Speaker 1: As media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the
Speaker 2: worst history in all of people or people in all
Speaker 2: of history, whichever is accurate. I don't know. I randomly
Speaker 2: put words together based on a predictive text algorithm, much
Speaker 2: like an LLM, except for I use this collection of
Speaker 2: bones with runes inscribed on them, and that's how the
Speaker 2: podcast comes to you every week. Thousands of bones with
Speaker 2: runs inscribed on them that I pick at random. Kava,
Speaker 2: how would you like me to read some random bones
Speaker 2: that might be about the Shah or not.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Let's roll the bones.
Speaker 2: But also welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: Here. Sorry, yes, thank you again for having me. My
Speaker 3: name is Cave Joda. I am a physician. I'm a gastrointrologist,
Speaker 3: and I'm also the host of a podcas ask called
Speaker 3: The House of Pod. It is a humor adjacent little
Speaker 3: medical podcast we look at well in the scrifter is
Speaker 3: we look at what the MAHA community and the administration
Speaker 3: is doing to our current healthcare and have a little
Speaker 3: fun when we can with it. So you should check
Speaker 3: it out anywhere you get your podcast after this, listen
Speaker 3: to this. This is more important than afterwards listen to you.
Speaker 3: You'll probably like it or your money back.
Speaker 1: Have you done an episode about our mutual enemy yet?
Speaker 3: Which one? I feel like we have a number rfk
Speaker 3: jor I've done a number one?
Speaker 1: No, no, no no. Our mutual enemy that we talk
Speaker 1: about on the side often.
Speaker 3: We did talk about can I say his name? Is that? Okay?
Speaker 3: I don't like to give him more airtime than he
Speaker 3: but Vine pissad Yeah, yeah, I like him. I like him.
Speaker 3: He doesn't like me. I have no problem with him.
Speaker 3: But he's been involved in a lot of aspects of
Speaker 3: medical or medical care recently in the country that I've
Speaker 3: disagreed with. And we actually did talk about him recently
Speaker 3: in our of our more recent episode, So yes, you
Speaker 3: could listen to the podcast and here are The episode
Speaker 3: is influence versus Evidence, and we talk about kind of
Speaker 3: what's happening out there right now in our current healthcare administration.
Speaker 3: He's not a fan of his. It's mostly good, right, oh,
Speaker 3: I mean ninety nine percent great.
Speaker 2: Everything's fine, Everything is great.
Speaker 3: Everything is really If you're really into communicable diseases things,
Speaker 3: this is a good time.
Speaker 2: Excellent. I love communicable diseases and my favorite communicable disease
Speaker 2: is knowledge.
Speaker 3: I was going to say it, I swear to God,
Speaker 3: I was going to say.
Speaker 2: It, let's spread some together. Yeah. So, in the four
Speaker 2: years after the October Revolution in Russia, Persia had been
Speaker 2: the site of bloody and constant conflict between Britain and Russia. Again,
Speaker 2: there's this brief period in World War One where they're
Speaker 2: kind of fighting together against the Ottomans in Persia as
Speaker 2: opposed stuff fucking with each other, and then we've got
Speaker 2: our revolution and the Bolsheviks are fighting the Whites, and
Speaker 2: Britain goes right back to fight in Russia. Right now,
Speaker 2: I guess it's a little different in that they also
Speaker 2: have allies who are Russians in this case too, so
Speaker 2: they're not fighting all of the Russians, just most of
Speaker 2: the Russians. And basically the kind of broad strokes of
Speaker 2: this conflict are the Brits see Persia because they've already
Speaker 2: got a good base in the area, and they get
Speaker 2: resources there, they have interests there, they have a lot
Speaker 2: of forces that they can get there. It's a great springboard.
Speaker 2: It also borders Russia, so it's a great springboard for
Speaker 2: them to use as a base from which to support
Speaker 2: the White Army and the Russian Civil War.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The Soviets meanwhile, don't want Britain doing that because it's
Speaker 2: bad for them. Right, So the Soviet Union annexes chunks
Speaker 2: of northern Persia and they create a the Persian Socialist
Speaker 2: Soviet Republic. Right, there's like a I mean, it's more
Speaker 2: complicated than that, right, there's and obviously there's local and
Speaker 2: like within like Persians who are communists who are part
Speaker 2: of this and like want to There's partisans and stuff.
Speaker 2: It's much more complicated than all that. But broadly speaking,
Speaker 2: you've got the Brits and the area they control in
Speaker 2: Persia that they want to use as a base to
Speaker 2: support the White Army in Russia. And then you've got
Speaker 2: this chunk of northern Persia that is aligned with the USSR,
Speaker 2: that is itself at least nominally Bolshevik, that the Bolsheviks
Speaker 2: are using as a base, right, and there's fighting betwixt
Speaker 2: the two. Now. The Quajars are still like that shot them,
Speaker 2: that line of Shaws is still in control technically at
Speaker 2: the point at which all this is going on, but
Speaker 2: they fail to exert They can't. They don't have any power, right,
Speaker 2: Like the Shaws are useless in this conflict. They don't
Speaker 2: really have any ability to influence what the Russians are
Speaker 2: doing because the Bolsheviks had just killed their czar, so
Speaker 2: they're sure as hell not going to listen to some
Speaker 2: Shah in Persia that they never respected to begin with. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the Shah like personally like the guy who was Shaw
Speaker 2: now is that dude who was like twelve when he
Speaker 2: came to power and has been ruled like a regent,
Speaker 2: was running things And there's like a triumvirent of guys
Speaker 2: who aren't the Shah who are mostly running things in
Speaker 2: the Persian central government. And so during this period after
Speaker 2: World War One, the central government's like bleeding provinces and
Speaker 2: big chunks of the army just kind of disappear into
Speaker 2: comical puffs of smoke because they didn't really want to
Speaker 2: be in the army and when push came to shove,
Speaker 2: they're like, nahhh, go back home, no, no thank you.
Speaker 2: So the only meaningful force opposing the Soviets are the
Speaker 2: Cossacks and the Cossack Brigade, and they're British backers. Again,
Speaker 2: it's a little more complicated than that. But that's the
Speaker 2: broad strokes now.
Speaker 3: But the Cossacks at this point, the Cossacks are not
Speaker 3: reporting back.
Speaker 2: Yes and no.
Speaker 3: So that's the part I don't understand here.
Speaker 2: Well, it's weird again. Russia's not everyone in Russia is
Speaker 2: a Bolshevik. There's a there's a civil war, right, So
Speaker 2: you've got a bunch of Russians or white Russians who
Speaker 2: support at least not the Soviet Union happening, right, generally
Speaker 2: they support some sort of return to the monarchy or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, and a lot of Cossacks support the white Russians.
Speaker 2: Because the Cossacks had been the Tsar's shock troops, a
Speaker 2: shitload of them wind up in the White forces, right,
Speaker 2: and when during this period of time, the Persian Cossack
Speaker 2: brigade is still led by a Russian officer, Like, it's
Speaker 2: still a Russian colonel who's in charge of the brigade.
Speaker 2: But that russian's a white, right, so he's siding with
Speaker 2: the British in their efforts to help the whites against
Speaker 2: the Bolsheviks. These are very messy wars. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: You know, as someone who is currently living through the
Speaker 3: Iranian diaspora dealing with the Iran War, I think I
Speaker 3: can understand a little bit of the complexity of this,
Speaker 3: and this is all starting to make sense in a
Speaker 3: historical context.
Speaker 2: To me, it's fucking messy this whole period, because it's
Speaker 2: not just Britain that's intervening in the Russian Civil War,
Speaker 2: like the United States has forces too, Like there's a
Speaker 2: whole allied intervention force. This is number one, barely talked
Speaker 2: about anymore, but really complicated everything that's going on in
Speaker 2: this period of time. I'm really smoothing the edges down
Speaker 2: just because we can't get into too much detail about
Speaker 2: all of the shit that's going on. But right, that's
Speaker 2: why the Cossacks are on the side of the Brits here,
Speaker 2: you know. So this is not nineteen nineteen, nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty one. This is not when like Domino theory
Speaker 2: doesn't really exist in the form it's going to exist.
Speaker 2: But conservative reactionaries have already started sessing out the basic tenets, right,
Speaker 2: They're already telling people, well, look, if Persia falls to communism,
Speaker 2: where all it stop?
Speaker 3: Right now?
Speaker 2: Obviously, Great Britain's real interest here is that if Persia
Speaker 2: falls to communism, they're not going to get cheap oil
Speaker 2: anymore for the Navy, And that's the real.
Speaker 3: Problem, right, love that oil.
Speaker 2: Their other problem is they have to keep troops in
Speaker 2: Persia during this whole period of time, like their own guys,
Speaker 2: the Cossacks alone can't hold shit. If they want to
Speaker 2: know that that oil is safe, they have to have
Speaker 2: their own dudes there and that costs a lot of money.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen twenty one, Great Britain's two main interests
Speaker 2: in Persia are stop it from falling to the Communists
Speaker 2: and if we didn't have to keep our soldiers here
Speaker 2: to do that, it would sure be great. Right, those
Speaker 2: are their primary concerns. Now, I want to take you
Speaker 2: back in time. I know, I just was talking about
Speaker 2: the Russian Civil War era to talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about how things within like the oil company working in
Speaker 2: Persia evolved over like the early nineteen hundreds up to
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty one, right, because we didn't really talk about
Speaker 2: that so much in the last episode, and it does matter.
Speaker 2: So in nineteen oh nine that entrepreneur Darcy and the
Speaker 2: company that he partnered with had transferred their rights basically
Speaker 2: had gotten in bed with another company because they needed
Speaker 2: more money to do the infrastructure necessary to get oil
Speaker 2: out of Persia. And this new company is called Anglo
Speaker 2: Persian Oil or APOC APOC. Remember these names, you're it's
Speaker 2: gonna be real interesting what happens to Anglo Persian Oil
Speaker 2: in the modern era. Now, The way in which APOC
Speaker 2: functioned from nineteen oh nine to nineteen twenty one does
Speaker 2: a good job of showing how dysfunctional the central government
Speaker 2: of Persia was by this point, how bad the Quajar
Speaker 2: monarchy is at actually like governing the country because APOC
Speaker 2: doesn't deal with Tehran at all. They don't talk to
Speaker 2: the Shah, They ignore the capital completely because their oil
Speaker 2: wells and shit aren't near the capital, and the royal
Speaker 2: wells are in the territory of a bunch of like
Speaker 2: there's a mix of like sheikhs and baktari cons which
Speaker 2: are like different like basically tribal level leaders who actually
Speaker 2: control the territory where they're drilling for oil and transporting oil.
Speaker 2: And so the oil company is like, why would we
Speaker 2: talk to Tehran. They don't have any power here. They
Speaker 2: can barely keep the capital. I'm gonna make deals with
Speaker 2: these local guys. They have the guns and the labor force. Right,
Speaker 2: the capitol is not gonna do anything but take bribes
Speaker 2: for me buck them. Yeah, so that shows you how
Speaker 2: weak the government is at this point in time. As
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, when the deal between Apok and
Speaker 2: these different tribal groups was concluded in nineteen ten, the
Speaker 2: company illegally imported a thousand laborers from India without talking
Speaker 2: to anyone in the Persian government. They take a thousand
Speaker 2: Indians and make them work in Persia and they don't
Speaker 2: ask anybody in the fucking government. It's like they don't
Speaker 2: talk to the first there's no visas for these motherfuckers.
Speaker 3: They just don't look. They don't they never do. They
Speaker 3: never look at Persians as real people. It kid this
Speaker 3: colonial mindset and it doesn't it so never goes away.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean maybe now it's gone away, but
Speaker 3: like it was so intrinsic to who they rte intrinsic
Speaker 3: to who they were as people that they just couldn't
Speaker 3: see the people living there as being worthy a warranting
Speaker 3: even that kind of dis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fucking nuts. And it's it's really like it
Speaker 2: as an idea for like how messed up their attitude
Speaker 2: towards like Persians is period they part of the agreement
Speaker 2: with these like local shakes and cons is will hire
Speaker 2: a thousand locals to work in the oil plants. Right,
Speaker 2: but they legally start bringing in a bunch of Indian
Speaker 2: workers to do most of the work, Like they aren't
Speaker 2: going to hire any more than the minimum they have
Speaker 2: agreed of local people. Right. I want to quote again
Speaker 2: from that piece Sharen Brysac wrote for the World Policy Journal,
Speaker 2: and what became a chronic grievance. APOK gave Britains and
Speaker 2: Indians the best jobs, relegating Persians to menial roles. Foreigners
Speaker 2: occupied the best houses, claimed to membership in the exclusive
Speaker 2: Persian Club, and sent their children to schools and segregated cantonments.
Speaker 2: There were even fountains marked not for Iranians. Feeding the
Speaker 2: cycle of and during resentment that was to characterize subsequent relations. Wow,
Speaker 2: Basically they're not giving like they they'll let you like
Speaker 2: transport shit, but they don't give you anything. They're not
Speaker 2: getting like the most dangerous jobs. But they're not getting
Speaker 2: good jobs either. They're not getting anything that pays well.
Speaker 2: And in the areas where the company is activated, there's
Speaker 2: segregation against the indigenous people who live there, like.
Speaker 3: And they're they're so smart, they're never gonna let the
Speaker 3: Iranians that are there, yea, get to higher positions where
Speaker 3: they can actually learn the oil industry, where they can
Speaker 3: actually learn how to do this, because heaven forbid if
Speaker 3: they were, yeah, they would run it themselves, so purposely
Speaker 3: keeping them in the dark.
Speaker 2: And then imagine there's segregation in your country because a
Speaker 2: guy came in last week and is like, nah, you
Speaker 2: don't get to use the same like water fountains because
Speaker 2: we're getting oil out of here now. Like if it's
Speaker 2: just if it's just a thing that happened a week ago,
Speaker 2: like how that would like like piss you off? Like
Speaker 2: what you guys just got here?
Speaker 3: Like we are so easily offended. So people, I have
Speaker 3: to tell you this.
Speaker 2: Is like anyone would be in this auriating.
Speaker 3: I've seen Iranians get pretty offended for much less then
Speaker 3: having a segregated water fountain.
Speaker 2: So this is nuts, okay, because some fucker just comes
Speaker 2: in a week ago and is like, oh, no, this
Speaker 2: isn't your place anymore. There's oil here. This is British property. So,
Speaker 2: as I noted in the first episode. In nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 2: the British Parliament had had voted for a proposal pushed
Speaker 2: by Churchill to fuel the Royal Navy with Persian oil.
Speaker 2: As part of this deal, the British government purchased fifty
Speaker 2: one percent of Anglo Persian Oil, ensuring it would remain
Speaker 2: an all British company, which is again them saying We're
Speaker 2: not gonna let the locals run anything. We won't even
Speaker 2: let them know how to run anything. This is always
Speaker 2: going to be our shit. So by nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 2: Northern Persia is a Soviet satellite and guerrilla fighters are
Speaker 2: advancing on Tehran, which basically can't defend itself without foreign help.
Speaker 2: There are the Cossacks, which are primarily made up of
Speaker 2: Persian soldiers and they are functional, but the government can't
Speaker 2: even pay them right like, the Cossacks are being paid
Speaker 2: entirely by Great Britain by this point in time, and
Speaker 2: Great Britain has to send her own soldiers to occupy
Speaker 2: large tracks of Persian territory in nineteen eighteen just to
Speaker 2: stop a total Bolshevik victory in the area. Now one
Speaker 2: of these Cossacks getting paid by the British in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty one is our friend Resa Khan, who at that
Speaker 2: point has been promoted to colonel. Right, this is machine
Speaker 2: gun Resa. So there is Khan.
Speaker 3: From stable boy to machine gun Reza. That's right.
Speaker 2: Still can't read, but he could shoot people.
Speaker 3: You shoot that gun. Good.
Speaker 2: Khan and his men and about fifty five hundred British
Speaker 2: colonial troops are holding the line against the communists. Right,
Speaker 2: while British Foreign Secretary Kurzon drafts what becomes known as
Speaker 2: the Anglo Persian Treaty. This authorizes the stationing of British
Speaker 2: veterans to build a functional army for the central government. Basically,
Speaker 2: Britain's going to send experts so that the central government
Speaker 2: can build an army that actually works. Right, that's not
Speaker 2: just the Cossacks. We want there to be a functional
Speaker 2: army here so we don't have to keep ours here.
Speaker 2: So we're going to send experts in and we're also
Speaker 2: going to put a bunch of investment money into Persia
Speaker 2: to build railroads and reorganize the economy. All of this
Speaker 2: is to keep the oil flowing. None of this is
Speaker 2: for the benefit of regular Persians. The army and the
Speaker 2: railroads and the economy are also that this is a
Speaker 2: stable place for the Royal Navy to get its fuel from.
Speaker 2: Right now, this plan is to be paid for by
Speaker 2: a two million pound loan issued by Great Britain, who
Speaker 2: would collect customs duties to pay the loan back directly
Speaker 2: from Persians. In effect, British tax collectors are now directly
Speaker 2: taxing Persian citizens to pay for the things that they're
Speaker 2: doing in order to make sure Great Britain has continued
Speaker 2: access to basically cheap oil. Right the tax.
Speaker 3: So angry the more I learn about this history, it's
Speaker 3: a it's a good thing. I love your colleague James
Speaker 3: Stout so much because sometimes I learn about the things
Speaker 3: of Britain and get so mad. But he's so lovable.
Speaker 3: It's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 2: We are Americans. It's not like we can get We
Speaker 2: don't have that much of a leg to stand on
Speaker 2: these days.
Speaker 3: True, I'm so confused. I'm torn between two groups of
Speaker 3: terrible things.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, it's the it's the team Jacob,
Speaker 2: a Team Edward of colonialism. So yeah, Great Great Britain's
Speaker 2: taxing Persia directly. And if it's not, if the British
Speaker 2: aren't directly running the government. Most Persians sure as hell
Speaker 2: think they are. At this point in time. Right at
Speaker 2: the end of World War One, the Bolsheviks had published
Speaker 2: a bunch of documents that they'd seized from the Tsar's
Speaker 2: palace revealing secret wartime pacts. And one of these secret
Speaker 2: wartime pacts was Britain offering Russia the Dardanels in exchange
Speaker 2: for giving Britain Persia. Right, so this comes out and
Speaker 2: people in Tehran, educated Persians are obviously like, oh so,
Speaker 2: like they they just bought us. Basically, they bribed the
Speaker 2: Czar for us, and they think they own our entire
Speaker 2: ass country now. And this helps spawn massive resistance to
Speaker 2: this treaty that Secretary Curzon has put together. Initially, Curzon
Speaker 2: is not all that concerned. He states the case will
Speaker 2: be settled by cash, and then he proceeds to organize
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty one thousand pound bribe to the
Speaker 2: three man triumvirate governing Persia on behalf of the Shah.
Speaker 2: These three guys agree to the bribe, and Kurzon, being
Speaker 2: a genius, is said to have declared the treaty a
Speaker 2: great triumph, and I have done it all alone, like.
Speaker 3: Great Brandy.
Speaker 2: He's like, so we're gonna we're gonna tax these people
Speaker 2: to build an army to protect our oil basically and
Speaker 2: to keep them oppressed. And the people are like, we
Speaker 2: don't like that, and he's like, but I bribed three men,
Speaker 2: solving the problem forever all on my own. But unfortunately
Speaker 2: for Kurzon, that damned free press I mentioned earlier got
Speaker 2: to work and they reported on the fact that Persia's
Speaker 2: growing try It had sold the country for a song.
Speaker 2: Next per Brysex article, the treaty was broocked by the
Speaker 2: Mosleys and three successive Persian prime ministers fell. So basically,
Speaker 2: three successive governments failed to gain whatever they need to
Speaker 2: do in the parliament to be able to govern as
Speaker 2: a result of resistance to this treaty, which gets it
Speaker 2: blocked in Tehran. Now this causes chaos because the British
Speaker 2: are this is fucked up of them, But also British
Speaker 2: money and guns is the only thing propping this government
Speaker 2: up at the time, right, so when the treaty gets blocked,
Speaker 2: things aren't just like good.
Speaker 3: You know that could from that peacock throne they could
Speaker 3: sell then it looks like.
Speaker 2: It's worth the money. Yeah yeah, so chaos envelops the
Speaker 2: capital city and back home in London, the lords of
Speaker 2: the Admiralty are really have real reason to fear that
Speaker 2: they might lose their hookup to cheap gas. Now, Curzon
Speaker 2: had basically been like, the fuck around and pretend we
Speaker 2: care about international log Like he's bribing these dudes, but
Speaker 2: he's trying to frame it as like a legal treaty
Speaker 2: in an agreement between states. And since Operation Bride three
Speaker 2: Guys failed, all eyes turned to one of the top
Speaker 2: ranking generals in the Royal Army Field, Marshal William Edmund Ironside,
Speaker 2: who was referred to as the Lord Ironside, a name
Speaker 2: George Lucas would laugh at you for giving to a
Speaker 2: character in a fictional story.
Speaker 3: Like the Lord. Okay, we get it much.
Speaker 2: It's he was also nicknamed Tiny William Tiny Ironside.
Speaker 3: Ironside. That's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: It's gonna suck to being born with that cooler name
Speaker 2: and like knowing you're going to be a military leader,
Speaker 2: but also being a little guy, like because people are
Speaker 2: gonna call you tiny, Like Tiny Ironside is just less
Speaker 2: cool than the Lord iron Side.
Speaker 3: With that name, your options are limited. You're like, if
Speaker 3: you're an iron.
Speaker 2: Size, you can only be in the military. He doesn't
Speaker 2: care for joining the army.
Speaker 3: Or you could be an actor from Starship Troopers and
Speaker 3: that's it. Those are your two editions.
Speaker 2: That's it. That's right. And unfortunately Starship Troopers had not
Speaker 2: quite been invented yet. We we we had barely harnessed
Speaker 2: the technology to create Paul Verhoven at that point, you know,
Speaker 2: he was he was still just stating, I believe.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: The best way I can describe the Lord Ironside physically,
Speaker 2: if you're not looking at you know, the video version
Speaker 2: of this because most people listen to it because it's
Speaker 2: a podcast, the best way I can describe him is
Speaker 2: that he had the face of a man who didn't
Speaker 2: understand why other nations beside England should exist, Like like,
Speaker 2: look at this guy's face, Like that is a face
Speaker 2: of confusion that there are other countries.
Speaker 3: What are they doing? Look at them with the brown
Speaker 3: the country smells coming off their food food.
Speaker 2: It's not all was there My British rib was going
Speaker 2: everywhere there. I think you're more consistent than me.
Speaker 1: He's got Lord mount Batton energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he does. He has strong the iration have
Speaker 2: blown up a both. This guy was on energy. That's
Speaker 2: what I'll say about this fucker, although he has bad
Speaker 2: luck with planes not boats. So, Ironside had been made
Speaker 2: commander of the Allied Intervention Force in Northern Russia during
Speaker 2: the Russian Civil War, and he had been reassigned to
Speaker 2: Persia in nineteen twenty one, and basically as soon as
Speaker 2: he arrives in country, he sees Colonel Khan or Reza
Speaker 2: at the time, right, and he spots this guy, and
Speaker 2: he's like, this dude looks like a good person to
Speaker 2: charm and put in position as like a military strong man.
Speaker 2: That might be what happened, or Resa might have looked
Speaker 2: at this guy and immediately been like, all right, this
Speaker 2: is the British dude I need to charm, right. I
Speaker 2: don't actually know which is truer. There are two different versions,
Speaker 2: one of which is that Ironside manipulates Reza because he
Speaker 2: needs a guy. The other is that Resin manipulates Ironside
Speaker 2: because it gets him what it wants. I think probably
Speaker 2: both are true. Both guys see each other as useful, right.
Speaker 3: That's the typical narrative about Resion is that he was
Speaker 3: not extraordinarily bright, not well resident mentioned, but he did.
Speaker 3: He did have a sense for power, and it's really good. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: and he could root out sort of a little bit
Speaker 3: of Oh, this dude seems to be like a good
Speaker 3: you know, ship took my you know whatever, I don't know,
Speaker 3: the saying hook my ship to or whatever. What's the
Speaker 3: worst again, sale, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Good, but probably pitch his boat to or whatever. That's right,
Speaker 2: tie his horse to. I don't know, but this, I
Speaker 2: think this is good. That is a good point about
Speaker 2: Like I try to make this point often about what
Speaker 2: intelligence is, because there's a bunch of climate scientists out there,
Speaker 2: and any one of them is smarter than Donald Trump
Speaker 2: in a million ways. But Donald Trump is smarter than
Speaker 2: all of them at how you acquire power in a
Speaker 2: democratic society and use it for your own benefit. Now,
Speaker 2: part of why he's smarter at that is that he
Speaker 2: has absolutely normal scruples whatsoever. But he's completely negated many
Speaker 2: people's life's work who are much smarter than him because
Speaker 2: he has that kind of intelligence. And Reza Khan is
Speaker 2: also that kind of guy. He can't read. He's not
Speaker 2: super bright in that way, but He's incredibly intelligent socially,
Speaker 2: and he is very good at making every British guy
Speaker 2: he meets love him. And that's all that matters in
Speaker 2: Persian politics at this point in time.
Speaker 3: And that's what my wagon to.
Speaker 2: My wagon too. I can't believe none of us could
Speaker 2: fucking figure. And there is evidence that the Lord Ironside
Speaker 2: Tiny is charmed by Reza. He describes him upon meeting
Speaker 2: him as quote a man and the straightest I have
Speaker 2: met yet, the real life and soul of the show.
Speaker 2: He doesn't mean that in like a sexual sentiment. It
Speaker 2: is funny to be like, that's the straightest man I've
Speaker 2: met yet. Almost is like, and I've been fucking my
Speaker 2: way through this country too, so I can tell a
Speaker 2: straight one.
Speaker 3: It's funny too, because, like you know, when Reza Hahn
Speaker 3: is raising his son, Mohammed Reza, which goes on to
Speaker 3: be the shaw that people think of as a shaw
Speaker 3: in modern time.
Speaker 2: Will say the shaw they're talking about this guy's son.
Speaker 3: Yes, when he's raising him, he is he there's like
Speaker 3: no emotional connection there of any kind. Absolutely, he doesn't.
Speaker 3: He treats him as a subordinate because he was one
Speaker 3: of these old school dudes who is under the belief
Speaker 3: that showing your son affection would make them gay. That
Speaker 3: was like, that was his whole.
Speaker 2: Bag absolutely well. And again, to be fair, his mom
Speaker 2: abandons him after her husband dies when he's eight months old,
Speaker 2: to be like, go, I'm gonna try again with a
Speaker 2: new family.
Speaker 3: Sorry. Yeah, yeah, his uncle probably wasn't great either, me
Speaker 3: if we're like, I'm sure his uncle was not like
Speaker 3: a super enlightening guy.
Speaker 2: You know, this kid's first healthy relationship is with a
Speaker 2: machine gun. Like, it's not shocking. He becomes the man
Speaker 2: he is. You know who else had a healthy relationship
Speaker 2: with automatic weaponry?
Speaker 3: Hello, fresh, I hear they?
Speaker 2: Oh yet they love them?
Speaker 3: Oh my god them. Can't genough of them.
Speaker 2: They own a lot of machine guns, a shocking number.
Speaker 2: Why we can't tell you by their product. And we're back,
Speaker 2: so we just let that happen. Huh okay, cool, so
Speaker 2: uh yeah, good stuff. So Resicon, as we've noted, was
Speaker 2: you know, not a bright guy in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: But he's very well liked by British people, particularly by
Speaker 2: the Lord Ironside, who promotes Reza to brigadier general and
Speaker 2: makes him commander of the Cossack brigade in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 2: He sits down with the newly minted general and the
Speaker 2: British officer acting as paymaster for the local Persian forces,
Speaker 2: and he tells both men Britain won't stop him if
Speaker 2: he sees his power. Basically, he sits down with these
Speaker 2: guys and he's like, look, if you want to take
Speaker 2: control of the country, we won't do anything as long
Speaker 2: as you don't depose the current Shaw. Right, that guy's
Speaker 2: technically our friend. So I'll keep Ahmed Shaws. Is that
Speaker 2: the current Shaw's name? Keep Ahmed Shah the Shah? But
Speaker 2: you can't do anything else you want, right Basically, and
Speaker 2: Res is like, hey, bro, sounds cool to me. You know,
Speaker 2: I'll take that deal any day of the week. And
Speaker 2: he takes that deal.
Speaker 3: Right. Is that the twelve year old? Is it that
Speaker 3: the Ahmed Shaw is the twelve year old Shaw? Are
Speaker 3: we onto a different show now?
Speaker 2: I mean he starts as twelve, He's not twelve.
Speaker 3: I recognize that people don't stay the age that when
Speaker 3: you meet them, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yes he is that kid. That's how he
Speaker 2: gains power initially, right, Yeah, So Ironside is like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: if you want to be in charge, just don't depose
Speaker 2: the sha. We'll back your play. And then he let goes,
Speaker 2: claps his hands together, wipes them off, and leaves the
Speaker 2: fucking country for Egypt. He's just gone right, He sets
Speaker 2: up the dominoes and he fucking bounces so. Not long
Speaker 2: after he leaves, on February twentieth, Resa marches a column
Speaker 2: of six hundred men six hundred cossacks towards the undefended capital.
Speaker 2: All other military forces in the local police were ordered
Speaker 2: to stay inside and keep their goddamn mouth shut. And
Speaker 2: the coup that follows isn't totally peaceful, but it's like
Speaker 2: a fairly minimal amount of bloodshed for a coup detta, right,
Speaker 2: but it is a coup d'ta now. Depending on which
Speaker 2: historians you like best, Reza Khan is either a bold
Speaker 2: opportunist who execute his own coup with a little help
Speaker 2: from his British friends. Beside their promise not to intervene,
Speaker 2: they don't do much other than not stop him. And
Speaker 2: the other way to look at this is that Reza
Speaker 2: is a total pawn of the Brits, a chess piece
Speaker 2: maneuvered into position by the Lord Ironside to block the
Speaker 2: Reds and keep the Royal Navy fueled. I'd never want
Speaker 2: to argue for a reduced British culpability in all of this.
Speaker 2: But if Ironside was the mastermind here, he was a
Speaker 2: very hands off one, because as soon as he leaves
Speaker 2: Iran for Egypt, he's grievously wounded in a plane crash,
Speaker 2: and he's like recuperating in the hospital while the Khan
Speaker 2: overthrows the government and takes power right Princeton historian Richard Olman,
Speaker 2: it is idle to speculate upon whether or not he
Speaker 2: would eventually have come to power had Ironside not singled
Speaker 2: him out. But it is clear that Ironside and his
Speaker 2: British colleagues were largely instrumental in placing Resicon in a
Speaker 2: position to bring about the coup at Dah, and I
Speaker 2: think that's accurate. Resiicon doesn't need much help from them
Speaker 2: other than backing out right. He's got the guys and
Speaker 2: the guns to do this, and he has a skill
Speaker 2: for building an army. He's going to very effectively get
Speaker 2: more guys and more guns because he doesn't have enough
Speaker 2: at the start of this to control much more than
Speaker 2: the capital.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Once he takes power in the capitol, he still has
Speaker 2: a lot of shit to do, and there's a year's
Speaker 2: long road before he becomes the Shaw. He's not the
Speaker 2: Shaw after this coup. He's technically the War Minister for Persia,
Speaker 2: which is a new position that makes him the commander
Speaker 2: in chief of the military but also lets him basically
Speaker 2: pick his own prime minister. And here's how he looks
Speaker 2: at the time. By the way, this is like how
Speaker 2: he looks when he's Minister of War for the country.
Speaker 2: Great mustache. It must be said. Everyone was wearing hats
Speaker 2: like that back then. I don't know why, but they
Speaker 2: do look that. One does look comfortable. I love it.
Speaker 3: I love a pretty baller cossack cat.
Speaker 2: Those like shackos or whatever don't normally look that cozy
Speaker 2: like his looks like it's knitted together at a wool.
Speaker 3: He's got this like sneer sort of thing down. Pretty
Speaker 3: good like smirk.
Speaker 2: Yes, pretty good sneer of cold command. That Ramsey's look. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's got it knocked down.
Speaker 1: I love that so stunning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my people's eyebrow game has been strong forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those those brows power acts fact, so all Resa
Speaker 2: needs to do now at this point is in the
Speaker 2: war with the Soviets and defeat his numerous local rivals,
Speaker 2: most of whom are major tribal leaders who had gotten
Speaker 2: These are the guys that the oil company APOC is
Speaker 2: paying right like those local leaders are his now his
Speaker 2: main rivals for power as well as like the Soviets.
Speaker 2: So great Britain sends him a friend right around this
Speaker 2: time to help him out, you know, now that he's
Speaker 2: newly the Minister of War and this into a British diplomat,
Speaker 2: so Percy Lorraine. Now, Persia is not seen as a
Speaker 2: great place to be a British diplomat at this point
Speaker 2: in time. It's kind of like a career death sentence
Speaker 2: because things have not gone great for a couple generations
Speaker 2: of British diplomats here. It's been messy for them. Percy's
Speaker 2: not the Empire's best. He is smart, but he's also awkward,
Speaker 2: and he's bad at being social or at editing his
Speaker 2: own dispatches down into something people would want to read.
Speaker 2: His coworkers nickname him ponderous Percy, which is a huge,
Speaker 2: huge burn to British people. So basically the names these
Speaker 2: names are and tiny Ironside.
Speaker 3: Get more British as the story goes along.
Speaker 2: Right, So this shy book whem dude is supposed to
Speaker 2: be like the liaison to Reza, and he immediately falls
Speaker 2: for this handsome and heroic seeming fucking machine gunner who's
Speaker 2: just made himself the Shah and all but name right,
Speaker 2: just like Ironside, Rezza sums this guy up and charms
Speaker 2: him immediately and writes back to his boss curs On.
Speaker 2: He gets straight to what he has to say and
Speaker 2: does not waste time in exchanging the delicately phrased but
Speaker 2: perfectly feudal compliments, So dear to the Persian heart and
Speaker 2: ignorant and un educated man. Nevertheless, he betrays no awkwardness
Speaker 2: of manner nor self consciousness. He has considerable natural dignity,
Speaker 2: and neither his speech nor his features reveal any absence
Speaker 2: of self control. So that's how he's described by Lorrain.
Speaker 3: I have to say, he is in some ways so
Speaker 3: atypical for a Persian man, from like not wanting to
Speaker 3: show his kid's love to like not using flowery poetry,
Speaker 3: like especially this age, every and like every older Persian
Speaker 3: man fancies himself a poet, like the the language itself
Speaker 3: is so flowery, like you say, like instead of saying
Speaker 3: I miss you, you say my heart tightens for you.
Speaker 3: Instead of saying like, uh, you know, we wish you
Speaker 3: were here, it's we kept the space for you. It's empty,
Speaker 3: you know, we have all these like flowery little bits
Speaker 3: of landue. This guy is so like the opposite of that.
Speaker 3: That's what's so interesting about him. He's so a typically Persian.
Speaker 2: And it's it's both because I mean, partly he's he's
Speaker 2: only half Persian, right like his mom is Caucasian, probably
Speaker 2: arm but he's he's probably he's not raised the way
Speaker 2: like I mean, he's certainly not raised in a traditional
Speaker 2: Persian family at all. He's almost basically an orphan, right
Speaker 2: like he's he's so he doesn't have and I think
Speaker 2: part one of the things that results in is that,
Speaker 2: unlike a lot of other people who have stuff like
Speaker 2: art to learn and culture and family that matter to them,
Speaker 2: all he thinks about is power. It's the only concern
Speaker 2: in his mind. His entire life is gaining and taking power, right,
Speaker 2: And guys like that tend to be the ones who
Speaker 2: gain and take power in situations like this because it's
Speaker 2: all they think about. Yeah, cool, good stuff.
Speaker 3: Just like podcasting in medical step.
Speaker 2: Just like podcasting. Yeah. So Lorraine uses what influence he
Speaker 2: has to convince his superiors to advance Reza enough money
Speaker 2: to fund an army of eighteen thousand men. He also
Speaker 2: argues that Reza should be the one that the British
Speaker 2: back over several local shakes and cons who'd previously worked
Speaker 2: with Anglo Persian oil. General Ironside also helped his friend
Speaker 2: machine Gun Resa, filing a report with the British War
Speaker 2: Office that promised Resa would quote solve many difficulties and
Speaker 2: enable us to depart in peace and honor. Basically, if
Speaker 2: we let this guy be in charge, he'll build an
Speaker 2: army that works and we won't have to We can
Speaker 2: leave and we won't have to be ashamed. We won't
Speaker 2: like leave like we did Afghanistan. Just like getting beat
Speaker 2: out right, and we can keep getting our oil right.
Speaker 2: That's the argument Ironside's making. So it takes about two
Speaker 2: years of fighting in the heartland of Persia for Reza
Speaker 2: to take a hold of this chaotk situation, to beat
Speaker 2: back his rivals and to restore a form of order
Speaker 2: or take i should say power right over the rest
Speaker 2: of the country outside of the capitol. Now the pretense
Speaker 2: of a constitutional regime still exists. But Resu's prime minister
Speaker 2: is like, well, now that you're the commander in chief,
Speaker 2: that's a civilian job. You have to retire from your
Speaker 2: military job and leading the Cossack brigade, right, and res
Speaker 2: is like, no, I'm going to keep my private army. Obviously,
Speaker 2: you never give up your private army. You never give
Speaker 2: up your uniform if you want to be dictator. Right,
Speaker 2: that's a bad idea, right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, keeping that sucker on more medals on it,
Speaker 3: more and more medals. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And once this happens, basically everyone in the government realizes like, well,
Speaker 2: this guy's the Shaw in all but name, you know.
Speaker 2: So after he returns in like nineteen twenty three to
Speaker 2: the Capitol at the head of an army that had
Speaker 2: at least been semi victorious, Cohn was appointed prime minister himself.
Speaker 2: Now he's still bound by a pinky swear not to
Speaker 2: overthrow Ahmed Shah. But somehow Ahmed got the idea that
Speaker 2: life in Persia might not be safe for him with
Speaker 2: the Reza in charge for looming monster machine gun lover. Yes, right, yes,
Speaker 2: So he flees to Europe, where he spends the remainder
Speaker 2: of his life In next right now, Resa has at
Speaker 2: this point they've basically made a kind of peace. You
Speaker 2: know that things have been settled enough with the Soviets
Speaker 2: that they're not worried about that taking about like communists
Speaker 2: taking over the rest of Persia. And Resa sits down
Speaker 2: with the Parliament and says basically, hey, have you guys
Speaker 2: noticed I have all the guns? And Parliament says you
Speaker 2: sure do, Resa, how do you like to be dictator
Speaker 2: for life? And he says that sounds dope and an.
Speaker 3: Ontobi of id.
Speaker 2: I'm smoothing some things over. But in October of nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty three, he was appointed His Serene Highness and King
Speaker 2: of Kings, although again he's not the Shah yet. In fact,
Speaker 2: Resid debates briefly after this point what kind of government
Speaker 2: should he impose upon his newly won land. Per the
Speaker 2: World Policy Journal, Resa Khan had toyed with proclaiming a republic,
Speaker 2: following the example of Kamal At a Turk, the Turkish
Speaker 2: soldier reformer. He sought to emulate the King of kings,
Speaker 2: claim to be a reluctant monarch, only agreeing to ascend
Speaker 2: the throne at the urging of the Ulima or Mullas,
Speaker 2: who thought that conservative Persia would fare better with a
Speaker 2: shah than with a democracy. At the time, royal titles
Speaker 2: were very much in the desert air, hence King Faisal
Speaker 2: of Iraq. So he chose the peacock throne, right, So
Speaker 2: he picks being a king as opposed to being like
Speaker 2: a president, who would have been the same as a shaw.
Speaker 2: He would have actually given up power. But he decides, well,
Speaker 2: I'll just make myself basically king, right, So he's yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Is interesting that he he goes and he tries to
Speaker 3: connect with the Turkish leader and is seeing what's happening
Speaker 3: in Turkey at this time because.
Speaker 2: He loves at a Turk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure he sees like a strong guy who's
Speaker 3: maybe modernizing Turkey at that point to do that, but
Speaker 3: it seems like, and you'll know better than me, but
Speaker 3: I feel like he's not the politician to do that,
Speaker 3: he's not the leader to do it. The same with
Speaker 3: the same sort of clarity that the Turkish at a
Speaker 3: Turk would do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, and he's not nearly as as bright at
Speaker 2: a Turk was interested in actually building a functional state, right,
Speaker 2: the Shaw is primarily interested in getting as much out
Speaker 2: of Iran of like he wants to rob it blind, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's why he's in the He wants to be the Shah.
Speaker 2: And it takes him bout a year of badgering Parliament,
Speaker 2: but he succeeds in convincing them to formally depose the
Speaker 2: old Shah and make him the new Shaw. And almost
Speaker 2: as soon as as that becomes his job and we'll
Speaker 2: talk about the actual process of crowning him, Reza Khan
Speaker 2: changes his name to Resa Shah Pelavi. Now this is
Speaker 2: inauspicious change. During the ancients, as you know, during the
Speaker 2: Sassanid Empire, which dominated a lot of the Middle East
Speaker 2: and North Africa except for the bulk of the land
Speaker 2: mass of the Arabian Peninsula that it's like a lot
Speaker 2: of the coast. The language by most that most Persians
Speaker 2: spoke they was called Pallavi, right like, that was the
Speaker 2: term for it. And Reza changed his name like he
Speaker 2: does this, Like the reason he does this is what
Speaker 2: Mehdi a Lavi and Attoul Sing, writing for The Fair Observer,
Speaker 2: call a very clever public relations stunt. He's basically making
Speaker 2: a nationalist pitch to like Persians saying like hey, or
Speaker 2: I mean specifically to like Iranian Persians, saying like I
Speaker 2: am going to be your leader and this is going
Speaker 2: to be your country as opposed to these other groups
Speaker 2: of people who currently live here, right, Like, that's the
Speaker 2: pitch that he's made.
Speaker 3: Was great branding, This whole thing was great brand Yeah,
Speaker 3: changing the name and then he goes on to i mean,
Speaker 3: his son actually goes on change the name of the
Speaker 3: Anglo Iranian or Anglo Persian oil company to Anglo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we'll talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yes, good brand they're good at branding, especially the father.
Speaker 2: There's solid branding. Yeah, it's yeah, it's lasted to this
Speaker 2: day some of the branding they did, and there's there's
Speaker 2: a lot of this stuff. So in their book, The
Speaker 2: shah A bos Malani writes that prior to obtaining total power,
Speaker 2: Reza began playing at piety in front or really we
Speaker 2: talked about this a bit. He'd always kind of been
Speaker 2: like the enforcer, like religiously that had been he'd gained
Speaker 2: a religious like a reputation for that. He likes being
Speaker 2: in good with the Chiaid clergy, and he really ups
Speaker 2: that during the years when he's like, you know, in
Speaker 2: charge but not yet the Shaw quote, he participated in
Speaker 2: religious mourning processions and like the most pious of the mourners,
Speaker 2: he beat his chest and brust his forehead in the
Speaker 2: top of his head with ashes of sorrow and grief.
Speaker 2: Not long after he was crowned, Resashaw would change course
Speaker 2: and begin a carefully planned policy of limiting the power
Speaker 2: and role of the clergy in Iran. So he's this
Speaker 2: is going to be a pattern for him. The people
Speaker 2: that he needs to get to power he's going to
Speaker 2: fuck over fairly quickly, and that does include the clergy,
Speaker 2: and there will be Titanic. You can tie the fact
Speaker 2: that the clergy are in charge in Iran today to
Speaker 2: his decision to fuck the clergy and some of the
Speaker 2: things he does as a result of that. Right, we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about all of this. There's really long
Speaker 2: reaching consequences to this, but nobody calls his bullshit at
Speaker 2: the time. Right, everyone's fooled by well not everyone's fooled
Speaker 2: by resist charm actually Alavian Singh note in their piece
Speaker 2: for The Fair Observer. Not everyone bought into Resashaw's sham
Speaker 2: for courageous legislation supposed the new Shaw. One of them
Speaker 2: was Mohammed Mosada, who would go on to become Prime
Speaker 2: Minister years later. The British managed Resisha's coronation using the
Speaker 2: coronation of King George the Fifth is their guide. So
Speaker 2: you do have people who oppose him, including Masada, who
Speaker 2: will talk. I mean we Margaret should talk about an
Speaker 2: episode on her show.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, exactly. Most. So it's pronounced most. I'll give
Speaker 3: you the most two versions of it, the easy one
Speaker 3: and by the way, again, apologies because my Farsi is garbage.
Speaker 3: Mozed deck is probably the easiest way to with more
Speaker 3: of a Q sound, but I think it's pronounced more
Speaker 3: mozed derr. It's one of these sounds that's hard for Americans.
Speaker 3: Hey g h at the end, Yeah, that's that would
Speaker 3: be a perfect, perfect person. I mean, he had some flaws,
Speaker 3: I mean, but he was like he is one of
Speaker 3: these heroes that's held up in secular Iran.
Speaker 2: I heard his name for the first time mispronounced in
Speaker 2: songs that were angry about the CIA over throwing it,
Speaker 2: about our government's rolling it's over throw.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, I love it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we're not going to talk about him much
Speaker 2: more in this episode. But I didn't want to note that, like,
Speaker 2: not everyone is fine with what res is doing. There
Speaker 2: is resistance. There's very brave resistance. So when he is coronated,
Speaker 2: as I noted here, the British used bit like that
Speaker 2: quote said the British, I'm going to go into a
Speaker 2: little more detail about what that actually means when it
Speaker 2: says the British used Resishaw's coronation, like use the coronation
Speaker 2: of King Churse the fifth as their guide. I want
Speaker 2: to talk about like what that means. So one of
Speaker 2: the British people who's in Tehran at the time is
Speaker 2: a writer named Vita Sackville West. She is a prominent
Speaker 2: author and she's a good friend of Virginia Wolf, and
Speaker 2: she happens to be in to Ron for the coronation
Speaker 2: because her husband is a British diplomat and she kind
Speaker 2: of inveigls her way into helping to plan the coronation,
Speaker 2: which resisies is both a way to show his continuity
Speaker 2: with Persia's grand past and to celebrate the coming new
Speaker 2: modern regime. Now, Sackville West is not a fan of Tehran, which,
Speaker 2: after a decade of nearly a decade of warren starvation,
Speaker 2: isn't in great shape, right. She calls the city squalid
Speaker 2: with quote few pretentious buildings and mean houses on the
Speaker 2: verge of collapse and little else, which is not nice
Speaker 2: given that, like your government really helped with the family
Speaker 2: that Gill like half the people who lived in the country, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he contributed to that London wouldn't look nice if forty
Speaker 2: percent of British people died in a fam I'll bet
Speaker 2: that much, right, Yeah, yeah, Well, I can.
Speaker 3: Take a lot of criticisms, but like when they come
Speaker 3: from the peerless.
Speaker 2: Force, it's not a fair one.
Speaker 3: That's just not a fair one.
Speaker 2: Nope, So Vida and the wife of the head of
Speaker 2: the British legation literally sit down with books about the
Speaker 2: coronation of King George the Fifth because res is like
Speaker 2: ress people I should say, are like, we got to
Speaker 2: figure out how to coronate this guy because this is
Speaker 2: kind of a new thing, because he's not being like
Speaker 2: the rest of the Shaws. How should it look and
Speaker 2: they leave it to the British people, because well, you
Speaker 2: know how kings and queens are supposed to take the throne, right,
Speaker 2: you figure it out. And so these two women sit
Speaker 2: down with these books about the coronation of King George
Speaker 2: the Fifth, and they make notes about, oh, there's all
Speaker 2: these symbols of power that they handed, and there's all
Speaker 2: these swords and scepters and crowns and precious stones that
Speaker 2: mean all these things and have these fancy names that
Speaker 2: are part of this whole process, and they kind of
Speaker 2: make their own version of it. For the coronation of
Speaker 2: the Shah. I want to read you a quote about
Speaker 2: this whole process of planning the coronation from a very
Speaker 2: British coup by Scharen Brysac. But as I read all this,
Speaker 2: I need you to remember that again, seven years earlier,
Speaker 2: about half the country dyed of famine. When we're talking
Speaker 2: about how obscene the display of wealth that this represents
Speaker 2: really is. As Vita Sackville West recalled, the linen bags
Speaker 2: vomited emeralds and pearls, The green bays vanished, the table
Speaker 2: became a sea of precious stones. The leather cases opened,
Speaker 2: displaying jeweled scimitars, daggers mounted with rubies, buckles carved from
Speaker 2: a single emerald, ropes of enormous pearls. Then from the
Speaker 2: inner room came the file of servants, again carrying uniforms
Speaker 2: sown with diamonds, with a tall aggrete secured by a
Speaker 2: diamond larger than the mountain of light. Two crowns, like
Speaker 2: great heretic tiaras, barbaric diatems, compose a pearl of the
Speaker 2: finest orient. We plunged our hands up to the wrist
Speaker 2: and the heaps of uncut emeralds, and let the pearls
Speaker 2: run through our fingers. We forgot the persia of today.
Speaker 2: We were swept back to Akbar and the spoils of India.
Speaker 2: Soon orders went out to shops throughout Europe. But after
Speaker 2: the intercession of Lady Lorraine, Vita was given authority to
Speaker 2: order china, glass, cutlery and stationary from London's royal purveyors.
Speaker 2: She commissioned red liveries for the palace, modeled on those
Speaker 2: worn by the British legations servants apropos of the coronation.
Speaker 2: Vita Sackville West writes to her friend Gertrude Bell she
Speaker 2: and Luis Lorraine have been very busy painting the throne
Speaker 2: room pink.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm envisioning the scene from the cartoon movie Aladdin
Speaker 3: where he comes in as Prince Ali Abavois, and I
Speaker 3: wish we could talk about that movie for a long
Speaker 3: time time. I got thoughts, I got thoughts. Yeah, boy,
Speaker 3: it's so opulent.
Speaker 2: Yes yeah, yes, And this this this all this wealth
Speaker 2: that like could have been used during the famine years
Speaker 2: to maybe help with the famine, wasn't used for that.
Speaker 2: And also there's an opportunity here in this capital that's
Speaker 2: been devastated of like, well, we need a shitload of
Speaker 2: cutlery and stationary in China and glass. You could have
Speaker 2: a lot of that made by people in Tehran, by
Speaker 2: people in the Greater Persian area. No, we're sending off
Speaker 2: to London. You're sending money out of this starving country
Speaker 2: to bring in stuff from London. It's just better, you know.
Speaker 3: Be a job creator, right if nothing else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this pisses some people off too, Really, I
Speaker 2: want to yeah, I want to talk about how the
Speaker 2: Shaw gets coronated. And here's how the biography of the
Speaker 2: Shah describes them. Reza stepped into the hall where he
Speaker 2: would be coronated. He's arrived. He's known as a very
Speaker 2: punctual man. In fact, he's accused often angrily, of bringing
Speaker 2: like the concept of puncture ruality to Persia that like
Speaker 2: Iranians didn't give a shit what time it was before
Speaker 2: ress like he is building a people's say.
Speaker 3: I'm calling you out la. So I'm calling you out
Speaker 3: La Persians.
Speaker 2: Sorry, So it's noteworthy he shows up late as like
Speaker 2: a power move because he can right quote. At last,
Speaker 2: there was a stir, The doors were opened and the
Speaker 2: six year old Mohammed Reser that's his son, appeared in
Speaker 2: the hall. Behind him walked the procession of the twenty
Speaker 2: two political dignitaries, led by the Prime Minister. They were
Speaker 2: carrying the many royal accouterment necessary for the coronation, three
Speaker 2: different crowns, a scepter, three swords belonging to past kings,
Speaker 2: and even a diamond studded royal bow and arrow. One
Speaker 2: of the swords belonged to Nadir Shah, a powerful king.
Speaker 2: He united Iran and was reported to have been planning
Speaker 2: limits on the powers of the clergy. Nadir Shaw was
Speaker 2: also alleged to have attempted a reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis,
Speaker 2: and he was Resashaw's great hero. So he's kind of
Speaker 2: signaling some of what he's going to be trying to do,
Speaker 2: right by what stuff they pick for this. So the
Speaker 2: Shaw's son after he's crowned, Mohammed Resapelavi was pronounced crown
Speaker 2: Prints initially. Now that res is this Shaw. He promises
Speaker 2: a reign free of religious influence or internal strife, and
Speaker 2: he promises quote European style educational institutions, westernized women active
Speaker 2: outside the home, and modern economic structures with state factories,
Speaker 2: communication networks, investment banks, and department stores. In the words
Speaker 2: of historian Aravond Abrahemian, right, he's saying, we're going to
Speaker 2: be a modern country like all those European countries. Right,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's a lot of good stuff that
Speaker 2: sounds like those in those promises. You know, cut the
Speaker 2: power of these religious tyrants, let women do more stuff,
Speaker 2: sounds great, roads sounds good. A lot of that stuff
Speaker 2: will in fact happen. Now, first off, it's always debatable
Speaker 2: how much of this is actually how much of the
Speaker 2: good stuff that happens has anything to do with the
Speaker 2: Shaw or is it just stuff he takes credit for.
Speaker 2: But the other thing that's important to know is that
Speaker 2: like what he does, he does by instituting the most
Speaker 2: direct one man rule possible. And this means cracking down
Speaker 2: on and in many cases eliminating all of the local leaders,
Speaker 2: the tribal leaders who had previously been friends to his
Speaker 2: British patrons, and in it doing so in a very
Speaker 2: brutal way. Ending internal strife means ending any fiction that
Speaker 2: Persia is a nation of many peoples, and so it
Speaker 2: was Resashah who officially changed the name of his country
Speaker 2: from Persia to Iran. Per the Fair Observer, Resishaw's detribalization
Speaker 2: and Persianization led to ethnic cleansing and genocide. William Douglass,
Speaker 2: a noted American judge, had the following to note about
Speaker 2: one community that fell fall of Resishaw, Lure after Lure.
Speaker 2: That's the group of people, that's the ethnic group, like
Speaker 2: the tribe that he's going after. Lure after Lure was
Speaker 2: beheaded again and again. The plate was heated red hot
Speaker 2: and slapped on the stump of a neck. The colonel
Speaker 2: started betting on how far these headless men could run.
Speaker 2: Every man, woman, and child had been killed. Not a
Speaker 2: living soul was left. Wow, this is the kind of
Speaker 2: shit his soldiers are doing to wipe out any other
Speaker 2: groups that might be a threat to his power.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Like they're beheading people and cauterizing the bodies and then
Speaker 2: like seeing how far their headless corpses will sprint. Fucking like.
Speaker 2: This is a brutal, dehumanizing crackdown on everyone else. That's
Speaker 2: a big part of what the Sha does. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: have we had two ad breaks? Sophie? No, Okay, great,
Speaker 2: this is a good time for one. So it isn't.
Speaker 2: But let's do it. Anyways, we're back. So the new
Speaker 2: Sha also put a violent in to what had at
Speaker 2: that point been some eighty years of increasing press freedom.
Speaker 2: Over the course of his reign, he grows increasingly obsessed
Speaker 2: with the way Mustapha Kamal is doing things over in Turkey,
Speaker 2: aping him res a band's traditional clothing. It was now
Speaker 2: illegal for Iranians to wear anything but Western dress. Now,
Speaker 2: this is something that gets missed a lot when you
Speaker 2: see conservatives or other people post pictures of Iranian women
Speaker 2: in headscarfs next to old photos The second shot in
Speaker 2: this line of like women during the reign of that
Speaker 2: Shaw in Tehran dressed like westerners, right, looking like women
Speaker 2: in Western cities, right. And it's always framed as like
Speaker 2: and it is fucked up that people don't have like
Speaker 2: freedom to choose what they wear on their head. But
Speaker 2: what is not talked about is how those pictures came
Speaker 2: to be. And so I want to read you a
Speaker 2: quote from a lobby and Singh's article about why you
Speaker 2: have those pictures of women without head scarves in Tehran.
Speaker 2: If they did not do so give up their traditional dress,
Speaker 2: they were beaten and even taken into custody. This policy
Speaker 2: caused a massive rupture with tradition. In small towns and villages,
Speaker 2: people ignored the Shaw's edict and cities people suffered, especially
Speaker 2: the women. Many women stopped going to public places to
Speaker 2: avoid harassment and became involuntary prisoners within their own homes.
Speaker 2: This is not a nice process. He's not freeing people.
Speaker 2: So he's saying you'll be beaten if you do this
Speaker 2: thing that you've been doing your whole life.
Speaker 3: Still, this is the point where I have to say
Speaker 3: two things. There's two things I have to mention. One
Speaker 3: and this is for all all the Aunties out there
Speaker 3: who might be listening or hear this episode. Please no
Speaker 3: angry emails. We can accept two truths are happening or
Speaker 3: have happened, which is one the Shaw The Shaws were
Speaker 3: repressive and fascist, and also the Moulaws are repressive and fascist.
Speaker 3: And I would argue their worse, and I would say
Speaker 3: most Iranians would say it's worse. But it doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that what they were doing was good. This is not
Speaker 3: the last time and it was not a nice time.
Speaker 3: And also it probably led long term to some of
Speaker 3: the conflicts that we had down the road with the
Speaker 3: Moulaws and those that fascist Islamo fascist regime. Another thing
Speaker 3: I will have you note when this meme was popularized,
Speaker 3: where it's like they show, like the picture of the
Speaker 3: women that this was Iran in the seventies and now
Speaker 3: look their animals sort of always has a weird vibe
Speaker 3: to it. I posted one of my more popular tweets
Speaker 3: when I was on x or Twitter was a picture
Speaker 3: of John Chaval in Saturday Night Fever, and it was
Speaker 3: him dancing with the full on dance thing. You can
Speaker 3: imagine where he's like on the dance. Folet's all lit up,
Speaker 3: and I said, this is an actual picture of my
Speaker 3: father in pre revolutionary Iran dancing, And to be fair,
Speaker 3: it does kind of look like my dad, and it
Speaker 3: does look like the kind of dancing he would do.
Speaker 3: It looks extraordinarily persian. In fact, there's never been a
Speaker 3: more Persian coded picture than John Travolta dancing in that
Speaker 3: and it was very popular and up to everyone who
Speaker 3: thought that was real, I apologize, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just it's important to know that. Like again,
Speaker 2: there are much better ways to Yeah, it's bad to
Speaker 2: tell people they have to or can't wear a certain thing.
Speaker 2: You can do that without saying it's now illegal to
Speaker 2: wear what you were wearing before, and you'll get beaten
Speaker 2: in the street if you do it. The shot could
Speaker 2: have just said you don't have to dress like the
Speaker 2: clerics want you to anymore, do whatever, and doing that
Speaker 2: also probably would have caused a lot less of the
Speaker 2: kind of resentment that builds up in the right right right.
Speaker 2: It's just he's a dick about everything. He's a huge asshole.
Speaker 2: That's Resus Shah basically. So Ron does modernize a lot
Speaker 2: during Res's time, and power, and early in his reign
Speaker 2: there are other people who are doing hard work and
Speaker 2: good work. We're like competent political figures and allies who
Speaker 2: is able to entrust to execute and create policy right,
Speaker 2: and this is part of why there's a lot of
Speaker 2: development in the country. Each of these men, though, grows
Speaker 2: too powerful and popular for Res's liking. He is not
Speaker 2: a guy who is good at trusting. The Encyclopedia of
Speaker 2: the World of his Lam notes they were gradually eliminated
Speaker 2: from the political arena, and most of them were murdered
Speaker 2: humiliatingly at his behest. So not a great dude to work.
Speaker 3: God, I don't like that sentence. Murdered humiliatingly.
Speaker 2: No, that is no very that sounds bleak. Yeah, horrible. Oh,
Speaker 2: I mean he likes cauterizing stuff. So we know that
Speaker 2: there's some fucked up shit going on here. By nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty one or so, the Shah is about as close
Speaker 2: to a total desk but as one could be. But
Speaker 2: his cruel he was to his own people. He was
Speaker 2: deeply aware of how fragile his hold on power remained.
Speaker 2: He had seen in action how little effort it took
Speaker 2: the British to help him onto his throne over the years,
Speaker 2: though he had also grown increasingly paranoid about their plots.
Speaker 2: At the same time, he was terrified of the USSR.
Speaker 2: And he actually gives the Soviet Union a big chunk
Speaker 2: of what's today Turkmenistan in nineteen thirty three to try
Speaker 2: and buy them off and keep them happy. And he
Speaker 2: does the same to British oil interests. He gives them,
Speaker 2: like concedes, a bunch of Iranian soil. He does this
Speaker 2: a few times to and I think he does this
Speaker 2: to Turkey as well. He gives away a sizable chunk
Speaker 2: of his country in order to preserve his reign and
Speaker 2: try to make friends with these foreign powers that he's
Speaker 2: hoping will help keep him on his throne. And this
Speaker 2: obviously pisses people off. He's literally giving away the country.
Speaker 2: Public authorities in the media were ordered to describe the
Speaker 2: Shaw as a reformer who had modernized the country. He
Speaker 2: was given credit for reforms instituted by other past leaders
Speaker 2: like Amre Kabir, while his secret police punished any one
Speaker 2: who spoke out about the darker side of the regime.
Speaker 2: Per Serene brysik Resa, Shaw's whim was absolute. His memory extraordinary,
Speaker 2: his thirst to avenge proverbial his skin gossamer. No elective
Speaker 2: constitutional system was allowed to grow roots under the Pelavis,
Speaker 2: another break from Atta Turk's example to the untraveled Shaw,
Speaker 2: the concept of a free press was unfathomable. When Resa
Speaker 2: discovered that Iranians were still using postage stamps bearing the
Speaker 2: portrait of the deposed Ahmed Shah, he sent his troops
Speaker 2: to seize the entire supply. For some weeks, Iran remained stampless,
Speaker 2: and since the newly minted ones with Reza's portrait were
Speaker 2: slow and arriving from Holland, the old stamps had to
Speaker 2: be retrieved and circulated. I'll bite with the exiled Shaw's
Speaker 2: effigy blacked out.
Speaker 3: That's a bit. Somebody had to go through each one
Speaker 3: of those stamps and just gride it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you just had a temper tantor He's like,
Speaker 2: oh the stamps, confiscate them all and they're like, well,
Speaker 2: no one can use the mail. Hey, hey, hey, boss,
Speaker 2: that kind of a problem here. He's like, you got sharpies,
Speaker 2: don't you.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and I'll have you note. This is where
Speaker 3: this is the corner of the show in which I
Speaker 3: talk about Persian contributions to the world, the postal system,
Speaker 3: you like the postal service. Persians came up with that,
Speaker 3: you like that love something that's that's our thing, one
Speaker 3: of our things, and he fucked it up, fucked it up.
Speaker 3: It's our thing, man, and you fucked it up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been your thing. It's been your thing for
Speaker 2: a while. Yeah. So when the Great Depression hits, oil
Speaker 2: revenues from Great Britain dry up sharply. Again, the British
Speaker 2: are nominally supposed to pay quite a bit to Iran
Speaker 2: for the oil that they take out, but like during
Speaker 2: World War One, they stop paying because they're like why
Speaker 2: would we pay? Times are hard and during Great Depression
Speaker 2: oil revenue is also dry up sharply. They're finding ways
Speaker 2: to fuck with them. They're still selling oil. They are
Speaker 2: often lying to the government because again APOC has never
Speaker 2: cared about the government in Tehran, so they're often they're like,
Speaker 2: the government Iran doesn't ually know what the British Navy's
Speaker 2: paying for oil, right, Like that's all kept in a
Speaker 2: black box from them. This piss is off the Shaw.
Speaker 2: There's years of ongoing arguments with the Shaw and renegotiations
Speaker 2: of that contract with Darcy, where the Shaws like, you're
Speaker 2: fucking us because and they are. The Shaw is not wrong,
Speaker 2: he's being fucked here. So it is still APOC, the
Speaker 2: Anglo Persian Oil Company at the time, though it will
Speaker 2: eventually be renamed, as you noted, the Anglo Iranian Oil
Speaker 2: Company or AIOC. And just in case you're all curious,
Speaker 2: it's renamed one more time and it still exists today, COVID.
Speaker 2: Do you know what APOC slash AOK is today?
Speaker 3: Famously known for taking care of the environment, They are
Speaker 3: now known as BP Wonderful Company, British Petroleum.
Speaker 2: British Petroleum. That's right, baby, that's these motherfuckers.
Speaker 3: They were from the beginning. It's so funny. Uh huh.
Speaker 2: They were always evil, always evil as fuck.
Speaker 3: Even when they weren't killing like ducks and stuff.
Speaker 2: No, no, there's never been a leader of that company
Speaker 2: who didn't deserve to be flung into the sun.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so.
Speaker 2: The fact that Great Britain's fucking him and that the
Speaker 2: old company's fucking him really wears on Reza and resentment
Speaker 2: over this builds at the same time as an awful
Speaker 2: lot so in the twenties up to the thirties, he's
Speaker 2: getting increasingly angry at Great Britain and increasingly paranoid at
Speaker 2: at at Great Britain. And at the same time, a
Speaker 2: lot of Germans start coming to Iran and like a
Speaker 2: lot of if a lot of tourists come and a
Speaker 2: lot of like vacation German.
Speaker 3: Investors look in this business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no to not very German regime. It's very nice.
Speaker 2: Then you know, a guy gets elected in nineteen you know,
Speaker 2: in the thirties who's not as nice, but but who
Speaker 2: Resa Shaw finds himself actually in agreement with a lot
Speaker 2: that guy his name is Adolf Hitler and is like
Speaker 2: this Hitler guy. He's saying a lot I agree with
Speaker 2: about how the British are evil and untrusted worthy. He's
Speaker 2: saying a lot of other things that res agrees with too,
Speaker 2: stuff on genocide that Resa might not be against. And
Speaker 2: Germany this is actually one of the most successful. Like
Speaker 2: German it's a mix of like a spying and like
Speaker 2: an economic influence effort that, like the Nazi regime like
Speaker 2: carries out over this period of time, which is that
Speaker 2: by nineteen forty nearly half of all Iranian imports come
Speaker 2: from the German Reich, and forty two percent of all
Speaker 2: Iranian exports are entering Germany. So by the time World
Speaker 2: War two starts, Germany is kind of more important for
Speaker 2: the Iranian economy in a lot of ways than Great
Speaker 2: Britain is. And Rezushah has come to believe that, like, well,
Speaker 2: I've got these Germans who were good allies, right, Like
Speaker 2: these these guys will be good friends to me, and
Speaker 2: he starts he hates Britain and Russia both pretty much
Speaker 2: the same at this point in time, and he kind
Speaker 2: of at the start of World War Two he makes
Speaker 2: a bet that, like, I bet Hitler's gonna win. I
Speaker 2: bet this, I bet things are going to keep going
Speaker 2: well for Adolf Hitler. This goes wrong for him almost immediately.
Speaker 2: For first off, he shocked at the Molotov Ribbon trop
Speaker 2: Pact in nineteen thirty nine that like, the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: and the Nazis have a detent and invade Poland together,
Speaker 2: because he's like, wait, but I don't like Russia. I
Speaker 2: thought that we were on the same page about that Germany, right,
Speaker 2: And when World War two starts, he's like, Iran's neutral,
Speaker 2: trust me neutral, We want not. We're not siding with
Speaker 2: the Germans here, but when the Germans invade the USSR,
Speaker 2: that makes Russia and Great Britain allies, and they're the
Speaker 2: British are increasingly unhappy with this guy who seemed very
Speaker 2: sympathetic to Hitler being on the throne. And to make
Speaker 2: a long story short, the Shaw is forced to abdicate.
Speaker 2: He tells his son, I cannot be and this is
Speaker 2: because like Russia and Britain, like primarily Britain, like sins
Speaker 2: soldiers into Persia, right, they basically take the country because
Speaker 2: they need the oil for the war that they're fighting
Speaker 2: with the Third Reich, and they don't want this guy
Speaker 2: who's untrustworthy to be able to cut off the Royal
Speaker 2: Navy's fuel supply.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's part of why there's a conference in Tehran during
Speaker 2: World War two, the Tehran Conference. It's a big deal.
Speaker 2: And the Shah, Yeah, Reza is not a fan of
Speaker 2: any of this. He abdicates, telling his son, I cannot
Speaker 2: be the nominal head of an occupied land to be
Speaker 2: dictated to by a minor English or Russian officer. His son,
Speaker 2: who's twenty one years old at this time, Mohammed Reza
Speaker 2: Palavi is immediately proclaimed Shah by the Mazles right after this,
Speaker 2: and yeah, that's more or less the end of this
Speaker 2: guy's story. Reza, the former Shah, gets put onto a
Speaker 2: British boat. He goes to Mauritius first in the Indian Ocean,
Speaker 2: but he doesn't like the climate and he eventually is
Speaker 2: taken to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he stays under house arrest,
Speaker 2: dying from a heart attack in nineteen forty four. And
Speaker 2: that's the end of his life.
Speaker 3: That that's fascinating. First of all, when I heard that
Speaker 3: we were doing the show, I had the wrong show
Speaker 3: in mind. So this is fascinating because this is the
Speaker 3: Shaw I know the least about. So that's really interesting
Speaker 3: to get all this background.
Speaker 2: I thought this was all going to be the first
Speaker 2: like two pages of a script. On the other shot,
Speaker 2: I was like, this is just the context we need,
Speaker 2: and I just found it so interesting and worth telling,
Speaker 2: and I like, especially once I hit the fucking Great
Speaker 2: Persian fam and I was like, well shit, this like
Speaker 2: I need to refocus these episodes.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely, And I do think it's so important because
Speaker 3: it lays out the groundwork for what happens next, Yeah,
Speaker 3: really importantly, and it makes it so much easier to
Speaker 3: understand what happens next. I was under the impression that
Speaker 3: he had flirted with the Nazis just because he hated
Speaker 3: the British so much, but I didn't. I didn't realize
Speaker 3: he was quite so sympathetic. It sounds like the Allies
Speaker 3: had their their fears, which may or may not have
Speaker 3: been grounded, but yeah, makes sense as to why they
Speaker 3: went in and deposed him. It's always weird to me
Speaker 3: that dynamic, like I because like, what does that mean?
Speaker 3: As the sun? How do you stay behind? And that's
Speaker 3: just so weird. I guess you have to. You feel
Speaker 3: like it's your duty. In the best case scenario, you.
Speaker 2: Get to be the king. Your dad's never been that great,
Speaker 2: you're twenty one, probably always figured you could do a
Speaker 2: better job.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm curious because at this time, I think
Speaker 3: the twenty one year old Mohammed Resishaw the Sun was
Speaker 3: just out there in like Europe, hanging out like with
Speaker 3: like B grade celebrities and actresses and partying hard. So
Speaker 3: I didn't I'm curious to know where he was at
Speaker 3: in the stage in his life. But we'll have to
Speaker 3: get to it as some other point three more episodes.
Speaker 2: Please, yeah, don't worry. We will, friends, we will, but
Speaker 2: we're not going to do that today. Today we're going
Speaker 2: to do something else. We're going to end the episode
Speaker 2: with you plugging your pluggables.
Speaker 3: Wow, beautiful, you're very good at this. Uh So, if
Speaker 3: you like this show, I think there's a very good
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Speaker 3: It is a humor adjacent medical podcast. I have on
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Speaker 2: Well, everybody that's been Behind the Bastards for this week.
Speaker 2: Check back next week we will talk about someone else
Speaker 2: who's sucked, you know, someone different.
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