A Political History of Contemporary Iran
Dr. Roy Casagranda
1,546,793 views Nov 12, 2022 #IranHistory #MiddleEast #mosaddegh
Dr. Roy Casagranda explains the key events in shaping the current state of Iran over the last 125 years. This video covers the 1901 oil concession to Britain, the 1953 CIA-backed coup against Prime Minister Mossadegh, the rise and rule of the Shah, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the collapse of the reform movement. It explores how foreign intervention, domestic repression, and cultural shifts have shaped Iran’s political system, economy, and relationship with the West — offering context for current tensions involving Iran, Israel, and the broader Middle East.
*I made an error in the video: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was the 4th President of Iran! He was in office 16 August 1989 – 3 August 1997
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00:00:00 Introduction
00:08:00 How Britain Got Interested in Iran (Late 1800s)
00:16:00 The Global Oil Race Begins (1901)
00:24:00 Birth of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (1908–1914)
00:32:00 Sykes–Picot: Redrawing the Middle East (1916–1918)
00:40:00 Iran’s First Shot at Democracy (1906–1911)
00:48:00 Reza Shah Pahlavi Rises to Power (1921–1925)
00:56:00 Iran Gets Invaded in WWII (1941)
01:04:00 Post-War Struggles and Ethnic Tensions (1945–1946)
01:12:00 Mohammad Mosaddegh and the Oil Nationalization (1951–1953)
01:20:00 The CIA Coup That Changed Everything (1953)
01:28:00 Propaganda, Bribery, and a Staged Uprising (1953)
01:36:00 The Shah Returns as an Authoritarian Ruler (1953–1960s)
01:44:00 The White Revolution and Its Consequences (1963–1970s)
01:52:00 Cultural Shifts and the Road to Revolution (1970s)
#IranHistory #MiddleEast #mosaddegh
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Suggested music:
1) Baraye (Shervin Hajopour) (This song makes me cry!)
• Shervin Hajipour - Baraye (full version wi...
2) Baraye (Rana Mansour version in English)
• For Woman, Life, Liberty (Baraye) - Shervi...
3) Women's anthem:
• Soroode Zan (Woman's Anthem) - With Englis...
4) Another one
• سرود آزادی
5) this is the anthem from 2009 (called My Grade School Friend)
• Yar-e Dabestani
6) Another 2009 song (my country, my country)
• Vatanam Vatanam (First National Anthem of ...
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현대 이란 정치사: 제국주의의 간섭과 민주주의를 향한 끈질긴 여정
1. 요약
로이 카사그란다 박사는 지난 125년간 이란의 운명을 결정지은 핵심 동력으로 석유와 외세의 개입을 꼽는다.
이란의 민주주의를 향한 첫 시도는 1906년 입헌혁명이었다.
제1차 세계대전 이후 혼란 속에서 레자 샤 팔라비가 쿠데타로 권력을 잡는다.
1951년, 민주적으로 선출된 총리 모하마드 모사데크는 이란의 자결권을 주장하며 석유 국유화를 단행한다.
1979년 이슬람 혁명으로 샤는 축출되고 아야톨라 호메이니의 신권 통치가 시작된다.
강연의 결론은 현재 진행 중인 <여성, 생명, 자유> 혁명으로 이어진다.
2. 평론
카사그란다의 강연은 이란을 단순히 ‘반미 국가’나 ‘종교 근본주의 국가’로 치부하는 서구의 단편적인 시각을 통렬히 비판한다. 그는 이란 역사를 관통하는 비극의 핵심이 서구 민주주의 국가들이 자신들의 경제적 이익(석유)을 위해 타국의 민주주의를 고의적으로 파괴했다는 <도덕적 모순>에 있음을 지적한다.
첫째, 민주주의 파괴의 역설이다.
카사그란다는 1953년 모사데크 축출 사건을 현대 이란 비극의 기점으로 본다.
둘째, 이란 민중의 회복력과 지적 수준에 대한 재평가다.
카사그란다는 이란인들이 역사적으로 끊임없이 민주주의를 시도해 왔음을 강조한다.
셋째, 현재 혁명의 성격에 대한 통찰이다.
지금의 혁명을 <여성>이 주도하고 있다는 점은 매우 상징적이다.
결론적으로, 이 강연은 이란의 현재가 과거 서구 제국주의의 탐욕과 그에 맞선 민중의 투쟁이 빚어낸 필연적 산물임을 보여준다. 카사그란다는 미국이 과거의 잘못(1953년 쿠데타 등)을 진정으로 사과하고 간섭을 중단할 때만이 새로운 관계 개선이 가능하다고 주장한다.
==
<A Political History of Contemporary Iran> 1,000단어 요약 + 평론
이 강의()는 현대 이란을 이해하기 위해 지난 120여 년의 정치사를 압축적으로 설명한다. 핵심 질문은 단순하다.
<왜 이란은 오늘날 반서방적이고 강한 국가주의를 가진 이슬람 공화국이 되었는가?>
강의의 답은 명확하다.
→ <외세 개입 + 민주주의 좌절 + 강압적 근대화 + 반복된 민중 저항>
이 네 축이 현재의 이란을 만들었다는 것이다.
1. 석유와 제국: 영국의 개입
19세기 말, 영국은 “석탄의 시대가 끝나고 석유의 시대가 온다”고 판단했다. 문제는 영국이 자국 석유를 충분히 확보하지 못했다는 점이다.
1901년 윌리엄 다아시(William D’Arcy)는 카자르 왕조의 샤로부터 남서부 이란의 석유 탐사권을 획득한다. 조건은 매우 불평등했다.
→ 영국 84%, 이란 16%
이것이 훗날 Anglo-Persian Oil Company의 출발점이 된다. 강의는 이것을 단순한 경제 계약이 아니라,
→ <제국주의적 약탈의 출발>
로 본다.
영국은 이란의 민주화보다 석유 이권 보호를 우선시했다.
2. 1906년 입헌혁명: 첫 번째 민주주의 시도
1906년 이란에서는 입헌혁명이 일어나 의회(Modles)가 만들어진다.
이는 이란 최초의 민주주의 실험이었다.
그러나 영국은 민주주의를 위협으로 보았다.
왜냐하면 민주 정부가 석유 계약을 재검토할 수 있기 때문이다.
그래서 영국은
- 성직자 세력 지원
- 러시아와 협력한 압박
- 내부 불안 조성
을 통해 민주주의를 약화시켰다.
결국 완전한 민주국가가 아니라 제한적 입헌군주제로 남게 된다.
강의는 여기서 중요한 점을 강조한다.
→ <이란인은 처음부터 민주주의를 원했다>
현재의 신정국가만 보고 “원래 그런 나라”라고 이해하면 완전히 틀린다는 것이다.
3. 레자 샤와 강제 근대화
1921년 레자 칸이 쿠데타로 등장하고, 1925년 레자 샤 팔라비가 된다.
그는 터키의 아타튀르크처럼 이란을 근대화하려 했다.
- 중앙집권 강화
- 군대 현대화
- 국가 인프라 정비
- 전통 종교권력 약화
그러나 이는 민주적 근대화가 아니라
→ <위로부터의 권위주의적 근대화>
였다.
국민 참여 없이 국가가 강제로 “근대”를 부과한 것이다.
4. 1951–53년 모사데크와 CIA 쿠데타
강의의 중심은 여기다.
모하마드 모사데크는 총리가 되어 석유 국유화를 추진한다.
그는 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company를 국유화하며 선언한다.
→ “이란의 석유는 이란인의 것이다.”
이는 경제 정책이 아니라
→ <주권 회복 선언>
이었다.
영국은 즉시 반발했고, 미국에 도움을 요청했다.
트루먼은 거절했지만, 아이젠하워 정부는 CIA를 동원했다.
1953년 CIA는 군부 매수, 선동, 가짜 폭동 조성 등을 통해 모사데크 정부를 전복한다.
이 사건은 현대 이란 정치의 결정적 상처다.
강의는 분명히 말한다.
→ <1953년 쿠데타가 오늘의 반미 감정의 핵심이다>
이란 혁명은 1979년에 시작된 것이 아니라, 사실상 1953년에 시작되었다는 해석이다.
5. 샤 체제와 1979 혁명
쿠데타 이후 팔라비 샤는 사실상 독재자가 된다.
- 비밀경찰(SAVAK)
- 고문과 탄압
- 친미 체제
- 서구화 강요
그는 “백색혁명”을 통해 산업화와 여성 교육 확대 등을 추진했지만,
많은 이란인에게 이는
→ <미국의 대리 통치>
처럼 보였다.
특히 문화적으로는
- 서구 지향
- 백인성(whiteness) 동경
- 전통 단절
이 심한 반발을 낳았다.
결국 1979년 혁명이 폭발한다.
여기서 중요한 점은,
혁명 초기에 선택지는 둘이었다.
① 좌파/사회주의
② 이슬람주의
미국은 공산주의화를 막기 위해 사실상 호메이니의 이슬람주의가 유리하다고 보았고, 결과적으로 이슬람 공화국이 탄생한다.
6. 이슬람 공화국의 역설
혁명 직후에는 잠시 자유의 순간이 있었다.
그러나 곧
- 좌파 숙청
- 군부 숙청
- 신정체제 강화
가 시작된다.
그리고 미국 대사관 점거 사건이 발생한다.
학생들은 CIA의 1953년 쿠데타 증거를 찾으려 했고, 실제로 많은 문서가 복원되었다.
즉,
→ 인질 사건은 단순한 광기가 아니라 역사적 복수의 일부
였다는 해석이다.
이후 이란은 이라크와의 8년 전쟁을 겪으며 체제가 더욱 경직된다.
7. 오늘의 이란: 여성 혁명
강의는 2022년 마흐사 아미니 사건으로 끝난다.
히잡 문제로 체포된 쿠르드계 여성 마흐사 아미니가 사망하면서 전국적 봉기가 시작된다.
슬로건은
<여성, 삶, 자유 (Zan, Zendegi, Azadi)>
이다.
강의자는 이것을 단순한 여성운동이 아니라
→ <민주주의를 향한 세 번째 거대한 시도>
로 본다.
1906년, 1951년, 그리고 지금.
이란은 계속 민주주의를 시도하고 있다는 것이다.
평론
이 강의의 가장 큰 장점은
→ <이란을 “광신적 이슬람 국가”로 단순화하지 않는다>
는 점이다.
오히려 반복적으로 강조되는 것은
→ 이란인은 오랫동안 민주주의를 원해왔다는 사실
이다.
이것은 서구 언론의 단순한 이미지와 크게 다르다.
특히 1953년 CIA 쿠데타를 중심축으로 놓는 해석은 매우 설득력 있다.
오늘의 반미감정, 혁명, 이슬람 공화국을 이해하려면 이 사건을 빼고는 설명이 불가능하다.
다만 이 강의는 상당히 강한 미국 비판적 시각을 가지고 있으며,
- 호메이니 선택 과정
- 혁명 내부의 복잡성
- 이슬람주의 자체의 자율성
은 다소 단순화되는 면도 있다.
또한 연설자의 수사적 과장이 자주 등장해 학술적 엄밀성은 약해진다.
그럼에도 핵심 구조는 매우 유효하다.
결론
이 강의를 한 문장으로 요약하면:
→ <이란의 문제는 이슬람이 아니라, 반복적으로 좌절된 민주주의의 역사다>
이란은 “특이한 나라”가 아니라,
외세 개입과 독재, 근대화의 폭력 속에서 계속 자유를 요구해온 사회다.
그래서 오늘의 이란을 이해하려면
히잡보다 먼저,
1953년을 봐야 한다.
==
==
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Transcript
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Introduction
foreign [Music]
[Applause] this is the first Applause I've ever got
so that's weird all right so what I'm gonna do tonight is I'm going to do uh an attempt to give
you kind of a good overview of what has happened to Iran over the course of the last 125 years my goal in starting that
far back is to give you some background but my my emphasis is going to probably be in the last uh 45 years as opposed to
focusing on the front end of it um so let's just jump into it because
there's no point in in delaying um I want to start this story
firmly nested in Empire and of course in this case the Empire I'm talking about
is the British Empire because the Brits are going to play this really crucial role in shaping what Iran looks like
today and the reason is is because Iran I'm sorry Britain finds itself in a really
awkward position that awkward position is the following
in the late 1800s the end of the 19th century
the British come to the conclusion that oil is the new coal
and that the future is definitely going to be oil and the problem the British have is the
Dutch have just bought their oil company the British oil company was actually originally an antique dealership called
shell and the Dutch company Royal Dutch bot
shell and had 51 controlling interest so at that moment then there's
essentially two Mega oil companies on the planet the reason there's only two is because
the United States has been overrun by a single Oil Company one oil company has
taken out all the other ones and it's Standard Oil so by the end of the 19th century
Standard Oil owns 95 percent of the U.S oil industry and Royal Dutch Shell
dominates the rest of the world although Standard Oil is going overseas too so it's it's these two companies Britain
has had a long intertwined history with the Dutch especially after William of Orange
becomes king of England and so it's not that the Dutch are their enemy
and of course they have a good relationship with us so it's not that we're their enemy this
isn't they're they're not worried about oh at some point the Dutch in the United States will betray them they're they're
worried about what happens if something happens to the Netherlands what happens
if the United States elects some Nut Job president and they derail themselves
they're not we can't rely on others we have to rely on ourselves and they're
thinking you can make a lot of money off of oil if we're right that oil is the future
the British don't know where to start and then somebody comes up with a genius idea
what if you just read a bunch of History and as you're reading the history books
you'll find a reference to Prior use of oil and then once you find that reference
then you just go to that place and look for oil because in in the 19th century
the way you look for oil as you looked at the grounds and you just went for a walk
you're if you got really lucky you stepped in it and went squish there was so much oil on the planet you could just
step in it not what you're thinking about um but odds are you're not going to get that lucky what you're then looking for
is black Shale or black Limestone those are really porous rocks they'll pull the
oil that's underneath into them and they'll go black and that means there's probably oil there and the way you've
got to the oil was a shovel and a pick and you literally dug a well like you
would dig a water well and hopefully there's a little bit of pressure and the
oil has just come into the surface on its own so that's what the Grits need to do the
problem is where to even start the planet's big they own a huge chunk of it but it's still big
and so the history books give them the answer a thousand years ago the Middle East lit
its streets up at night using oil lamps which meant that medieval Arabs had oil
which meant there was probably oil somewhere in the Middle East
so that's where they decide to start looking in anticipation of this the Brits decide
to expand their presence in the Arabian Gulf now they already had uh it's also called
a Persian Gulf I'm using the Arabian Gulf in this particular case because at the time the Brits were using it that
way I'm not going to take sides in the argument about whether it's the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf
purse so Arabian golf no it won't work that's terrible um so
the reason Brits have an have a presence already in the Arabian Gulf is the following the Arab states that are today the UAE
Qatar Bahrain and Oman had pirate fleets and those pirate fleets were operating
in the Arabian Sea capturing British ships going back and forth between India
and the British Empire and it was driving the bits Brits absolutely Bonkers so in the early 19th century the
Brits either militarily engaged them or diplomatically engage them and they make
a deal to get them to stop attacking British shipping and a one one of the
deals ends up then the British end up naming that space The crucial Coast because of the truths they made with
those Arab Pirates and then that state when it got its independence from the British renamed itself the United Arab
Emirates so the Brits are already on the ground there but they decide to expand and the
place they're thinking about ends up being Kuwait they literally carve Kuwait
out of the Ottoman Empire so that they're at the top of the Arabian Gulf
right next to the mouth of the Tigris and the Euphrates the the shuttle Arab where the two rivers come together and
that way they they can militarily position themselves if they need to in the event they find the oil they think
they might find in 1901 a guy named Darcy approaches the
Iranian government to see if he can get permission to explore for oil in southwest corner
of Iran the rulers of Iran at the time were the
kajars the gajars like to spend their days
in opium opium dance they were really into opium like that was their thing
opium in the morning opium in the afternoon opium in the evening they just
they really liked so Darcy approaches the British the
Iranian government and the ruler at the time was a gajra named musafir Shah
and he strikes a deal with him here's the deal in the event that they do find oil
uh the Shah the kajal ruler of Iran will get the equivalent in today dollars
about two and a half million just cash in return he'll also and he'll also get
How Britain Got Interested in Iran (Late 1800s)
16 concession so for every hundred dollars that the
British pull out of oil the the shaw will get 16 of those dollars and the Brits get 84 of those
dollars that's an incredible deal like you want Darcy negotiating every deal we
need to dig this guy up find his DNA and Cloud him usually it's a 50 50 split
it's Iranian oil British effort you split it 50 50. this is an 84 16 split
uh or here's another possibility always negotiate with people who are high on
opium one of the two not sure which
Darcy actually runs into a lot of trouble he doesn't quite get what he wants in the beginning his companies
basically on the verge of going bankrupt long story short they end up creating
the anglo-persian oil company out of this thing and it does find oil the
narcy was right he was in the right place they find oil and they don't find a little bit they find a lot
the Brits are filthy rich just off of this one event they're so thrilled it's great it's the best thing ever
as World War one is approaching the British realized or they find out
that the Ottomans have just found oil and the Ottomans have found oil in what
is today Northern Iraq and so the Brits approach
the Ottomans and say look we want that oil too we want it all and the Ottoman Empire goes sorry we already
made a deal with the Germans and so the British go okay we got your number you got your number we're going
to take you down if there's ever a World War One so
the British and the French start planning for World War One the reason they're planning for World War One is
because they're going to make it happen the British especially are interested in this in part because the British have a
problem another one oil was the first one that crossed that hurdle but they have another problem it's called the
German Empire this brand new state because Germany's brand new it was made in
1871. it's 95 years younger than the United States of America you're young
when you're a century younger than the United States of America this brand new Empire that came out of
nowhere basically is a super industrial State making a
massive Navy and the German ships are of course quality ships that are probably totally
over engineered and the British ships are good they're just not German quality
and so the British every time the Germans built a ship the British build two ships to make sure because the
British know if the German Navy ever matches the British Navy and so the British are stuck in this
arms race with Germany and both states are charging they're cleaning towards
bankruptcy they can't keep building ships like this they're just turning them out one at a time well two at a
time for the Brits it's too expensive so the Brits know something has to
happen to knock Germany down a notch and so they're sort of gearing their minds towards eventually doing that
World War One of course will break out um just for the record as it's as it's
unfolding it unfolds for the dumbest reason on Earth somebody gets assassinated like who cares
I mean I think you know at the end of the day really that you're going to start a whole global war for four years
that's going to kill 13 million people for one dude who cares anyway he wasn't
even is Archduke like forget about it he wasn't even like an emperor or something
as it as the Declarations of War are going back and forth leading towards this inevitable end is it just me or is
there a feedback thing going on no only I hear it what
oh it's the architecture okay cool um the Kaiser realizes this is a terrible
disaster mistake and he starts trying to figure out a way to back out of it and he's like approaching the Brits going wait what are we doing why are we doing
this and the Brits are like no no it's too late we're doing this but we wanted this this is gonna happen
the British sit down with the French and they work out a deal called Sykes Pico
Sykes is the Brit Pico is the French guy they consult no one else this is just an
anglo-french deal made in a vacuum and even though it's going to involve a
bunch of other actors they basically whip out a crayon they take a map of the Middle East and
they just start drawing off chunks of stuff the Ottoman Empire is the prize they're
going to disassemble the Ottoman Empire you're going to remember the Ottoman
Empire was this Global superpower at one point that was the Rival of every
European State and was had higher Tech than any European state but the Ottoman Empire ran into a
problem and that problem really tore the Ottoman Empire up and that problem originates in
a philosophical argument that actually starts in the 11th Century A.D
and the argument is how much philosophy and Science and Math really is enough
is there a way to have too much of those things does it distract
from the greater truths that religion affords and the result is is that the Muslim
world now has a conservative movement that starts in the 11 at the end of the 11th century
and by the time we get to the Ottoman Empire that conservative movement is actually actively trying to stop the
Ottoman Empire from innovating too quickly so ottoman rulers will take over they'll
try to put through a bunch of reforms because they're trying to change technology or behavior or economics or
the military and then they'll get pushed back mostly from the military and their
reforms will go nowhere and so the Ottoman Empire gets bogged down in this
this argument about whether religion should be at the center of this or politics should be at the center of this
and as a result the Ottoman Empire starts to fall behind Europe instead of staying ahead of Europe
by the time we get to world war one the ottoman Empires the old man right it's
it's done it's finished itself it's shrunk dramatically it doesn't have the
tech to keep up here let me give you a taste of what I mean by this not only did the Ottomans put Vienna Under Siege
twice uh the second time Vienna was done the Ottomans almost took over Austria like
it's insane what was to stop them from just plowing through the Holy Roman Empire after that taking out Italy
Austria was the linchpin if they could grab Italy the rest of Europe was wide open
it was a Polish Knight who actually wore wings as part of their uniform who
charged into battle at the last minute and saved the day like it it's just it
needs to be a movie I'm sure it is but it needs to be a movie of quality let's do that
um in the set in the year 1700 as Prussia
is redesigning itself because it's merging with the kingdom of Brandenburg it actually had it they're trying to
figure out what what Germany is going to look like in the year 1700 and they
decide they're going to move the capital to koenigsberg which is outside of the
The Global Oil Race Begins (1901)
Holy Roman Empire so that the Kingdom of Prussia which will include territory inside the Holy Roman Empire namely
Berlin and Brandenburg in that territory that that new state
we'll be independent of the Holy Roman Emperor because it'll be outside
it needs a military and it needs a really nice one and they know that this Prussian military has to be really high
quality because they're so severely outnumbered so they send their officer core to the Ottoman Empire to train with the
janissaries because the Ottomans they were the they were the best soldier man for man what
you think of as Prussian military tradition largely comes out of this experience of
these German Officers Training in the Ottoman Empire and taking those techniques back to Prussia and then
germanizing them and before you know it we have vegans Krieg and the next thing you know there's a Germany in 1871.
so it's way past that now it's World War One the Ottoman Empire has ruined itself
with with this anti-intellectual anti-innovation sentiment this conservative let's just focus on
religion let's not Advance ourselves technologically culturally and economically
sounds familiar so I didn't mean to bring that to too contemporary
um but there is a lesson here I think hahaha
the British car are going to carve off that when they got their crayon out and they got the map they're going to carve
off the Western end of turkey so Izmir and they're going to give that to Grace they didn't tell the Greeks they were
doing this they're just doing it so that's gonna happen they then take Palestine in what is
today Jordan and they they draw that off and that's going to go to the British Syria and what is today Lebanon is going
to go to the French they actually originally Drew Iraq
for the French because that way the French could have the northern Iraqi oil fields
that was the compromise with the French and then
came Iran now Iran was not part of the Ottoman Empire was a separate independent state but the British wanted
to do Iran also they drew a line through the middle of
Iran and split it into North Iran and South Iran and the British were going to take South Iran and the Russians were
going to take North Iran and the British know that the Russians are willing to do this because it's
something that's already happened where the British got the Russians to help them so I need to roll the clock back just a
bit so in 1906 Iran got this fabulous idea
really the movement I guess started in 1905 but by 1906 this movement is taken
off and here's here's what Iran has in mind it wants to become a democracy
the Iranians decide to make a play for democracy in 1906
the high izakite opium culture ruler of Iran that did the 84
concession to the British where he got 16 percent that guy ends up signing basically a
compromise with the pro-democracy movement to create the modulus the modulus is Iran's Parliament so now Iran
has a parliament with a prime minister and then he dies the next year
but the British don't want Iran to have a democracy the British are horrified at
the prospect of Iran having a democracy because what happens if the Iranian
people at some point down the road figure out that this oil concession in
kazistan in the southwest part of Iran is a catastrophe for the Iranian people they're literally giving their oil away
it's not even a 50 50 concession if they figure this out what's to
prevent the Iranian democracy from voting to change this so the British decide they need to do
what every good Empire does and Destroy democracies in third world countries
right that's what you do oh no brown and black people are getting a democracy
no that's wrong we got to stop that stop that now so the British figure of the week
peace in Iran in the Iranian state is the clergy because the clergy are also
not sure they want a democracy so the British start funding the clergy and
paying the clergy off with the hope that the clerics will help derail Iran's democracy
but that's not all the British also then go to the Russians and go how do you feel about invading from the north we'll
come in from the south let's just tear the place up a little bit cause some harm some pain some suffering we've got
the clerics on our side and maybe we can topple the democracy
it's a long story and we don't probably I probably should do it but we're not gonna it and I just give you the sort of
the the nutshell end to this by by 1911 so three years before World War One
breaks out the dust settles on the pro-democracy
movement it took five years of struggle and suffering
and it mostly ends in Failure Iran does not come out of this as a democracy
but the seeds were planted and one of the things that came out of
this first of all the the guy who replaces Muzaffar has been Shaw actually ends up getting toppled in 1909 Muhammad
Ali Shah and he's replaced by Ahmad Shah who will be just spoiler alert the last
gaja ruler of Iran he's he's the beginning of the end 1909 is when he
takes over the the Revolutionary movement to democratize Iran finishes uh
in 2019 sorry 1911 with a constitutional monarchy they they end up with a
constitution they've codified the fact that there's a parliament it's just not a very democratic system
so but they've got the pieces to make one down the road in other words this is maybe a good
first step even if it wasn't a perfect first step so now
back to World War one so the British think yeah we've got the Russians they'll just come on in on our side
they'll take the northern half of Iran they're interested in it we'll take the southern half that's where the oil is
the Russians probably don't know and it'll be perfect only
it isn't because the British weren't counting on something and that was that Germany would defeat
Russia you know there's always this thing you should never attack Russia because they always somehow Prevail I I mean
usually somehow Prevail it might be better because they did it in World War one they surrender now they they they're
getting real Coy about it and they keep like pretending they're not going to surrender even after they've stopped fighting the war and they quit but they
eventually do surrender and by the way it's not the Russian Empire anymore because they've had these two
revolutions it's now uh the Russian Soviet federative Socialist Republic
foreign and so when the war ends when it's
1918 and the Germans have finally surrendered the British are like even if the
Birth of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (1908–1914)
Russians were willing to do it we can't work with them because they're communists so we can't do Iran because the British
didn't have the military ability to take the whole thing and there's no way to invade half of it because the other half
will fight you you've got to do the whole thing they needed to divide and conquer Iran
so the Brits go oh oops sorry France I guess you're not getting Iraq that's
ours we need that oil and they switched the Sykes Pico deal the French go
whatever and they go along with it and so the Ottoman Empire gets carved up
the Greeks are of course thrilled to find out that they're getting the Western piece they send soldiers into
Izmir they begin committing acts of genocide against the Turks because they're trying to ethnically cleanse it it's a nightmare disaster and you think
why are you doing this the Italians moved into the coastal region on the southern part of turkey they're thrilled
they're like wow look at all this free real estate we we did poorly in World War one but we
picked the right side you know it's okay to kind of lose militarily as long as you're on the
right side and of course the Ottoman Empire recovers it drives the Greeks and the
Italians out it even gets a concession from the French so that Antioch won't be in Syria
and they pull it into turkey so it doesn't end up quite with the exact
crayon drawn border that the British and the French had come up with there's a little modification
for Iran right it's a sigh of relief they didn't get conquered Iran has the glory of
being one of the only states on the planet to not get colonized by Europe there aren't many white Liberia is one
of them now Liberia did get colonized but ironically enough it got colonized by African-Americans returning to Africa
and the United States sort of put a protectorate over it so that nobody would mess with it
um Thailand did not get conquered by a European State Japan
did not get conquered the Ottoman Empire definitely got carved up like a
Thanksgiving Day turkey pun intended but turkey effectively
avoided the European conquest and then and then Persia that's it because even
right at the end right before World War II Ethiopia gets conquered briefly by the Italians uh it's the second time the
Italians attack Ethiopia the first time they were destroyed by the Ethiopians um second time the Italians attacked
Ethiopia did I say it right I don't know I came through in my head it came out backwards but um so okay so the Islam so Iran survives
World War one without being Sykes peacoat I'm pretty sure that needs to become a verb
there there are unstable though so ever since the 1906 attempt at becoming a
democracy even though it effectively all stops in 1911. it doesn't there's this
percolating instability that keeps rolling through Iran and in fact
um in 1920 there is a guy Mirza kuchuk Shah who
this who this who is a communist who decides he's going to break a piece of Iran out of Iran and make the uh Persian
socialist Soviet Republic pssr and he does he takes the gilan
province out of Iran and it's sometimes called the the gilan Socialist Soviet
Republic and they rule it from June 1920 to
September 1921 it doesn't go on particularly long period of time and one
of the reasons that it fails is the Russians had definitely been involved with this right the Soviet Union was
eager to see if it couldn't maybe expand outward a little bit and the Russians
decide that this isn't worth their resources the Russians are kind of hoping that the Civil War will end
because the Russians are in the middle of a Civil War and so they stop they stop backing it and the Persian
socialist Soviet Republic ends after a year and a half
but it's in that span of time in that year and a half span of time that a
major political shift takes place earlier in 1921
um who was a Cossack
so when you think of Cossacks you probably think of Russians and Cavalry units charging in and slaughtering
peasants I need you to have that image but put them in Iran because it's the same thing he's a Cossack and he's in
command of a Cossack unit in qasvin and he is sick and tired of the complete
chaos that Iran is in so he takes his unit he takes him out of his unit and he
actually marches to Tehran and they capture it they capture the capital of Iran he topples the existing government
he replaces the prime minister with his guy
and he becomes the commander-in-chief of the Iranian Army Iranian military
and then two years later he replaces the Prime Minister because he starts arguing with him and he becomes the prime
minister and then in 1925 so two years after that
he's in a position now where he can make a serious move and take more control
over Iran Reza Shah has in mind that he's going to
become the Ataturk of Iran so Ataturk at the after the Ottoman Empire was
disassembled he decided he okay there's no more Ottoman Empire we're now turkey and then he decided I'm going to
modernize it in my own image and I'm going to take turkey and make it into this new thing
I'm going to change the letters it uses to write its language I'm going to
change the language the azaturk ordered that Turkish be purged of its Arabic and
Persian words and it had a lot of Arabic and Persian and then they switched the alphabet from
Arabic alphabet to the Latin alphabet so Turks today can't read any of their
literature that's more than 100 years old because first of all the letters are unrecognizable to them but even if they
get past that and learn the Arabic letters they have to now learn these Arabic and Persian words that have been deleted
from their language Reza Shaw maybe isn't planning to go that far but what he does want to do is
dramatically change Persia so that it's no longer this this third world country that's backwards that isn't modernized
he wants to advance it his original position his original goal
his original objective was to do like turkey and create a republic
but he ran head on into the clergy the clerics did not want this democracy
thing they were just against it every step of the way they were like what will the people
decide we don't want this and he had a problem with the British the British made it also very clear that
they simply did not want Iran to become a democracy Republic whatever kind of Republic you end up with that was off
the table and so in the end he yields the pressure from the clerics and from the British
and he goes to the modulus he goes to Parliament and says we got to do something we've got to have a stable
state it seems to me the only way forward is monarchy make me Shaw and they do and
Sykes–Picot: Redrawing the Middle East (1916–1918)
they replace out Ahmad Shah and that's the end of the kajals Ahmed Shah is the
last gaja ruler uh res
ha of Iran and he begins the modernization process as as a monarch he has a lot more
control over exactly how this unfolds but it also means the people have little control over how this unfolds it's
really just him making the decisions him and then the rubber stamp Parliament
foreign and then things go wrong there's this catastrophic event that has
Global repercussions that we're still dealing with called World War II
and he probably would have been okay except the Germans got this crazy idea that 70
million people could attack 170 million people and somehow defeat the 170
million people with inferior tanks
and an inferior Air Force just to give you an idea how insane this
is uh when the German Army was lined up against the Russians actually let's just do Operation Barbarossa because I don't
want to make it too complicated there were 5 000 German tanks in operation Barbarossa 3 500 when they lined up and
then they got 1500 reinforcements throughout 1941. so it ends up 5 000.
the Russians had 22 000 tanks
2 000 of the Russian 22 000 tanks were Superior to everything the Germans had I
know I know the Germans make everything better not then not tanks the Russians had kv-1s and t-34s and they were better
than anything the Germans had to feel in other words the Russians should have destroyed the Germans in operation Barbarossa it should have been an
Annihilation it was just it was the Russians who got the annihilation not the Germans it makes no sense when you
look at the numbers and you look at the technology involved but anyway that's what happens well when it happens when
the Germans attack the Soviet Union the British and the Russians decide on
that because now Britain isn't alone anymore right now they finally have somebody because
the Germans take out France and now all of a sudden Britain's alone and then the Germans attacked Greece and the British
are like oh my God Greece you could be our oh yeah not not gonna all right
anyway we're alone again uh you know I was one of those
tragic almost had a friend moment so when Soviet Union gets attacked
Churchill's like stop and we're best friends forever and so they start trying to work out how
the Brits can help because the Russians are getting torn to shreds even though they they should have been totally
destroying Germany and it's getting desperate it's it's bad
of the 22 000 tanks there are none left by 41. but the Germans still have like
three thousand it was a disaster Russians are surrounding
millions of men in a tie it's just like the Germans are like what do we do what do we do with them why did
we attack this place Germany ends up conquering it's an area like five times larger than Germany they're like well
this country doesn't end we've conquered literally 10 of us why did we attack this thing anyway
so the British in the front the British and the Russians decide you know what isn't it a shame we didn't
split Iran in half the end of world war one is it really ever too late
and Stan goes no of course not and the British invade Iran from the south and the Russians invade Iran from the north
and by September the Iranian military just throws its guns down in rods
they're modernized razor Shah military That was supposed to defend Iran just
disintegrates in front of the British and the Russian forces they don't even put up a fight he's freaking out he
can't believe it before he knows it the British and the Russians are in Tehran they capture him and his family
and they make a deal with them they say look if you step down you go under house
arrest we'll send you to some nice part of the Empire maybe Egypt maybe Uganda
who knows the Mauritius Islands looks good who doesn't want to go to the Mauritius and then I'll let we'll let
your family live in fact we'll let your son become the Shah of Iran
and raise a shot goes what choice do I have my Army didn't fight
and he abdicates and I think it's September September well maybe it's laters yeah sometime
late 1941 since I'm not drawing the right month now his son
is in charge his son ends up just being called the Shah so
he's in the British and the Russians occupy Iran until the end of the war and the reason
they did this officially was because this was a way now the
British could ensure that um supplies could be delivered to Russia
through Iran because you couldn't you're like the obvious way to go would be to go to murmansk or archangels in the very
far north of Russia past Finland the problem is the Russians had Norway so
the Russians sorry the Germans had Norway so the Germans could fly aircraft from Norway and try to sink British
shipping going across that way so it was dangerous the British were doing it it's
just they were going to take losses doing it so the way to go without taking losses was to go all the way well they
wanted to go through the Mediterranean but there was those obnoxious Italians trying to mess with them so they'd have
to go all the way around Africa and then through Iran and into Russia that way
but that's why they did it and then of course once the United States enters the war we also sent some supplies that way
as well so the war ends the British withdrawal
the Russians mostly withdraw but they stop in Azerbaijan the reason they
stopped in Azerbaijan was so um before the kajaros there was a there was
a safavids the safavids the rulers of Iran conquered the Caucasus Mountains and
they didn't quite finish the job they missed the westernmost 10 of it the
Ottoman Empire grabbed that but they had about 90 percent of the Caucasus Mountains well during the Napoleonic
Wars and then again a little bit afterwards in the 1820s uh the Russian Empire attacked the the cultures because
the gudgers took over by this point the safavids were no longer in charge and they carved off
the Persian Empire's Caucasus region well when they did that there was a
territory inside Iraq called Azerbaijan and the Russians split it in half
and so they the Russians took the northern half of Azerbaijan and left the southern half of Azerbaijan in Iran the
azeris are Turks so the Russians at the end of the war are like you know what let's just put
Azerbaijan together and in that way the azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic will be whole because it'll be both the
North and the South um for the record uh Turks are about 18 of Iran's population Iran's about 60
Iran’s First Shot at Democracy (1906–1911)
percent Persian it's about two percent Arab about uh two ten percent Kurdish
about two percent baluchi and then two percent if you take the Armenians the
Georgians the circations and the Assyrians and put them together they're another two or so percent so Iran's
actually quite diverse um ethnolinguistically the baluchis the Iranians and the Kurds are related to
each other they speak uh Persian languages from the uh Persian Indian
language group the Indus River is effectively the boundary between the Persian languages and the Indian languages from from the Aryan language
groups this drives Indians nuts but I gotta do it so the Aryans conquered most
of India and brought Aryan languages with them there's this Indian nationalist movement that says no the
Aryans were always there that doesn't make sense events but go ahead
I have a lot of Indian viewers they're they're raging right now but we turned off the we turned off the ability to to
comment so that's perfect um I I love my Indian viewers so this is
just I mean um
Europe like there's no shame in this they're the guys who domesticated the horse they get to conquer a huge chunk
of land because they domesticated the horse the greatest weapon in human history ah you gotta love the horse like there
was such a good weapon we were still using it World War II not not the US and Great Britain they were the first countries to jettison the horse uh we
did it with Gatling guns we just took the Army's horse out into the middle of nowhere Montana Shot them to death
um but we got we did it and we switched over to trucks so but Germans the
Russians the Italians the French everybody else is still using the horse in World War II
you're not crazy hard to comprehend wait a minute so there was nukes yeah
and the horse feels like it doesn't when you had tanks
but we also had horses the hair
it's cool though when you think about it it's like this clash between this ancient world and this high-tech world
we should bring the horse back uh why did we shoot the horses you asked that's a great question nobody actually
asked that I just decided to answer it uh because it's capitalism if we had
sold the horses it would have crashed their value and it would have pissed off all the horse breeders
so if we had sold that for meat it would have crash the value of meat so the only
thing to do is shoot them right no there's capitalism I don't know why
you're looking at me like that it's weird it's how this works well we don't sell we shoot
the it's the economic system all right so
all right so it's the Russians are holding on to Azerbaijan they're planning to put it back together in 1946
the United States goes give it back give it back to Iran and the Russians go but why they're it's not fair to the
azerbaijanis they should be reunited we go we'll nuke you they go okay here we go and that was it because that was the
time period where we threatened to Nuke everybody a drop of a hat um the United States kept doing that right up until like
1960 something 63. I I feel like is a good number I'm just a random number uh
we just drop of a hat we're like you know what we'll nuke you and everybody walked away 1958 we threatened a nuclear
Rock so Iran is back intact the war is over it's
46 and the Iranians get that idea again
what if we did democracy to talk about stubborn like when are you
going to get it through your head that you're not going to do democracy because the British
or the Americans are going to stop you in 1951 Iran has as its new prime
minister a guy named mossedek mosa deck is going to do it he's the
architect of this he wants to modernize Iran so he's going to pick up Reza Shah's Banner
he's also going to try to fulfill it's it's its deep desire to be this democracy
so he's going to try and do both of those things he knows there is no doing
it without that oil he needs the oil
because he needs the money because how are you going to build the infrastructure to create a modern society without money right look at
Texas it's literally crumbling why because the rich don't pay taxes there's no money for infrastructure
there's no money for development we are billions of dollars behind in Texas on infrastructure billions like if we
started right now it would take us years to catch up don't worry crumbled bridges are fantastic you can totally still
cross them I have a picture in my office of Russian soldiers and American soldiers Reaching
Across the Elba River because they're on a bridge the bridge is smashed to Pieces but there they are like oh because they
want to shake hands because right they've met the two armies have met siendo over to it's like May May 7 1945.
see it's a smash Bridge it works well you gotta be so picky
so Melissa that decides the number one
threat that he has is the Brits so before he can do any move he shuts down
the British Embassy why the British Embassy well because
embassies are sovereign territory of the of the country that's hosted so the
British Embassy is actually the United Kingdom it's not Iran
and diplomats get diplomatic immunity
so your spies are your diplomats and they
freely operate out of your Sovereign territory the embassy so if you're worried that spies are
going to topple your government shut down that Embassy so that's what he
does he shuts it down and then he goes to the anglo-iranian oil company and changed its name from
anglo-persian to Anglo Iranian because uh part of the modernization does is he
switches the name from Persia to Iran for the record for etymology purposes just because these things matter
uh the original name of Iran was Iran Iran is the original name Iran was the
Persian word for Aryan they were they were the Aryans by the way there's another country on Earth named Aryan
it's not just Iran Erin
e-i-r-e-n Ireland Ireland is literally Aryan so there's
two Aryans on Earth it's Iran and Ireland Isn't that cool um
and so what happened was the Greeks cursus is gonna go to the Greeks it has
to something hot we had to bring the Greeks in somehow the Greeks uh believed that Perseus the
son of Zeus married Cassiopeia the daughter of Andromeda
you're not cool they're marrying constellations um and their children are the Persians
and that's why they're called the Persians they're named after Perseus the son of Zeus
and I go uh Andromeda was the queen of Ethiopia so so Zeus's son and the prince
Reza Shah Pahlavi Rises to Power (1921–1925)
Ethiopian princess they together produced the Persians according to the Greeks hence the name
Persia after Perseus so Persia became the name but it was the Foreigner name
and so Reza Shaw wanted to go back to the original actually Iranian name and
that's why he picks Iran it's an attempt to sort of get out of that so there's
this now there's this dialogue in in when we talk about Iran like should I
say Persia or per or Iran should I say Iranian like what are so generally when
we say Persian we mean the people who speak Persian which is the language it
used to be Farsi but Farsi was the Arabic attempt to pronounce Persian because there's no PA in Arabic they
just made it affa so the so the so the Persians now have said no no we have PA
and so they brought the PA back and so now it's Persia again and it's the Persian language
um so stop saying Farsi that's that's past that makes you look old um unless you're young and then say it
so they sound sophisticated so um so usually when we talk about Iran we
mean the the country and then the Persians are the Persian language speakers so then you will hear Kurds
from Iran or baluchis from Iran say very loudly we are Iranian but they're not
saying very loudly We Are Persian and so that's sort of how this has evolved but there's nothing solid about any of this
this is this is just sort of a superimposition for the record if you're baluchi Dari tajik
if you're from Western Pakistan and then all Kurdish Iranian that's that's the
Iranian language group so there is actually real connectivity there
in any case Melissa deck shuts down the British Embassy kicks the Brits out and then
grabs hold of the anglo-iranian oil company and renames it the national
Iranian oil company and terminates the concession it's not 50 50 it's zero 100
now and so it's not 84 16.
it's zero one hundred and and his justification is it's Iranian oil Iranians know how to extract it we don't
need the Brits why are the Brits here why are they doing this what benefit does Iran get from this none out now
we're going to use this money to modernize the Brits can't overthrow him because the embassy is closed
so the Brits actually go to President Truman and they go
the American Embassy is still open what do you say and Truman goes no
[Applause] the United States doesn't overthrow democracies so that's a bald-faced lie and Harry S
Truman knew it was because we had literally just overthrown this the brand new Syrian democracy it was three years
old in 1949. it's one of the cia's first ever operations a guy named Miles
Copeland the musician uh his son became
the drummer for The Police so just uh
connect somewhere dots uh miles Copeland the jazz musician the
white jazz musician I don't want you thinking that suddenly the CIA had like black operatives working in Syria uh
he overthrows the Syrian government of Al guatley three years in and it it plunges Syria
into Nightmare chaos over the next nine years they'll have 11 governments
the only thing that stops IT from being even worse is I'll quietly somehow gets back into Power stabilizes Syria and
then goes the the president of Egypt and goes if you don't have access right now the Communists are going to take over
and Egypt annexes Syria like that's how bad the overthrow event was it destroyed
the Syrian state it couldn't function anymore so Truman did overthrow democracies just
for clarity's sake but he turns to the Brits and he goes we don't do that
Eisenhower is running for office the next year it's 1952. it's Eisenhower is going to win
Eisenhower is a Supreme Allied Commander in World War II Eisenhower is gonna owe
it everybody loved Ike I mean that was his slogan I like Ike right it was everybody loved
Ike they didn't like him they loved him so he was going to win the Democrats approached him at the same time as the
Republicans and said would you run for president as our our candidate and he went I don't know what party I belong to
I have an idea I'm going to go out into the mountains and hang out in the cabin for a while I'll get back to you he came
back from the mountains he goes I'm a republican many Democrats are still weeping to this day
Eisenhower is approached by the Brits before he's even become president and
the Brits go so we have a problem in Iran we just lost our oil
we don't know how God put it underneath Kazakhstan like that that just seems unfair but we are we've been pumping it
out of Kazakhstan as fast as we can but we didn't get all of it
and Eisenhower goes I got you we got through World War II together
don't worry about it he becomes president in 1953 he orders the CIA to
take out Iran's second attempt at democracy not cool
that CIA operative is Kermit Roosevelt as in the grandson of Theodore
as in the grandson of the former president
now Kermit Roosevelt comes up with a brilliant idea all he has to do is take bags of CIA
money and he can just walk up by the way they tried to do this in Egypt already no it
was it later that it was right around 53 they tried to do this in Egypt I don't remember a year a year before a year
after they literally walked up to the president Muhammad najib they had Egypt
had just had a revolution of 52 and got rid of its monarchy and this guy went with bags of money into Muhammad najib's
office gamil abdullahser who was a colonel who wasn't the president of Egypt follow the CIA operatives and
pulled the bags of money out of the brand new president's office and built a
tower in the shape of a Lotus with a revolving restaurant on the top on an
island in the middle of the Nile with that CIA money
Isn't that cool and as a result prevented the CIA from effectively bribing the president of
Egypt anyway so that's Kermit Roosevelt's idea it's not going to bribe most of that there's no bribing him most of that is
clearly a Believer he clearly he's dedicated to his cause what Kermit's
gonna do is he's going to bribe members of the military he gets them on board to do a coup
d'etat it's like 3 A.M
there's a knock at most of that store the Prime Minister opens the door
and there's an officer standing there he goes prime minister most of that you are under arrest and most of that goes no
you are and all of a sudden a bunch of soldiers come out of the bushes that were hidden
in mosaduct's front lawn and they mass arrest the coup conspirators Kermit
Iran Gets Invaded in WWII (1941)
Roosevelt was just a like a block away watching the operation he sees what's happening he's running down the streets
of Tehran like the bionic man trying to get away any escapes into the Shadows
Eisenhower finds out what's happened he orders Kermit Roosevelt to back down
Roosevelt goes ah you sent me here to overthrow this democracy by God I'm going to overthrow
it and so he meets with Norman Schwarzkopf
senior not not the guy the general his dad
in this cool all you have to do in the United States is just memorize a few names and then they just repeat over the
generations like in a hereditary nobility system like here it's everything it's not just
generals and politicians you know like the USS McCain it's not named after
Senator John McCain it's his dad you know what I mean like you don't have to do Hollywood find your favorite
Hollywood actor actors I bet their Dad or Mom was a Hollywood actor actress
did it do this little thing you'll see it's all hereditary anyway so
uh he goes to Norman Schwarzkopf senior
who was a merchant who traded with Middle Eastern countries and he goes you know the Iranian people what should I do
I don't know what to do I'm hosed I'm actually Rogue right now because I've been ordered to stand down how do I pull
this off and Schwarzkopf says dudes you've got bags of money right
he's like yeah what do I do with it Schwarzkopf goes go and hire the day
laborers from the corner and Roosevelt goes to do what
and then Schwarzkopf says Pro mosa deck rallies
Roosevelt's like you're insane why would I have him do prorose at most of that rallies I'm trying to overthrow Mosaic
yeah after the rally have them go on a rampage and loot stuff smash out windows
steal things from stores flip over cars set things on fire and Roosevelt goes you're a genius
and so that's what they do the CIA starts hiring day laborers
to do these promosa deck rallies and then trash and they do a day after day and most of
that keeps getting up in front of the country and going what are you doing you're my if you're my people why are you trashing our country I'm trying to
modernize our country stop stop ending your rallies with rally in favor of me I
love it who doesn't love that don't break anything why are you breaking things and they do this until the military's
had enough the military design and Iran's second democracy goes down in
a mall of flames at that point then the Shah Muhammad
is in position as the monarch to basically take over
so that thing where the modulus and the Prime Minister were going to be in charge
evaporates and for the next 25 and a half years
then the Shah becomes the Tyrant ruling Iran
he is not kind you do not want to defy him he does not accept opposition forces
you will go to prison you will be tortured he is cruel
he's a tyrant he does try to modernize Iran and he does do some interesting
attempts like it's not all bad like there's the white Revolution oh wait was that all bad anyway the white Revolution
definitely had problems but there were definitely parts of what the Shah does that they were good they
did they did help modernize Iran he modernizes the military
but in the process Iran pays a really interesting price
and the price is complicated because turkey paid the same price I just told
you they lose their literature for example there's a cultural erosion that's taking place because as as the
modernization takes place and they do things like the white Revolution why'd you pick white as the color
there becomes this thing that Iranians get wrapped up into of aspiring to
whiteness so to the point where Iranian would go I'm I'm Aryan
I'm not Arab I'm Aryan I'm Persian
and there is this separation because they're not Arab they speak a different language they were never conquered like
Egypt was by the Arabs Egypt wasn't Arab either but the Arabs totally conquered
Egypt so it was like what three percent of the population speaks Nubian and
maybe two percent of the population speaks Coptic the rest of Egypt speaks Arabic they're Arab it's over
right but in the case of Persia they never lost their language and their cultural
identity marker was never destroyed so that's there but the problem is now
that they're in this aspiring to whiteness thing which drives this new nationalist thing
and it results in a really weird makes of cultural adaptation so for example the Shah keeps
looking to the Past his hero is Cyrus the Great kurosh
um by the way my hero Cyrus the Great too uh kurosh was simply one of the greatest human beings to ever walk the
planet Earth uh he issued the world's first ever Bill of Rights
right I mean that's really cool in the 6th Century BC so almost 26 years centuries ago almost
2 600 years ago he issued the world's first Bill of Rights he translated it in
every language of the Empire we actually have the text so I don't think we have a complete
version but we have a mostly complete version uh if you ever go to the UN building there's a text I think it's in
four languages over the front door that's it that's Cyrus the Great spill of Rights
it's on the UN building um
the Persians are right to look to Cyrus the Great the the guy who created the
Persian Empire and go wow that that guy by the way his Empire was expressly one
of diversity he intentionally told all the conquered Nations that were part of the Empire you
were not only full members and partners of the Empire we want you to speak your own language and have your own religion
and be different he he actually said diversity makes us stronger
can you imagine so weird crush them like the Romans did
ah or the Brits tried to do anyway so
there's this reminiscing of the past that goes on and
that past is largely pre-islamic but not exclusively pre-islamic because there are these features of Iranian culture
like Rumi that you don't ever mess with that are that will always be a core piece of Iranian culture
but part of this going to the Past thing also included having like these really amazing spectacles at places like
so uh the the Alexander the Great didn't know it existed it was one of the
capitals of Iran but it was a secret capital of Iran and so when he found it
Post-War Struggles and Ethnic Tensions (1945–1946)
uh he destroyed it of course that's that's what you should do when you discover there's a city you didn't know about just wipe out anyway he destroyed
it but he also called it Paris the police as in the city of Perseus
because right The Virgins of the descendants of Perseus so of course it's Percival police so if you if you look it
up in English you probably know it as person police or persepolis if you want to pronounce it that way
uh but the Persians call it by the way just for the record I've been
there it is definitely worth the trip it is a fantastic ruin the Shah does this
gigantic thing spending millions of dollars to basically have a big pageant
Fest there because he's trying to bring back the glory that was
and some of that doesn't click with the public they're trying to figure out I'm in poverty and you're spending all this
money in pageantry why aren't you spending this money developing this their the economy
developing our infrastructure educating our kids and so there's a little bit of Disconnect going on but also there's a
cultural problem because Iran becomes known as Little America because so we do the coup for the Brits
only we don't really do the coup for the Brits because Eisenhower had as one of his goals
the destruction of the French and British Empires Eisenhower intended to destroy the
British and French Empires and then replace them both it's why we do the Vietnam War
that's our attempt to replace the French Empire in Southeast Asia
Isn't that cool so after we do the coup in Iran the
Brits are like oh thank you and Eisenhower's like no dude that's ours now that's how that works we did the
coup the Brits still have a role to play but they're going to be second fiddle right
it's this is our thing now and so before you know it Iran is known as Little America it's also gets the nickname the
shopping mall of the Middle East right because if you think of the quintessential thing that makes America
America it's shopping malls and so boom there it is the shopping mall in the
Middle East um the most common surgery done in Iran
is no surgery I don't think that's changed I think that's still the case when I was there in 2002 I swear one out
of every 10 women women walking down the street had a splint over her nose um and then of course bleach was the
most common sold chemical in Iran because everybody and I wanted to be blonde
and my favorite album cover ever is Googoosh with cowboy hat and pistols
gagoosh of course being one of my favorite Iranian pop singers because she
is truly amazing this isn't an attack on gagoosh at all I swear
it's just there is this strange thing happening and some of it is flattering for example
we sell Iran f-14s only two countries on the planet ever had the best airplane
ever made it's no longer in commission which breaks my heart but the movie the recent
Top Gun movie solved that problem for me which is the only reason I could enjoy
it the F-14 is truly a splendid piece of Machinery in Iran and the United States
are the two states that had it that crazy but remember Iran Contra you're probably not
you're too young uh the spare parts that Oliver North was selling are on some of those were F-14 spare parts I'm going to
talk about it on country but just it's just too fun to think about
um so the shaw starts to run into trouble
his state is his status in the state is unpopular he is a tyrant he's been too
rough with the Iranian people he's been too hard on opposition forces and the reason that he has to be is you're not
going to believe this the Iranians still want to do democracy and they've got this Monarch who's saying no and they're
not okay with no they're not taking No as an answer and this is causing this constant struggle
and so Carter becomes president James Earl Carter
known as Jimmy that guy and Carter looks at the Sean goes it's
time to liberalize it's time you need to start making steps in that
direction so the shot goes okay what choice do I have I have to do what the
president United States says so he starts opening up press and while the Press is going nuts Auntie
Shaw everything it's a it's crazy it's full on it's like 1978 in every
newspaper is trashing the shaw the shaw gets sick because he gets cancer he
needs treatment he leaves Iran to go get treatment and a
revolution breaks out and uh by the first by in Spring of 1979 the Shaw's
toppled uh hands up in Panama at one point he finally gets to Egypt where he
dies where he's buried where his dad's buried because after the British Shuffle his dad around they buried him in Egypt
although now there seems to be some evidence that maybe he was actually buried in Iran anyway who knows where he
is um but the other his son is in Egypt for sure that's that's clear by the way in
the beginning part of the Shah's Reign there was actually conversations about
like how are we going to do this how are we going to make this work um and there was a lot of pressure put
on him to do like a traditional style let's get let's get alliances going and
so he actually Married An Egyptian princess fauzia with the goal of that kind of cementing this Egyptian alliance
with Iran because turkey Iran Iraq and uh Pakistan had formed a formal alliance
and they were trying to figure out how to get Egypt into it and the goal behind the alliance was to create an Islamic
block so that if European States went into colonialism mode again in the future the that at least the Muslim
states would have a means to to push back and and have resistance and so he
marries falzia but it's a disaster marriage and they end up divorced so I didn't work
anyway so so the shaw has this interesting connection to Egypt in any case
uh the Shah goes down and there's this really interesting
moment where Iran could go one of two ways it could go communist or socialist
because the Communists and socialists were working together at that point or it could go islamist it could create the
Islamic Republic those are the two directions it could go and we knew what would happen if it went
Communists to become a Soviet Ally so we didn't want that we knew no matter what happened we were
losing Iran because we had played too heavy of a roll in the Shahs heavy-handedness we were
too involved there was no way our friendship was going to survive this and then of course there's this pendulum
swing thing that people do so all of a sudden everybody wants to look like they have a European nose with blonde hair
Mohammad Mosaddegh and the Oil Nationalization (1951–1953)
and now all of a sudden everybody's rejecting that and in that moment there is a lot of
anti-us sentiment because we played such a nasty role including overthrowing their democracy
in 1953 and sticking them with the Tyrant to begin with and so a lot of the rhetoric coming out
of the revolution is fiercely anti-American so we know we've lost Iran but we don't
want Iran to become a Soviet Ally so the best thing to do then is to push
Iran into the islamist direction and what we weaponized the Ayatollah
Khomeini who of course had a tour of Duty in Iraq and a tour of
Duty in France and the next thing you know he's now in Iran and he was a truly charismatic character he was a Believer
he probably meant to make the world heaven on Earth but he's so charismatic he'll make the
decision between the left and the right and Iran will go islamist in the chaos
of iran-going islamist the the the left the Socialist and the Communists had
been working with the islamists thinking um an enemy of enemy is a friend and on the
other end of the Revolution we'll figure it out well I got figured out and the left got massacred it was a
Slaughter leftists are fleeing in every direction they can to get out of the country because it's they're host
the islamists also massacred the military uh the officer Corps not the not the
enlisted uh the generals the Admirals are wiped out some of the Air Force generals Escape by
plane the army guys are hoes because they're just sitting there on the ground the Admirals are decapitated some of the
Air Force generals get killed as well it's a disaster because they're now creating a new state and this new state
is going to be the Islamic Republic they're going to impose Shia's style
Islam through a theocracy on the Iranian people
but in that moment of the revolution the Iranian people actually experienced this incredible moment of freedom
because in that moment to the revolution there really isn't a state apparatus
so it's sort of like this Anarchist dream where the state hasn't established
itself the new state it's thinking about what rules to impose but even if it
imposed them it wouldn't have the force to do it because it doesn't have anything to do it with it still has to create its police force and its laws
right it's new constitution there's all and in that moment there's this incredible
foreign freedom that will abruptly end as soon as the state has established itself
in that same year 1979 a group of college students
get a crazy idea what if
they we broke into this is what they're saying this is their dialogue the U.S
embassy and we could get a hold of the CIA documents
that show that the U.S overthrew the Denmark the Democracy in 53
then we could show the world and maybe the United States would apologize for it and then we could start healing from
this wound and so a group of college students start heading to the U.S embassy well most of
the U.S embassy staff had already been evacuated there are like four civilians left
at that point and they get worried that the students are coming and they escaped the Canadian embassy
but there's 66 CIA operatives still there because Iran wasn't just the
headquarters for the Iranian the CIA operation operations in Iran Iran was
the headquarters for CIA operations in Asia
so basically everything from Turkey to China operated out of Tehran to the point where we had the minting plates
for twenty dollar bills there so San Francisco Denver Philadelphia and
Tehran that's where we minted U.S money those are the official mints
Isn't that cool because the CIA needed the cash right when it's overthrowing democracies
that's not cheap you gotta you gotta pay for that stuff twenty dollar bills are a fantastic way to pay for everything it
turns out and so that's what they did when we were doing the Sunni Awakening in Iraq we
literally had boxes of 20 bills and we just drive around with forklifts delivering these crates of 20 bills I
don't know what it is about 20 bills but and so that's the thing I think it's easier to buy AK-47s with them for some
reason uh not sure so
the the the the brand new Islamic Republic that doesn't want anything to do with what the
students are about to do calls the U.S embassy because the U.S embassy is officially United States of America so
as soon as those kids climb over the wall they're in the United States of America trespassing this is an international incident
and so they call you everything like dude get the rest of your staff out what are you doing there and the CIA guys are
like nothing as they're shredding the documents that they got to stay there they got to
get everything shredded and so they're just sitting there at the shredders going we're just gonna stay here a
little longer the Iranian government's like no you gotta go what are you doing
they're all ban orders the students climb over the wall and they capture the 66 CIA operatives in the act of
shredding the documents they had already gotten a bunch of the documents shredded those college students shove those
shredded documents in garbage bags they walk over to the nearby middle schools and high schools they go you guys like
making puzzles right and they put the documents back together
in our words Peace by peace we document how Kermit
Roosevelt over through the Democracy in 1953.
the students go here it is they cop make copies give it for free to the whole
world too bad there wasn't an internet back then they'd have loved that they give it away to the whole world
free documents and and then they go okay President Carter go ahead apologize
no way we're United States of America even though we've lost Wars we'll never admit it and we're definitely never
going to apologize and so we refused Carter wasn't going to do it
so the student said we won't release the hostages until you do Carter's I don't care
don't keep them they're just CIA operators no one cares
and then the students go but you know what else we have we have the names of all your operatives
in China and in Southeast Asia and in India and in Pakistan
and you sure you don't want to apologize and Carter didn't do it and so they published all of it in an instant cia's
massacred not literally they just had to pull all their operatives out of the field because now the Chinese knew their
name and where they were yeah no now everybody knew their names
and where they were and so the CIA had to start over
just just like we had to do in Russia right October 2021 the CIA admitted that
The CIA Coup That Changed Everything (1953)
uh their Assets in Russia were wiped out
that's amazing I wonder where those documents came from that detailed out the location and names of all those
assets hmm what do you think hmm where could those documents have come
from anyway Wonder
so uh that there's no denying what we did
but we're not going to apologize for it and we're not going to get the hostages released
and so time's passing Ted Koppel creates a new TV show
Nightline it's going to be at night
he's gonna have like fun music to start the show and then every every show is
going to start with how many days the innocent victim hostages have been held
in captivity in Iran I became like this measuring time
and Carter's popularity rating just kept going down down down so Carter and
Desperation decides to do a military operation he's going to send helicopters in to do a rescue
and the helicopters are flying across Iran and then they got to do mid-air refueling
that sounds like an awful idea I know we're good at doing it now but it turned out it was an awful idea
two of the helicopters Collide they go down and and there's not enough helicopters now to complete the mission
so they have to abort and come back and so now the Iranians are like dancing on these burnt out helicopters
and it Carter's popularity plunges even faster now
and then came rumors of the October surprise by this point here the hostages are like
in Hell for a year and there was talk that Carter had done
it he had successfully negotiated the release of the hostages and now
they were going to get released October 1980 November 1980s the Reagan Carter
election and so um
hahaha Reagan is panicking because if the
hostages get released before the election Carter's popularity will bounce right
back and he'll probably win the election so they've got to stop this from happening
so they figure out who Carter's been negotiating with his name is rossanjani in the early days he had so he had his
hands in so many different things that I nicknamed him the prince as in Machiavelli's the prince he was prime
minister at one point he was never president there is no prime minister of Iran they dissolved that position so uh
but he he did get into a powerful position he never got to the the top but
he's didn't matter he was very powerful and so the Reagan campaign now so for
the record this is not a hundred percent proven it's just mostly proven there's
like 15 Witnesses and multiple court documents because a lot of this a lot of
the material that that is evidence for this actually ended up in courtrooms and
judges actually even said yes some of this definitely did happen and by the
time you're done with the evidence it's probably true I I I'm confident this is true what happened was the Reagan
campaign sent a group of men they met with rafsanjani they came with briefcases
they put the briefcases on a desk and they said we'd like for you to hold the hostages at least until after the
election Johnny went I thought you said you were from the United States they go we are
and Ross Andre goes what's in the suitcases and they go you'll like it it wasn't twenty dollar bills it was
more and so he opens it up and he goes you know what I'm going to see what I can do he had successfully negotiated
with the students to release the hostages he goes back and he renegotiates with them to keep the hostages
the election happened Reagan wins Carter doesn't know this has happened so he's
still got his sleeves rolled up negotiating trying to get the hostages released he's negotiating while Reagan's
being inaugurated like he was so determined to make it happen and of course moments after Reagan has
inaugurated president they released the hostages as planned so that Reagan can
get credit for it
Nicole by the way it is the second time that I'm aware of of a U.S president throwing
an election by working with a foreign power the first time was when Nixon got
president two to leave the Paris Peace Accords in 1968.
and that that's a hundred percent there's no leftover slight doubt in that
one in part because we have uh recorded conversation of LBJ freaking out when he
finds out what's happened and saying that man has committed treason that man being Nixon and it's
one of the reasons why Nixon was so paranoid that he cheated in 72 he was worried that if a Democrat beat him in 72 they'd find out he had rigged the
election in 68. so he don't cheat in a race you're going to win anyway that if you're going to cheat
only do it in the races you're going to lose I just think that should be a rule
always uh also do the math like figure out how
much you should cheat like don't over cheat because sometimes that backfires on you get it right like you know work
it out first so uh the hostages get released and then
Reagan decides that it would be really fun to do a proxy war with Iran
and what the United States does is it goes to Saddam Hussein the president of Iraq and it says you
have a grievance with Iran isn't that correct and Saddam Hussein said yeah our border on the shuttle Arab isn't quite
resolved and uh we'd like that straightened out and he goes and and
Reagan guys are like yeah couldn't your grievance go beyond that and they go what do you mean and go
isn't plazistan Arab that's the Arab part of Iran wouldn't it be better if an Arab country
ruled the Arab part of Iran and Saddam Hussein went you know that you mentioned it that does sound like a good idea and
so the Reagan guys say well they just decapitated their military it's gonna it's like Stalin's purges it's going to
take them forever to get to recover from this attack them now will supply you we'll run you the
weapons whatever you need and uh Saddam Hussein obliges and in 1981 Iraq attacks
Iran it's a not eight year long War it's a complete disaster for both Iran and Iraq the low number is three three
quarters of a million Iranians die one quarter of a million Iraqis die the high number is just double that
uh nothing is gained the Border doesn't really change in any meaningful way and
the world is not better off for having done it um
the war ends and Iran that whole time then is an
emergency mode so whether you like the theocracy or not didn't matter this is life and death this is survival
there's this catastrophic War where Iranians are losing a huge number of lives three people die for every Iraqi
so even though the war is a stall a stalemate there's no real winner in this
thing the cost to Iran was catastrophic and through the roof and so Iranians were willing to fight for the Islamic
Propaganda, Bribery, and a Staged Uprising (1953)
Republic whether they liked it or not because this was a matter of nationalism and national identity
and then the war ends pretty much for no reason other than the
Ayatollah Khomeini goes you know what why not let's stop Saddam Hussein kept saying please let's stop this isn't going
anywhere it's like no no he turned it into a holy war so he's like I'm an idiot from starting the War I should
have never trusted the Americans the war ends Iran's trying to get back
on its feet Iraq's trying to get back on its feet the next thing you know the United States is smashing Iraq into the
stone ages in 1991 and Iran's looking at it going wow weren't they friends just
now enough obviously in the meantime there was the whole Iran Contra thing what the
United States did was it told the world look to get the Iran Iraq war to stop please nobody sell weapons to either
side in the meantime we're selling Iraq just crazy amounts of weapons and the French too just for the record I think
even the swedes sold them Wiggins so I think even they were like everybody's like yes
nothing to either Iran or Iraq as they're sending the weapons to Iraq including we sent them sarin gas and VX
gas and mustard gas and Anthrax just for the record so those weapons of mass destruction we blow up Iraq for later we
knew they had them because we had the receipts so
we did we actually had the serial numbers of every rocket we sent them that's how the UN weapons inspectors
knew what to look for they were literally we literally they literally had the cereal that's what Scott Ritter's whole job while he was UN
inspector in Iraq was he was just looking for the serial numbers that's all uh Isn't that cool is that
keep keep serial numbers on the weapons that you send to other countries that you think are probably violating an
international law I think that's just always a good idea um the reason we did it Iran contract
I'll do the nutshell version was Iran desperately needed spare parts its entire military was U.S he even had an
F-14 Tomcat like you know they're like what are we supposed to do we don't have any spare parts and So Reagan wanted to
fight a terrorist war in Nicaragua he wanted to fund the contradoras to attack
the sun Denise the government so he needed funding for it because when he went to Congress Congress said no
that's terrible let's not do that so Reagan decided the Constitution doesn't
say I have to listen to Congress oh yeah it probably does but I haven't read it so I don't know and so he he decides to
fund them anyway where are you going to get the money from well Oliver North comes up with the
plan sell the Iranians the spare parts at four times the market value take that
money and then launder the money and I mean it's a loop-de-loop launder like it
goes to Brunei and I think it went through like I don't remember how many countries it's really complicated it
gets to Israel Israel had a cachet of AK-47s they kept capturing after
arab-israeli Wars that they they were selling to the highest bidder and in this case it turns out it's the CIA the
CIA buys the AK-47s using that Iranian money and then sends them to the contradoras so that the Contra doors can
shoot Nicaragua up that's that's what that was not neat anyway uh he does Reagan does
get busted for it uh but but Americans don't have memory so
he got away with it uh Oliver North was basically called in by the house and
grilled and it was on TV before he knew it somehow Oliver North had become a hero and it's like no he
just broke the Constitution the procedure is blindfolding in firing
squad anyway I'm I must have missed the memo where Traders become Heroes uh
how I don't know when was the memo issued
it's like what we've done with the word hero you're a hero what did I do grocery shopping
were they throwing hand grenades at me while I was doing it how am I a hero for grocery shopping how did did hero get
redefined and I missed something doing ordinary things
doesn't make you a hero it probably just means you're not suffering from a depression bout
depression sucks uh
uh so we got past there on Contra skin okay so fast forward
a 19 in the late 1990s Iran elects a guy named khatami so Iran
is in this weird situation because strangely enough it is kind of democratic
this is the irony of the Islamic Republic in the 90s that modulus that
got created in 1906 is still there and they're holding relatively free and fair
elections the the reason I'm not saying they're fully phrased the following to
run for our office you had to be approved by a council the council was a Theocratic Council so they purged a
bunch of potential people but they let some people through including this guy
khatami hatami thought he could get into the presidency a position that doesn't have a lot of
power because the Islamic Republic is a monarchy it's an absolute monarchy monarchy just means one person is in
charge that's all it means it doesn't have to be hereditary although Ayatollah he has designated his son as
his successor so he's switching the Islamic Republic from a Theocratic
monarchy into a Theocratic hereditary monarchy so he's the guy really in charge not the
president but the president because the president is President has a lot of symbolic power and as a result can kind
of move people and can can affect policy because the president's a guy who's supposed to execute policy so khatami
gets in there and he tells the morality police stop going after women for not
covering their hair if they have some hair covering and let's see if we can start easing
back the reason was the following the hijab had become the
symbol of women's oppression whether or not wearing hijab is oppressive doesn't matter having somebody stick a gun to your head
and say you're gonna wear this you're gonna cover your hair makes it
oppressive right if you give the person the option and they decide they want to do it that's their choice but if you're
forcing them to do it they've taken Choice out of the equation we're not in
anything other than oppression land there's no there's no two ways about it
I figure out the secrets of the universe let's say the Supreme Being comes to me and tells
me everything I need to know about the secrets of the universe I walk up to one of you and I say I figured it out here it is
and you go I don't know I don't know and then I take a gun and I stick it to your head I go you will convert to My
Religion now did I just save your soul
probably not I'm going to go with that I suspect you I didn't like the thought
that somehow violence is going to save somebody's soul is really remarkable to me I talk about logic fail
in any case that's the position the Islamic Republic suddenly found itself in because they had had a debate should
we do the head cover or not and they decided yeah we're going to make it mandatory this is something we're going
to do by the way they tried to do the Azan from the mosques really loudly and they tried to make that mandatory but
The Shah Returns as an Authoritarian Ruler (1953–1960s)
one of the interesting twists on that was the Iranian people were like uh we're not sure we want that it's too
noisy and so they basically deleted that so they were trying to do some things it just didn't work the hijab worked they
got women to wear the hijab but under duress and so hatami is like let's let's ease
this up just so happens when I went to Iran in 2002 khatame was president and
what I kept seeing was women who had head covering on the back but the whole front of their hair was completely out
also women have to wear a tunic and women in 2002 in Iran were wearing the
tightest garment the world has ever seen and they would usually wear black which
just for the record is is the most amazing color for clothing ever it is just like oh my God so I was walking
around Iran the whole time going wow this is actually really hot um
so there was a rebellion it was a fashion Rebellion it seems like a dumb thing when you think about it like oh my
God you're taking your Rebellion through Fashions but that was exactly the focal point for women's oppression
the reform movement doesn't work it fails in 1999 the the
supreme leader orders an attack on a university that killed a bunch of students it's a disaster katami sort of
sputters after that he's still holding on he gets replaced by Ahmadinejad the
the bush of the Middle East you know 60 IQ can't string together an intelligent
sentence she says one dumb thing after the other you're like oh my god did you say that and my favorite was when he
said Iran doesn't have gays anyway um
there's a fun story about Khamenei related to that uh there there is
actually I I um anyway uh let's just say Harmony
might not be straight just leave it at that
um so the uh Islamic Republic Reform movement
fails Ahmadinejad is this right-wing lunatic takes Iran the exact opposite direction
we played a role in this when 9 11 happened hatami issued an official statement from the Islamic Republic it
said the people of Iran condemn all forms of terrorism and the people of Iran stand with the people of the United
States we are here to offer anything you need in assistance
in an instant khatame had ended Decades of hatred and anger
with one statement he'd even apologize for the Iran hostage crisis in the last
few years of the Clinton Administration I think it was 99. he said we we regret that
and some we didn't apologize for overthrowing their government yet we did we did it Obama did it
he was like all right we're sorry
our bad but uh
George Bush Jr he's gonna do his first state of the union it's 2002. the whole
world's gonna watch because 911 just happened and what does he say there is an axis of
Evil that runs from North Korea through Iran to Iraq and the Iranians go what are you talking
about because not only did they offer us assistance they gave us assistance we
told them we're going to blow up the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iranians go dude we've been fighting a proxy war
with we have a whole group of soldiers on the battlefield who are Afghans who fight that we Supply will give you their
contact and you can use them as your ground forces and Bush is like sure and
the next thing you know he's calling Iran evil that was it that was the end of the reform movement because all the
hardliners went oh you work with the great Satan they backstab you this is what you get you should have never
helped them and of course the average iranian's like yeah it looks like that to me from here
so in 2009 there's the green movement the
Iranian people rise up they're attempting democracy again their goal is to
overthrow not sorry to to reform the Islamic Republic not to overthrow it
their goal is to force the Islamic Republic to make dramatic changes
especially around women's rights but everything and the grilling movement doesn't last
very long it Fizzles out and goes down it taught the world a big lesson though so what the green movement would do is
they would they would they would protest in the most important spot in every city so in the most important location in
Tehran and then they'd go home for dinner and then in the morning when they'd show up at that spot to protest again the
police would have it cordoned off so the only way to get into that spot would have been to battle the police
so then the protesters would go to the second most important spot in the city and protest there and then they go home
for dinner and when they come back in the morning that's cordoned off so then they'd go to the third and fourth and by
the time they were at the 16th it was like an allium that nobody even saw and
the the Revolution was over the Arab Spring learned that lesson so
when they took the streets they permanently occupied that location 24 7.
and then when we decided to do the Arab Spring we took that lesson and we called it Occupy Wall Street
Isn't that cool so 2019 rolls along Iran has another
attempt it doesn't last it burns out pretty quickly earlier this year who's Astan the
southwest corner the era part it has a it's Arab minority now as far as I know
it's majority Persian but it's traditionally the arrow part it went into Rebellion
it has not actually stopped being in Rebellion it is it has maintained that Rebellion but then a little bit over
seven weeks ago I think we're closing in on the eight week Mark um an Iranian woman actually she's
occurred to be precise right so she's not a Persian Iranian she's a Kurdish Iranian
um she was in Tehran visiting the Kurds are not allowed to have their first
names so she she went by Masa Masa Amani is her Persian name
um and she shows up she her head covering wasn't on
correctly she gets arrested she's put into the morality police van
and all the witnesses say one of the morality police she was mouthing off she
was telling him to go to hell she was calling him all sorts of ugly names one of the morality police guys got mad and
he raised his leg and he kicked her in the head and smashed her head against the metal side of the the truck and then
when she gets to the police station the TV the cameras are there it's rolling so you can see here she walks over she
looks like she's gonna sit down she gets up she walks over to a person looks like she's gonna have a conversation with the
person she falls down she dies it turns out she had brain she had a brain injury
and it was swelling and it finally swelled to the point where it caused her to lose Consciousness that's why she
passes out a novel and then she dies of her injuries that's it that was the spark Iran has now been in a revolution
now for going it'll be eight weeks here shortly and there's no signs it's
letting up in in Iranian culture on the 40th Day after a person dies you have to have a
The White Revolution and Its Consequences (1963–1970s)
ceremony to to talk about that person to mourn that person so these 40ths keep
popping up like just two weeks ago masamani's 40th came up and people took
to the streets and the violence level increased because now people are reminded and they're angry and they're
in large crowds and so the people who were killed in the early days of this revolution now their 40th keep popping
up so this so about about 10 days ago no was it more two weeks ago let's say the
Revolutionary guard leader said we're going to start using live bullets we're gonna we're gonna intentionally start
killing you you need to stop you need to get out of the streets and he said it on a Friday that's Saturday and Sunday
there was definitely a drop in the protest people definitely got scared by Monday they were protesting again
before you knew it the protests were even larger than they were before so it
didn't work they weren't intimidated off the streets and and then what happened was the government actually came and
said you got to stop killing people because these 40ths are causing so much
more revolutionary Force afterwards how do so so you have one guy saying we're
going to kill and then you have the supreme leader saying please stop we don't we can't manage this Iran's economy is on the verge of
collapse the uh petrol petrochemical industry went on strike
the oil industry went on strike the gas industry went on strike a bunch of the
truckers not all of them but a bunch of them went on strike their whole whole bazaars that have gone on strike there
are whole segments now of the Irani economy that's in free fall and of course this is on top of all the
sanctions that have been put imposed on Iran and so the Iranian state
can't do this forever there is a there is an end point to this one of the hopes
was that oil prices would continue to plunge because that takes out the
ability of the Islamic Republic to fund itself and then OPEC raised oil prices
to stabilize Venezuela Russia and Iran and so uh that that's not happening but
nonetheless Iran is the Iranian state is is collapsing
um the the question is what happens next so this revolution is an unusual
Revolution it's unlike probably anything ever before and one of the reasons is it's a woman's uprising
uh the slogan for this revolution is Zan zendigi Azadi which means life women
Liberty like that's the slogan for the revolution there the songs that they're
singing are about this the chants the marches a whole Cadre of the Revolutionary Force
are basically middle school and high school and college student women in Iran the women are actually running
the revolution so when I talked about petrochemical and gas and petroleum those guys are all men it's a 90 male
dominated economic field who are citing with the women in the
revolution like they're clear about this it's not only about women's rights there's economic problems there's this
need for democracy that Iranians have never let go of but women's rights are at the core of it because it's become
the symbol of Oppression for everybody even the man and and that's what's really interesting about this because if
you look at some of the protests but the hijab is God like all these
women have torn off their hijab but there are also this Cadre of totally covered women that
not just hijab but even chador which is more a car is they tie it off
under your chin who are standing with the women who don't have hijab who are saying we want women to have the right
to choose we want to choose to wear hijab but we want them to choose not to
if they don't want to so we're standing with them there there's a amazing video a woman has just been captured by the
morality police what a disgusting group of people you're the morality police anyway get a job like I don't know
construction or something build something worthless anyway this woman gets
captured from her not wearing hijab all of a sudden these covered women they're wearing
hijab and chidorah come charging at the cops they're beating the cops the woman
the uncovered woman escapes by the way she looked like a gazelle she's like leaping through the air running and in
the meantime the colored women after the woman has escaped they just sort of walk away
and the morality police are like what's this happened and it so in other words this isn't
about in Iran this isn't about they want the top of the regime and then do something weird like ban Islam what they
want to do is they want to topple the regime create a democracy and then have the freedom for people to choose the
kind of Life they want to have going forward they want to terminate the theocracy and replace it with a secular
Republic they don't want to terminate their culture they don't want to de-muslimize and I think sometimes
people are seeing it in that framework which is wrong and bizarre but in the
meantime you've got places in Europe saying should we ban hijab to show solidarity with Iran and they were
getting this really loud group of women from Iran going no that's so that's not any better you're just flipping the
oppression you're still telling women what to do we have an idea let women decide what they want to do
which would be neat to do in Texas wouldn't that be neat if women had rights in Texas too I I think we should
do that here I think it should be inspired by the women of Iran there was
a woman's Uprising in 1975 in Iceland those are the only two now that I know
of the one that's taking place in Iran and the one in Iceland the one in Iceland not only succeeded they drafted
a new constitution they uh the women successfully toppled the state Iceland
is probably the most democratic country on the planet right now so it it worked
it transformed from what I can tell Iran totally has
that potential in this moment it it's not certain it will happen but that
that's actually what this moment is there there are people are sophisticated they're intelligent they have the potential to have a massive economy
they're the 21st largest economy on Earth right now with their economy being
flushed down the toilet so if they could if they could get out of that and rebound they'd probably be like the 12th
or 14th largest economy this is this is a super power state with enormous resources they're one of two countries
on the planet that has an advanced drone research program the United States is the other one that's why you keep
hearing in the news that there are Iranian drones in the Ukraine because the Iranian drones are so much more
sophisticated than the Russian drones right that that's that's what we're
dealing with we're dealing with an incredible state with Incredible potential that's been crushed by this
conservative regime that wants to superimpose its idea of morality
and it's not working it's killing the Iranian people and they're they're done
I I but who knows what the future looks like you know what I mean it's like predicting an election
it's like rolling dice well I I think we're out of time I'll field one question because we don't have a lot of
time
yeah that's a fantastic question so the question was because he's not miked up uh what's the role of the United States
basically going forward so the the pessimist part of me says that
Cultural Shifts and the Road to Revolution (1970s)
what the United States is going to do is use the CIA to try to undermine the Revolution and install a new monarchy so
uh the Shah's son is still alive he has said himself that he doesn't necessarily
want to be the Monarch but then he came back and he said well but maybe I could do a temporary thing until the state
gets stabilized um I don't trust anybody I assume every
politician is always trying to figure out how to maximize their power so but for all we know he's a wonderful guy and
he really will do that um my thinking however is that the Iranian
people aren't going to go from it from what I can tell from what's Happening inside Iran if it's up to the diaspora
so the people living especially in the United States maybe not even the Iranians in Europe but the Iranians the
United States they I think they would love to have the monarchy restored but I don't see it from what I'm seeing in
Iran I think they want a secular Republic My Hope Is that the United States will stop being the bad guy in
foreign policy it's time to stop interfering in that way and turn this around and use this as an opportunity to
mend this bridge Obama apologized for overthrowing the government in 53 you
know like we the first steps in the 12-step program is you've got to apologize to the people you hurt we're
there Iran's apologized we've apologized we're in great shape so all we got to do is
stop interfering in a negative way they could be a great trade partner and maybe we could be friends again I mean why not
that could be on the table but I think the first step would be to keep the CIA out there's another part of
your question though that I think is really important that's what can the what can the American people do to stand
in solidarity with the Iranian people one of the things that Iran has been asking for is for there to be protests
overseas they say it it it gives them hope because they see the support so
like that protest that just happened in Berlin I want to say it was like 10 days ago oh my God
uh it was insane now it was largely Iranian they were from the diaspora coming from all over Europe going to
Berlin but there were a bunch of Germans there too hundreds of thousands of people
um I've been at multiple protests here in are they protests or rallies I've been at multiple rallies here in Austin
uh in fact I I spoke at one in front of the capitol Lloyd Doggett was there he also spoke
and one of the things I'm seeing is it's just it's mostly Iranians it's not 100 Iranians but it's probably like 85
percent Iranians when you find out that there's one of these protests show up and Sh and show your your
non-ironian-ness and I think it matters I think it matters a lot I've been protesting for 30 something
years now and one of the things that I notice is you go to an event and it's
overwhelmingly that group so right you show up at a
Palestinian rights event like during the Gaza massacre in 2008-2009 and you know
there's a lot of Arabs there and there are some non-arabs there but there's there's no Iranians there
well there were there were there were two I knew both of them
um and then you you know and then you go to the green movement event that same year 2009 and there weren't any Arabs there
it's just Iranians and and you know there were there weren't any white people there it's really just Iran's and
I and every time I kept thinking man you know if everybody cared about the other guy just a little bit
more and we could make these events cross over
maybe we'd have some power and we wouldn't be so fragmented um by the way
there is Great Value in showing up to these events even if it's not your group because you get experience doing them
for example my role in the green movement in 2009 was to get in front of
the Iranian protesters and slow them down they just wanted to race and it's like no our goal is to mess up traffic
slow down slow down and so I was this guy walking backwards doing that and
then afterwards they would ask me how do you know all this stuff well because I was at this protest and that protest and this book in other words don't wait
until your group's on the line get out there and do it now care about other
people in this case it's the Iranians and it's an amazing event because it like if
you're a feminist it's there uh if you believe in religious freedom it's there if you believe in democracy
this is that Revolution there are all these things on the line that most people I think get behind
um anyway so my hope is that we as Americans will start to support that way without
getting heavy-handed in interfering which is our our ugly past they already
know what they need we don't need to tell them what they need trust me when I was there in 2002 I just walk up to
random Iranians and just start political conversations and it was amazing how
informed just walking down the street like you walk down the street here and start a political conversation you're
just gonna get gibberish it's nonsense oh by the way Jon Stewart did that he
went to Iran and did a show and I I want to say it was 2007 so it was like five years after my experience and he had the
same experience he just walk up to random Iranians and you know how they always have those comedy things where you walk up to a random American and you
go did you know and then you tell them some wrong fact and they're like oh I didn't know Australia is three times
larger than Russia for real and the capital of Australia is
Singapore and oh yeah and and then you mock us don't don't be
that person all right so we're definitely out of time when we're over and so I'm gonna have to call it here
thanks so much for coming [Applause]
[Music]
[Music]~~~
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