there was a sense of cultural alienation. The term that became popularized in the 1960s was West Toxification. This idea that Iran had become less toxified, like it was a disease, you know, this kind of illness that had entered into the Iranian body. And this was an idea propounded by an Iranian intellectual called Jalal Al Ahmad. And the idea was that the Shah's modernization efforts were kind of aping of the West, a kind of poor imitation of the west, and that they'd come at the expense of Iranian identity and the kind of soul of Iran. And so that's one aspect of it, is this kind of backlash against this massive social and cultural shift, and that takes the form of a kind of romanticization of Iran's Islamic identity, you know, and people like Ayatollah Khomeini, but also lots of other intellectuals, Ali Shariati and many others, who kind of talk about this return to some kind of authentic Iranian self, which is grounded in Shia Islam. Of course, nobody knows precisely what that means. They basically invent it. It's an invented concept, as Rohan said.
- [35:24]
David Boris
On paper, it was modernization, but in practice, they were anything but. Land reforms weakened rural elites, but failed to create a stable peasantry. The rapid urbanization produced sprawling poverty on the edges of the cities. The clergy and religious institutions lost influence, and wealth distribution became uneven. One of the loudest critics was a cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini.
- [35:50]
Rohan Alvandi
Khomeini emerges essentially as a spokesperson for that traditional Iranian society that felt alienated by the Shah because of culture. On cultural and social terms, he emerges in 1963 as one of the most vocal opponents of what the Shah called his white revolution of reforms, which included land reform, literacy programs, the enfranchisement of women. Khomeini was against all of this. He thought the idea of redistributing land was un Islamic. This Sounds like communism. Basically, ownership is sacred in Islamic law. He thought the idea of giving women the vote was horrendous. This was the equivalent of turning Iranian women into harlots and worse. So he becomes this kind of militant opponent of the Shah and He's exiled in 1964. He lives for a while in Turkey and then eventually ends up in Iraq, where there is a major Shia seminary in Najaf in Iraq. And he teaches there in Najaf. And is this kind of irritant for the shah throughout the 1960s and 70s, you know, constantly issuing denunciations from his exile. But his popularity begins to grow in Iran in the 1970s as the opposition to the Shah becomes more and more radical. More and more Iranians are kind, even those who are not particularly religious are kind of attracted to Khomeini as this kind of implacable foe of the Shah, whose black and white vision of the world stands in kind of stark contrast to the Shah's rather compromised image.
- [37:57]
David Boris
Iran continued to appear outwardly strong and flush with oil revenue as the Shah showcased his ambitious development projects and claimed to be the king of Kings while celebrating 2500 years of Persian monarchy with extravagant ceremonies.
- [38:14]
Rohan Alvandi
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, who was a young monarch who was actually pretty popular in iran in the 1940s and 1950s, was transformed from really a kind of symbolic head of state into an absolute ruler who really kind of administered the day to day politics of Iran. And as the Cold War progressed, with the support of the United States, he essentially concentrated more and more and more power in his own hands. Basically, Iran's place in that world of the 1950s, 60s and 70s was as a oil producing ally of the west of the United States that shared a 1,500 kilometer border with the Soviet Union. So it was a frontline state in the Cold War. And on the surface, you know, it appeared to be a very successful, modernizing, stable country. And in many ways it was because the Shah was carrying out a pretty ambitious modernization program, reform program that benefited many Iranians, particularly the sort of urban Iranian middle class. The Iranian women saw their lives completely transformed under the Shah's reign. Within a generation, women went from being sort of largely illiterate, pretty much confined to roles in the home, to being university educated and entering the workforce and having economic independence. And so this was a, you know, these were huge changes in Iranian society. But, you know, as you can imagine, when you have changes of that magnitude, you know, changes that are really impacting society, it's going to create massive political Upheaval.
- [40:15]
David Boris
The Shah's power came at a great cost. Political opposition had been crushed. The unequal economic growth created inflation and little opportunity in the rural areas, while intellectuals, students, clerics and workers all felt alienated.
- [40:32]
Rohan Alvandi
So you have half of society that resents the Shah for his, you know, the impact he's having on Iranian culture and society and their identity. And you have the other half of Iran who, even though they're on board with those kind, with those kind of modernizing changes, resent the fact that the Shah wants to modernize every aspect of Iranian society except the political one. You know, as far as politics is concerned, Iran's going to stay in its kind of medieval state. It's not going to advance. So this is the way in which the Shah basically ends up alienating everyone. He alienates everyone in society. And that all comes to a head in the late 1970s, because in that moment of the late 70s, you have an American President, Jimmy Carter, who comes to office on a basis of putting human rights at the center of American foreign policy. And so the Shah, worried that he's going to alienate the United States, begins to carry out a liberalization policy in Iran, slightly loosening controls in order to satisfy the Americans and get ahead of this kind of chorus of criticism of his human rights record in the United States and throughout the world. But what that does is it unleashes all of these forces. All this pent up anger and frustration suddenly begins to blow.
- [42:02]
David Boris
The regime's legitimacy had eroded from multiple directions at once, from the secular left to the religious right. What united them was not ideology, but the rejection of autocracy, inequality and foreign influence. And by 1978, the scene was set. The powder keg was ready to ignite, because what happened next would have a ripple effect that is still being felt to this day.
- [42:26]
Rohan Alvandi
Revolutions always appear impossible until they happen. And when they happen, they seem inevitable. So in a country where there's been no rallies, no open dissent, no you can imagine how electrifying it must have been for people to be able to actually gather together, thousands of them, and express their anger, express their dissent, you know, express their opposition. And this wave carries on into 1978. And again, the Shah makes a catastrophic.
- [43:01]
David Boris
That's next time on Hostile History as we continue with part two of our series, Iran, Oil, Power and Protest. Thank you for joining me this week and a special thanks to Roham Alvandi. He'll be back with us next time as we continue our journey through Iran. Hostile History was written by me, Dr. David Boris and produced by Curious Cast. Our producer was Deela Velasquez. Our audio producer and sound designer was Rob Johnston. Our executive producer is Chris Dunner Duncomb, the director of Curious Cast podcast for Curious Minds. Hostile History is part of the Canyon Entertainment umbrella. Keep your powder dry.
- [43:42]
Alan
The world is changing. From the misuse of AI and the rise of deep fakes to the dangerous spread of misinformation, it's getting harder for Canadians to separate fact from fiction. That's why having a trustworthy news source is vital. At Global News, we're committed to objective journalism that cuts through the noise. Stick to the facts. Global News, Canada's trusted news.