Rescuing Reason - E12 - Iran Pt1 - The History

The 2026 conflict between the US/Israel and Iran has a long history, arguably traceable to the mid-20th century. This multi-part series looks at how Iran was shaped over millennia to become the force it is today; the roots of the modern day conflict; the key issues (Iranian anti-West behavior [through proxies too], its nuclear program, state-sponsored terrorism, and its oppressive regime); analysis of the current conflict, and concludes with a look to the future. This first episode takes us through Iran's history with a focus on the last 100 years and how that shaped Iran to be anti-West.

Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:25

Welcome to episode twelve of the Spartan Spirit Season Three podcast series titled Rescuing Reason, where we examine topical political and socioeconomic issues affecting Western liberal democracies, particularly Australia, Canada, and the USA. And today we are looking at Iran. I'm your host, Bill Carolakis. I'm a retired senior Air Force officer. I use history and research to baseline the topics on Rescuing Reason, and I'll be offering you a Spartan perspective in each episode. In other words, taking a pragmatic view that values the nation and broader Western society over individual interests. I'd intended to cover carbon and climate change for the next four Rescuing Reason episodes, but the Iran conflict is just too topical to overlook. So, these next few episodes of Rescuing Reason will cover all things Iran, and by the time we get to the final episode, in a few months' time, we'll have a good understanding of how the current conflict came to be, and one hopes has ended, or at least been paused until the next round of conflict. Rescuing Reason is intended to be informative and to get us all discussing critical topics in a more reasoned and informed manner. And armed with that information and reason, hopefully you can influence your government by writing to your local member. As such, this series on Iran is not up-to-date news. Rather, it gives you background into Iran and some food for thought on the US or Israeli conflict with Iran. In particular, there's one overriding question we all have to ask ourselves. Should we support military action against Iran? Presumably in the pursuit of either regime change or to prevent their acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Or you might say, is it just retribution? Very, very interesting question that all of us should be concerned about given the scale of the conflict happening right now, today being late March 2026. There are a lot of people commenting on this topic, and much of what I'm seeing in the media smacks of misinformation. In other words, it's ill-informed, factually incorrect, or simply outright lies. The sources I've used for this episode and the ones coming up in the next few months, and in fact all rescuing reason episodes, are generally academics or people with some expertise in the subject area. Of course, everyone is biased, so I've endeavored to present both sides of the story in this series on Iran. And as always, I'm taking the view that national interests and the good of society is more important than individual perspectives, so we'll apply that lens as we talk about the 2026 Iranian crisis and Iran in general. The first episode will paint the picture of Iran. We'll start with a condensed version of its history, with some deeper dives into key events of the past hundred years. We'll finish the introduction with a rundown on Iran's demographics, geography, economy, and politics, including the unrest we often hear about in Iran. And that will take us through this first episode. The following episodes will look at the contentious policies of Iran's government, such as their role in supporting militias in the Middle East, terrorism, and its nuclear ambitions. These policies resulted in numerous conflicts with the West since 1979, and we'll cover some of those in a later episode. Along the way, we'll also consider how Iran interacts with other key nations of the global south, particularly the Crink nations of Russia, China, and North Korea. And if you're not sure what crink means, have a listen to episode seven in which I discuss the rules-based order. Woven into the US-Iran story is the history of US-led regime change, including the reasoning, methods, and whether it works or not, but I'll leave that for a future series that focuses on regime change around the world, not just in Iran. And of course, we'll try to make sense of what the US and Israel are trying to achieve in their bombing of Iran. Okay, here we go. Let's start with the name Iran, and its other well-known name, Persia. To tell us this story, here is Professor Roy Cassagrand. He's an American political scientist, historian, and professor of government studies at Austin Community College in Texas. Although he's sometimes loose with his facts, he tells a generally accurate story, and here he is now.

SPEAKER_05 5:10

The original name of Iran was Iran. Iran was the Persian word for Arian. They were the Arians. By the way, there's another country on Earth named Arian. It's not just Iran. Ern. Ireland. Arland is literally Arian. So there's two Arians on Earth. It's Iran and Ireland. What happened was the Greeks believed that Perseus, the son of Zeus, married Cassiopeia, the daughter of Andromeda, and their children are the Persians. And that's why they're called the Persians, they're named after Perseus, the son of Zeus. Andromeda was the queen of Ethiopia, so Zeus's son and 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 Rezarshah wanted to go back to the original actual Iranian name, and that's why he picks Iran. This dialogue, when we talk about Iran, like, should I say Persian or Iran? Should I say Iranian? 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. So the Persians now have said, no, no, no, we have pa, and so they brought the ph back, and so now it's Persian again. So stop saying farsi, that's past that makes you look old. So usually when we talk about Iran, we mean the the country, and then the Persians or 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. For the record, if you're Baluchi, Dari, Tajik, if you're from Western Pakistan, Kurdish, Iranian, that's the Iranian language group.

SPEAKER_07 7:21

So that's a great example of how history can inform our understanding. I always thought the name Iran was forced onto the Persians in modern times, and his accounting of how farsi is incorrect usage is also interesting. Now that we know where Iran's name came from, let's hear Colin Heaton, professor of history at American Military University, in his overview of Iranian history. You should know in advance that Colin is a right-wing supporter of Donald Trump. I've removed his rhetoric and kept it just to the facts, and here they are.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Things really took off with the Achimedon Empire in 550 BC founded by Cyrus the Great, becoming the largest contiguous empire the world had ever seen up to that time, stretching from Greece to India. Persia would fight many wars against the Greek city-states as well as the Romans, but this was the empire that invented the concept of human rights, at least on clay tablet. Darius the Great built a political and social infrastructure and bureaucracy that following empires replicated. But then came Alexander the Great, who torched Persepolis and shattered Persian dominance in 330 BC. Next up, the Parthians, who created their empire within ancient Persia. Think of them as mounted guerrilla warfare masters riding circles around Roman legions. And the Romans decided that their expansion would end along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Persians gave way to the Sassanians, who brought back Persian pride and Zoroastrianism. For 400 years, from 224 to 651 AD, they were Rome's archenemy in the East until the Arab Muslim conquest in 651 changed the game forever. The Arabs then conquered Persia, but Persia conquered Arab culture. In the 7th century, when many non-Arabs, such as Persians, entered Islam, they were recognized as Mawali or clients and treated as second-class citizens by the ruling Arab elite until the end of the Umayyad Caliphate. During this era, Islam was initially associated with the ethnic identity of the Arabs and required formal association with an Arab tribe and the adoption of the client status of Mawali. Centuries of ethnic unrest would only get worse between rival Islamic groups. The Salmonid dynasty of 819 to 999 AD, which followed, led the revival of Persian culture, but also periodic wars against the Byzantine Greeks as well as conflict with the Ottomans, who fought against both groups, but the contacts with the other cultures would have an unexpected benefit. The Ghaznavid dynasty, which followed and lasted until 1186, expanded Persian and Islamic knowledge and influence into northwest India, which would later establish the strong Muslim culture in India which lasts to this day, as well as that which is today called Pakistan. But then came Jingis Khan and the Mongols in the 1200s. But Jingis was followed by Tamerlane, another Buddh invader, who turned cities into bone pyramids, almost destroying the Persian culture. He had invaded Iran and eventually conquered most of it by 1381. As a result of all of these conflicts, ideas were exchanged. Persian scientists, poets, mathematicians, and administrators built the Islamic Golden Age. Think of such great men as Avicenna, Rumi, and Omar Cayenne as the major influencers who expanded thought and culture. Persia at this time was a center of higher learning, technology, and enlightenment far beyond what Europe was experiencing. Following the rise of the Black Sheep Turkmen replacing the Timurids in 1452 and their being replaced by the White Sheep Turkmen in 1468, the culture grew exponentially. In 1501, the Safavid dynasty took over, which gave Iran a new identity, Shia Islam. Their dynasty lasted until 1736. Shia Islam is still the official religion today. For centuries, the Shia Persians confronted the Sunni Ottoman Empire, which failed to completely encroach upon and conquer Iran or the majority of Arabia, which was also majority Sunni. Fast forward to the Qajars in the 1800s. They lost a lot of territory to the Russians and got played like a fiddle by the British. When oil was found, suddenly everyone wanted a piece of Persia. The 1906 constitutional revolution tried to fix the mess with democracy. In 1925, Reza Shah took power, a secular strongman. He modernized Iran with steel and censorship. His son, the infamous Mohammed Reza Shah, continued the modernization. During World War II, the Iranian government was pro-German, and the British and Soviets both invaded and destroyed the small Iranian army. The British then had a major influence in Iran, as the region was a staging and training area for Allied forces preparing to deploy to North Africa, as well as a major conduit for Lindley's aid going to the USSR. After the war, the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh tried to nationalize Iran's oil, which was supported by the Parliament. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee considered seizing the Abadan oil refinery by force, but instead settled on an embargo by the Royal Navy, stopping any ship transporting Iranian oil for carrying so-called stolen property. On his re-election as Prime Minister, Winston Churchill took an even harsher stance against Iran. Churchill and the Eisenhower administration decided in early 1953 to overthrow Iran's government due to fears of rising communist influence in the region. Their justification was not just the nationalization or theft of British and American property, but that Mossadegh was warming up to Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviets. With the Cold War starting to heat up, that was also a risk that could not be taken. The West placed more embargoes on Iranian oil exports. The CIA under Alan Dulles and Britain's MI6 decided that was not a great idea, and they orchestrated a coup to remove Mossadegh and place the Shah in complete power. Following the ousting of Mossadegh, a new government under General Kazlola Sahidi was formed, which allowed Mohammed Reza Pahlawi, the Shah of Iran, to assume power and build a strong alliance with the West. Iran became the most prosperous, educated, secular, modern, and westernized Islamic country in the world. People had great freedoms. There were no religious police making sure Sharia law was enforced. Minorities were not really subjugated to much brutality. Women wore Western clothing and could drive cars and work with men. Men did not usually wear beards. Business flourished, especially oil and gas. But there was dissent among the religious faithful, and as a result, the Shah had a remedy. The Sabak, the Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State, was created by the Shah in 1957. It was the Shah's secret police, and it had a brutal history of cracking down on anti-government revolutionaries. People disappeared or were often jailed, many being extreme anti-Western Islamists and communists. In 1979, the people finally rose up. Out went the Shah. In came Ayatollah Khomeini, and with him the Islamic Republic.

SPEAKER_07 14:56

In summary, Iran has a proud history. A history in which it was strong enough to resist having its Persian identity wiped up by invaders, particularly Islamic invaders. Evidence of that strength is the fact that they still speak Persian and not Arabic or some other language. Now Colin only took us to the point of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which saw the Shah leave Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini take over and implement a new style of government, and we'll cover that more later in this episode. Of interest were Colin Hayton's comments about British and US influence in the 1940s and 1950s, and that influence has a lot to do with why Iran is being run by clerics today. The 1953 coup he mentioned is pretty important in Iran's psyche. So here are some experts discussing that coup and other factors that led to the Iranian Revolution. The commenters are Robin Wright of the New Yorker, and she's also a fellow at several universities such as Yale and Stanford, Geneve Abdo, who's another journalist and is a fellow at Harvard, Vali Nasser, who's the Dean of John Hopkins School of International Studies, Ryan Crocker, a former ambassador to Iran, Dahlia Kay of the Rand Corporation, and Irvand Abrahamian, a professor at the City of New York University.

SPEAKER_12 16:22

Although Iran had never been a colony of Britain, it was a you could say a neocolony because most of the economic resources were owned by the British Oil Company. And what Mossadegh did as help campaign was built on getting Iranian independence from Britain by nationalizing the British Iranian oil company.

SPEAKER_04 16:50

For many Iranians, it goes back at least until 1953, when the CIA and Britain's MI-6 joined forces to overthrow a democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. No Iranian will ever forget it. The U.S. deposed Mossadegh, brought the Shah back, he had fled the country, and said, Here are the keys to your kingdom again. I think over time that resentment built up and built up and built up. It wasn't just the Shah, he was merely the puppet of the Americans. So that was a weapon ready to use for the Islamists who eventually took power.

SPEAKER_09 17:29

The revolution actually played out over about 14 months and it brought together a motley array of political forces. You had leftists and communists, you had nationalists, you had academics and technocrats who wanted to see a different kind of system.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Although they had their own interests in deposing the Shah, nonetheless, they somehow came together with a common objective.

SPEAKER_11 18:13

It came from the extent to which it adopted the 1960s-70s third world anti-American imperialism rhetoric.

SPEAKER_09 18:22

The Iranian Revolution was as much about shedding foreign influence as it was getting rid of the monarchy. And the United States, since in the aftermath of World War II, had become the dominant political foreign power influence in Iran.

SPEAKER_12 18:37

Khomeini emerged as a leader for a number of reasons. One is obviously he tapped into religious sentiments. But also by 79, all secular liberal national organizations had been dismantled by the Shah. So there was a political vacuum. You get the situation where a charismatic figure can appear. And the charismatic figure is not just a very popular figure, but almost a figure that's seen as having authority from above. At the height of the revolution, the leaders, especially Khomeini, thought this was an Islamic revolution and it could be exportable throughout the Islamic world, especially into the Gulf in the Arab Saudi Arabia. But what they discovered was that actually the language they used, the symbols they used, were very much Shi symbols. So the slogans, the meaning of the revolution did not really resonate.

SPEAKER_07 19:44

In essence, there were a lot of reasons for change, some of which was anti-US sentiments, but not entirely. And I suggest to you that the common thread in all of those points is that the Islamic Revolution was a purely Iranian phenomenon. What I found interesting in all of that was that no one mentioned the Shah's lack of action in suppressing the uprising. It should have been a major factor in the Iranian Islamic Revolution, but it wasn't there. Here's Gary Sick of Columbia University discussing this very aspect.

SPEAKER_08 20:18

Basically, here was a man who had been on the throne for 37 years. He had a vast amount of experience, he had immense amounts of money, he had a huge army, he had a fearsome secret service, he had everything that he needed to deal with this problem, and he didn't. And we kept expecting him, as things got worse, to say, okay, now I'm going to really come in and do something. In retrospect, people say, shouldn't you have told him to do that? But on two different occasions, in the middle of 1978 and again toward the end of 1978, the Shah was presented with a plan by his own Savak people and by the head of the military, both of them outlining ways he could stop this from taking place. The people who've looked at it in register think, well, but it would have been a bloodbath. Well, no, it didn't have to be a bloodbath at all. The plan didn't call for going out and shooting everybody. It called for two things. One, rounding up all of the leaders of the opposition. They knew who they were, and maybe taking them off to a remote island someplace for a little while to get them out of the center of the action. And secondly, to sort of flood the streets with police and military people so that any rioters who felt the need to do that would be intimidated and would go home. You didn't have to kill a lot of people to do that. You can say now in retrospect, well, could that really have worked if the Shah had done it? Well, I give you the example of 2009. There was another revolution in Iran. There were something two, three million people in The street of Tehran. They were chanting down with the Islamic Republic. They were going after the Ayatoa. And it looked as if the game was over. And what did they do? They arrested all the people who were the principal spokespeople for the thing, threw them in jail, and held them for a period of six months to eight months. Mostly they let them out afterwards. There are very few of them that were left in jail. But they were silenced over a critical period of time. And they flooded the streets with the military. And what happened? It ended. Now, it's ugly. It's not something that you know you would particularly appreciate, but it wasn't a bloodbath. So my argument is the Shah had the capability of doing that. He not only had the capability, but he was actually urged to do it. And he didn't, and so the real question is why? And you know, it's a almost impossible question to answer.

SPEAKER_07 22:54

When you consider what Sikh had to say about the plan proposed for quelling rebellions, you can see that those plans were not wasted because that's exactly how Iran manages rebellious people today. As for why the Shah didn't act, who knows? He was not a well man at the time, and perhaps he was having a philosophical moment. In the immediate aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, a few key things happened. There was the US hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq war, and there was the imposition of cultural and political change that shifted Iran from a secular society to a Shia society. Let's start with the US hostage crisis. And here is Professor Khalsi Grand again giving us that story.

SPEAKER_05 23:47

And this new state is going to be the Islamic Republic. They are going to impose Shia-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 of 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 it 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, its new constitution. So a group of college students get a crazy idea. What if we broke into, this is what they're saying, this is their dialogue, the US Embassy, and we could get a hold of the CIA documents that show that the US overthrew 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 US Embassy. Well, most of the US Embassy staff had already been evacuated. But there's 66 CIA operatives still there. Because Iran wasn't just the headquarters for the Iranian, the CIA operations in Iran. Iran was the headquarters for CIA operations in Asia. So basically everything from Turkey to China operated out of Tehran. So the brand new Islamic Republic that doesn't want anything to do with what the students are about to do calls the US Embassy. Because the US 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 the embassy and they're like, dude, get the rest of your staff out. What are you doing there? And the CNIA guys are like shredding the documents. And they gotta stay there, they gotta get everything shredded. The students climb over the wall and they capture the 66 CNIA operatives in the act of shredding the documents. They've 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. Piece by piece, we document how Kermit Roosevelt overthrew the democracy in 1953. They make copies, they give it away to the whole world, free documents, and then they go, okay, President Carter, go ahead, apologize. No way. And so we refused. Carter wasn't gonna do it. So the students said, We won't release the hostages until you do.

SPEAKER_07 26:47

As I said earlier, he's a bit loose with his facts, but the story's essentially correct. There were other demands placed as well on the U.S. by the hostage takers and the new Iranian government, some relating to the Shah and his wealth. That hostage crisis lasted 444 days, and it was resolved once Reagan came to power in January 1981. Not only were the Iranians mad about the evidence they discovered in the U.S. Embassy regarding the overthrow of their democratic leader, Mossadegh, eight months later, Iraq attacked Iran, kicking off a bloody eight-year war. Conservative estimates say that a million people were killed, mostly Iranians. And there's evidence to say that the U.S. was a key factor in that war. And here's Casa Grand again on this topic.

SPEAKER_05 27:43

So 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 says, You have a grievance with Iran, isn't that correct? And Saddam Hussein said, Yeah, our border on the Shat al-Arab isn't quite resolved. And we'd like that straightened out. And then Reagan guys are like, yeah, but couldn't your grievance go beyond the? And they go, what do you mean? And go, isn't Khuzistan 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 the mentioned it. That does sound like a good idea. And so the Reagan guys say, well, they just decapitated their military. It's like Stalin's purges. It's gonna take them forever to recover from this. Attack them now, we'll supply you, we'll run you the weapons, whatever you need. And Saddam Hussein obliges. And in 1981, Iraq attacks Iran. It's an eight-year-long war, it's a complete disaster for both Iran and Iraq. Three-quarters of a million Iranians die, one quarter of a million Iraqis die. And Iran that whole time then is in 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. So even though the war is 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 Republic, whether they liked it or not, because this was a matter of nationalism and national identity. And then 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?

SPEAKER_07 29:42

I have to point out that Kasagran yet again has a pretty loose interpretation, and his accounting of the US role in starting the Iran-Iraq war is a bit exaggerated. But there's no denying that the US supported Iraq with intelligence and aid because they saw Iraq as a counterbalance to Iranian influence. This, of course, was yet another US thorn in Iran's side, thereby feeding the anti-US rhetoric coming out of the Iranian government. In addition to the US role in the Iran-Iraq war, here's Cassagrand yet again, this time discussing deliberations about cultural reform and how U.S. actions cemented Iran's anti-US views.

SPEAKER_05 30:25

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 gonna 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 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. But 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 Khatameh is like, let's ease this up. Just so happens when I went to Iran in 2002, Khatameh 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. 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, they kill a bunch of students, it's a disaster. Khatami sort of sputters after that, he's still holding on, he gets replaced by Ahmadinejad, you know, 60 IQ, can't string together an intelligent sentence, 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. The 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, Khatami 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, Khatami had ended decades of hatred and anger with one statement. He'd even apologized for the Iran hostage crisis in the last few years of the Clinton administration. I think it was 99. He said, We regret that. But George Bush Jr., he's gonna do his first State of the Union. It's 2002. 9-11 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 gonna blow up the Taliban in Afghanistan. And the Iranians go, dude, we've been fighting. We have a whole group of soldiers on the battlefield who are Afghans who fight, that we supply, we'll 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 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 is like, yeah, it looks like that to me from here.

SPEAKER_07 33:41

So by the time the US started the 2003 war on Iraq, there was absolutely no turning back on US-Iranian relations. They were about as low as you could get, and Iran openly called for the destruction of the US. That didn't stop some Iranians from wanting to improve their lives and get rid of the Islamic Republic. What followed was a series of rebellions in Iran, and here again is Kasagran covering some of them.

SPEAKER_05 34:09

In 2009, there's the Green Movement. The Iranian people rise up, they're attempting democracy again. Their goal is 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 Green movement doesn't last very long, it fizzles out and it goes down. The revolution was over. So 2019 rolls along, Iran has another attempt. It doesn't last. It burns up pretty quickly. Khuzistan, the southwest corner, the Arab part, it's Arab minority now, as far as I know, it's majority Persian, but it's traditionally the Arab part. It went into rebellion. But then an Iranian woman, she's a Kurd to be precise, right? So she's not a Persian Iranian, she's a Kurdish Iranian. She was in Tehran visiting Mahza Amani is her is her Persian name, and 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 truck. And then when she gets to the police station, 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 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 in that and then she dies of her injuries. That's it, that was the spark.

SPEAKER_07 36:01

There's more to the story of internal dissent in Iran, but we'll talk about that in a future episode. Cassagrand mentioned Masa Amini and the riots resulting from her death. Those riots petered out under the boots of security forces. Interestingly, though, her death and those riots happened in September 2022, which is just before Hamas attacked Israel on the 7th of October that year. I suppose conspiracy theorists might tie the two together. But as we'll hear in a future episode, Iran supposedly doesn't generally tell its proxies when and where to conduct attacks. But it wouldn't be much of a stretch to think that that might have happened in this case. That's enough history for one day. We'll finish off with some details about some elements of Iran's national power. In other words, the state of play in modern Iran in the lead up to the Hamas attack on Israel and the current war, and the subsequent exchanges of missiles and conflict that have taken us to today's warfare. Let's go over some facts and figures about Iran, starting with the geography. Iran is traditionally thought of as part of the Middle East, that is to say, the southwest corner of Asia. It's bordered by Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It has two coasts. The southern coast runs along the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman, which then leads you into the Indian Ocean. And there's also a coastline along the Caspian Sea to its north. Across those coastlines are many more neighboring states. These include Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, all of which are along the Caspian Sea, but more importantly for the current conflict, those across Iran's southern shores are Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. The distance from Tehran to Tel Aviv in Israel is about 1600 kilometers or a thousand miles. That's easily reached by a medium-range missile, and it's less than two hours flight for a bomber at subsonic speeds. And of note, Iran also has 34 islands in the Persian Gulf, slightly less than half of which are inhabited. And the most notable of these islands is Karg Island, which is in the northeast corner of the Persian Gulf, quite a distance from the Strait of Hormuz, like about 600 kilometers, and it's home to less than 10,000 people. But Karg Island is strategically critical to Iran's economy because 90% of Iran's petroleum exports go through Karg Island's three terminals. It stores 30 million barrels of oil, which equates to almost 5 billion liters or 1.3 billion US gallons, and it can load 10 supertankers at once. Iran's climate is generally desert-like. Most of the topography consists of mountain ranges. The largest of these is the Zagros Range, which covers the western half of Iran, including all the way down to the Persian Gulf. Thus, Iran has many mountains and very few flat areas. The highest mountain is over 18,000 feet or 5,600 meters tall. Its name is Mount Damavand, located a mere 66 kilometers from its capital, Tehran, and this is just south of the Caspian Sea. Iran is a relatively large country, ranking 17th globally by area, and funnily enough, it also ranks 17th largest by population at just over 90 million people. Let's turn to culture. A little over half of all Iranians are of the Persian culture. The rest of the country is made up of a range of subcultures such as Azerbaijani, Kurdish, and Arabic. But the key thing to remember here is that 90% of Iranians are Shia Muslims, which is distinct from Sunni Muslims, which are the majority of the Arab nations. As we noted earlier, their language in Iran is Persian, not Arabic. Thus you can generalize and say Iranians are Persian-speaking Shia Muslims. They have great pride in their Persian history, and it's important to remember that when we talk about alliances in the next few podcasts. Now we'll consider modern-day Iran and how it's politically structured. Let's go back in history a bit here and talk about 1906 when the first democratic Iranian constitution was developed. Here is Professor Ansari of University of St. Andrews in Scotland talking about it.

SPEAKER_10 40:48

I think 1979 will end up being, as we go through the history and development, will end up being a sort of a development on the pathway. But the pathway was set by 1906. It's 1906 that establishes the constitutional framework of the modern state in Iran. It's 1906 that sets up a parliament. No other subsequent uh revolution has done away with the parliament. It's 1906 and its aftermath that sets up the basic structures of the state.

SPEAKER_07 41:17

And on the basis of their earlier constitution, Iranians are proudly democratic, or at least are holding on to the vision of democracy. That constitution was changed by the Islamic Revolution, resulting in a new constitution, but one that retained elements of democracy. Here's Ervond Abraham, professor at the city of New York University, to talk about their government structure.

SPEAKER_12 41:43

The Constitution was actually a secular republic modeled on de Gaulle's fifth republic in France. That was the original draft of the Constitution with a strong president. But what the clerics did, especially the disciples of Homeni, is they transposed on that de Gaulleist Republican constitution a clerical structure where the clerics had supervisory role over elected politicians. So you have a republic where you have elections for parliament, you have elections for president, you even have elections for an assembly to elect the supreme leader, a religious leader. But on top of everything is the supreme leader who is a cleric, and he can overrule the other institutions. He can also appoint people in charge of the judiciary, people in charge of the radio television, the media, and therefore you get basically a dual structure where you have a republic, but on top of that you have a clerical state. And of course, this is a unique system. It's never existed in history. And people thought it wouldn't function, but it has functioned over 30 years. The Constitution has, as I said, it has room for elections. So especially for parliamentary elections, elections are very lively, especially if there is some differences between candidates. So whenever you have an election where there's a clearly a conservative candidate versus a somewhat more liberal or sometimes a moderate candidate, it energizes the public. So you can get as much as 80% of the electorate participating. So in that way it's a meaningful election. But of course, there are controls. The Guardian Council can veto who can run. So if they actually veto all liberals, all moderates, then it becomes a phony election. Participation can drop down to 40-50%. So, in order to keep the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, they often have to let a liberal or a moderate also run. And that always has a danger for them because then that energizes the public, it gets more people in to vote, but it also often brings in a law liberal or a moderate into power, and that then constantly creates a conflict with the clerical establishment.

SPEAKER_07 44:31

So to summarize, Iran is a unitary Islamic republic with one legislative house, but the real power rests with the head cleric, who's called the Rabbah, and a few weeks ago a new leader was appointed, Mojtaba Khamenei, who is the son of the recently killed Ali Khomeini, and he was the successor to Ayatollah Khomeini. Now, Mojtaba, along with his Islamic council, can overrule anything that the government does. In that government, there is an elected president, and Iranians tend to be very proud of the fact that they have some form of democracy. The president selects the Council of Ministers for approval by the legislature. The President appoints a portion of the members of the committee to determine the expediency of the Islamic order. And the President serves as Chairman of the Supreme Council for National Security, which oversees the country's defense. The President and his ministers are responsible for the day-to-day administration of the government and the implementation of laws enacted by the legislature. The President doesn't have overriding power, but the President can therefore influence general trends in state behavior. And here's Professor Kasagrand with an example of that.

SPEAKER_05 45:50

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 majlist that got created in 1906 is still there. And they're holding relatively free and fair elections. The reason I'm not saying they're fully free is the following. They purged a bunch of potential people. But they let some people feel including this colour. He could get into the presidency a position that doesn't have a lot of public because the Islamic Republic is a monarchy. It's an absolute monarchy. Monarchy just means one person is in public. That's a lot of means. It doesn't have to be hereditary. Because the president is president has a lot of symbolic problem. And as a result, he can kind of move people and can affect policy because the president's supposed to execute policy. So Khan he gets in there and he tells the morality police to 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 hijab had become the symbol of women's oppression. Whether or not wearing hijab is oppressive doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_07 47:23

So you can see that who the president is matters in Iran. You can have a hardliner or you can have somebody who has some concern for freedoms. And that's why the Iranians hold on to the notion of democracy and potentially want more of it. On the military side, after the 1979 revolution, although the Ayatollah Khomeini was supported by the military, he didn't trust them to remain loyal, nor did he trust his fellow clerics to competently run the country. After all, they had all turned on the deposed Shah. So he established the Revolutionary Guard as a protection mechanism. Here we have Babek Yektafar of the Center of International Enterprise discussing the Revolutionary Guard.

SPEAKER_06 48:16

He did not want any kind of military apparatus or security apparatus getting involved in politics. Having said that, though, he was also aware that it was very difficult for him to trust the clerics that he knew to entrust them the survival of the regime and the management of the country into their hands. So when this Guardians of Revolution, or IRGC we call them, or Pastaroni Farsi, when they were formed, essentially they were formed to protect Khomeini himself. They were afraid that the Shas agent would go after him and assassinate him. But beyond that, it became this entity as a parallel entity, military, to check the power of the regular army, which was still known as the Imperial Army at the time. But then beyond that, of course, what would I think really changed the nature of this unit was the Iran-Iraq war. After the revolution, the high brass of the military were basically executed by the revolutionaries for a number of different reasons. And essentially you had this vacuum at the upper echelon of the army. And in essence, some of these people, the IRGC members who did go to the war front, they had to build armies on their own. And again, we're talking about a country that was at the time in confrontation with the United States. It was scaring the pants out of a lot of countries, not just out in Europe, but the neighboring countries, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan and so on. There were a lot of nations that were opposing Iran. And once that war uh took place, uh, you're talking about a nation that had massive population, but not a proper army and particularly not proper equipment compared to what Saddam Hussein at the time had. The Revolutionary Guards, the RGC, actually changed its identity in some shape or form from being this unit that's protecting Iran from uh external invasion into an internal force uh to beat down the opposition. I mean, we're talking about what's taking place right now. I think in 1980, 81, we're talking about thousands of opposition members uh who were basically assassinated, executed, killed in so many uh different ways. And again, the regime uh throughout the its history of 30 years has shown on a number of occasions that it's not afraid to bloody uh its hands. But right at the end of the war, another thing that happened was that the country needed to be rebuilt. And at the time, after eight years of war, this particular entity, IRGC, was the only entity that had the means, the equipment, and so on that could get involved into rebuilding and recon and construction work, the roads and schools and buildings and things of that nature. And the financial might that came out of that really propelled IRGC into self-governing. That really allowed them to feel that they should have a say in the future of the country, more importantly, to compete with a lot of bazaar merchants and other uh pragmatic players within the regime. It was interesting uh that one of the high-level members uh of the IRGC recently had an interview where he said that that group, that entity, IRGC, is probably the only entity in Iran that has shown competence in management. And he was saying that to justify why members of IRGC should be involved in politics and they should be running the country. Uh, because at the time, of course, everybody was saying that this is not what Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Republic, had in mind, and he was basically justifying by saying that. So, what we see right now taking place, this kind of control that IRGC has, it's a sense of entitlement that they have. They feel that they've shown their competence in management, that they they have had many people die within their ranks defending the country from Iraq and other Western threats, uh, as they usually put it, and also from internal threats. And the reason that we do have an Islamic Republic standing up right now, it's solely because of their existence and of what they did. Those who are in control right now are probably in the same alignment with the Supreme Leader and some very hard line, hardcore clerics, and some other members, let's say, within the parliament and such. But even within at that level, and particularly uh file and rank of IRGC, and also the regular military, you have people who are not happy with this particular situation, who are not happy with the fact that those few high-level members of IRGC have such influence and such control. I think the students know that. I think originally, right after the election, when millions, literally millions of people poured out for the first time in the history, uh 30-year history of the regime, they did feel that they had allies within the regime. Uh again, we mentioned some of these names, uh, the former president Khatami, uh, Hashemir Afsan Jani, and some other uh high-level clerics, but also some members within the uh security apparatus in RGC. I think that opening allowed them to feel comfortable enough to come out. But then after the second or third day, when they actually poured out, particularly with the so-called Basij militia, these are the uh volunteer militia of about a million uh in number, once they came out, then uh again, uh a lot of them just decided that maybe it's not worth going at. It's also um important to point out when we talk about sanctions uh against uh because they're talking about targeted sanctions uh against IRGC. Uh and you you hear a great deal of debate that that still is going to hurt Iranian people because IRGC has is such a huge entity that it employs such a large number of Iranians that regardless, if you're targeting them, it's still going to impact uh Iranian as a whole. We do have to remember that their claim is to some extent true. I mean, the fact that these people actually went out there in defense of Iran. And it's a shame that the name of Basij, as well as the IRGC, has been sinking to such a low and they're reacting in such a way because the original Basij and original IRGC were the people who not only defended Iran, but were heavily involved as volunteers in some cases in rebuilding the country after a devastating eight-year war that they had with uh with Iraq, but now they've become this uh kind of agent uh oppression. That's uh regrettable.

SPEAKER_07 54:38

That was a good rundown. And given how integrated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is across governments and the economics in Iran, we can now understand a bit better why they are targeted by US and Israeli forces. And since we've mentioned economics, let's now look at how the Iranian economy is going. Here's Mahdi Gotzi of the Virchhof University in Vienna giving us a summary on how the Iranian economy is going. He uses the term joint comprehensive plan of action. And this is the deal that was struck between Obama, Europe, and Iran to ease sanctions in exchange for curtailing the Iranian nuclear program. By the way, that's the same agreement that Trump tore up in his first term.

SPEAKER_02 55:25

When uh President Donald Trump in his first term in office uh withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and imposed crippling secondary sanctions on the Iranian economy, since then uh inflation is hovering around 40%. And it was a very high inflation because prior to that it was less than 20%. And since six years ago, unfortunately, because of the austerity measures that were introduced by President Raissi, the real income of employees, public employees, minimum wages in Iran have decreased by about 50%. And this is what Iranians are suffering from. And this means a huge amount of pressure on their household income, on their costs, so they cannot spend as much as before. There is not enough food on the shelves of shops, and because of supply shortages, so there is a huge supply of bottlenecks, and uh prices are increasing and increasing. The economy is growing, it's still growing, and so much of this growth is due to increased oil exports that was being facilitated at the time of the Biden administration, who turned blind eye on Iran's exports of oil to China, to Malaysia, to India. So there was some growth, but the growth was not in other sectors of the economy. About 70-80% of Iran's gross domestic product is going to Iran's public budget. Iran is dependent on lots of intermediate and primary commodities, foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals that are being imported from outside. And if Iranian government continues to devalue its own currency, it means that prices of these imported goods would again continue to rise. Lack of investment in the past, let's say, decade or even uh since 2011, since 2012, when the sanctions intensify, the business environment in Iran has never been good. And due to that, investment has been declining. So infrastructure is becoming rusty, and the Iranian government does not manage to supply enough utility, energy, electricity, even water in certain periods. So, given all of this, lack of private investment, lack of public investment, the situation and the living standards are not being improved. Because of sanctions, because of mismanagement of the government, because we're dealing here with an autocracy that tries to conceal information that is not transparent. We don't know exactly how much of it is going to different commodities and products. So some parts of it, some parts of Iranian export is being transferred to imports of commodities like foodstuffs, like livestock feed, like medicine, pharmaceuticals. These commodities are not targeted by sanctions. So that's how the Iranian government can still import these goods. There are some estimates that the cost of building the nuclear facilities in Iran in the past decades was reaching more than a trillion dollars. But there's no tacit information, there's no transparent information regarding these issues. But what we know, there has been always a covered support of the Iranian regime for proxies, for its nuclear program, for its missile activity. We believe that a huge amount of Iranian export revenues are going to these costs. A regime that is ruled by ideology, while Islam is in its capital, it does not pursue expertise to provide enough knowledge, technology for its own domestic production. There is no internal source of growth and development in Iran. On the other hand, technology that is developed in different parts of the world is heavily needed in Iran. And because of sanctions, there is no access to such technology. So both domestic and foreign relationship of Iranian government have led to the situation in which Iran cannot develop. Economic conditions are the ones that could push the society to the streets again, and they could uh ask for change. But I think the Iranian society needs a coalition of leaders to guide them and mobilize them. And those leaders are within and outside Iran, they just need to come to alliance.

SPEAKER_07 59:57

Okay, so Mighty gave us quite a rundown there. Basically, Iran's major source of revenue comes from its petroleum products, oil and gas. And as the world's seventh largest oil producer, Iran should therefore be really wealthy. But it isn't. Seventy-five percent of the Iranian economy goes to the public sector to combat inflation and to provide for staples due to those sanctions. It should be noted that Iran spends about 2.1% of its GDP on national defense. It also finances Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis, Iraqi militia, and Hamas. And there's also the Bazij, which is a paramilitary force which is now subservient to the Revolutionary Guard. And it has a very minor budget of only about$100 million, but it's a bit murky as to where it's getting its money from. The average annual budget reserved for the funding of Iran's proxies is about$1.6 billion US dollars. And the amount spent on nuclear and missile production and research is likely to be a substantial burden on Iran's already stretched budget. Now Mahdi also made the astute observation that economics alone are unlikely to lead to regime change. I thought that was really good. He called for new leadership to stand up and leverage public discontent with the economy and the regime's hard line on religion. I think he's spot on. What a great point he made. But ask yourself this where are those leaders? I mean, if you're gonna stand up and say, let's do regime change, now is the time. The Shah's son, who some people are saying should be leading that regime change, is hiding in Europe, saying he's ready to help transition the regime, but he isn't going to Iran to lead the revolution, is he? We'll talk more about the leadership vacuum and those sanctions Mahdi mentioned in the next episode. Well, we've done our run on the background to Iran. Let's do a little summary. Iran has a proud history. Its oil resource was a source of confrontation with imperial powers, leading to the re-establishment of the Shah dictatorship in the 1950s. The Shah's return to power, his secularism and brutality, and his allegiance to the West were all sources of tension that brought about to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Since then, Iran turned anti-West, particularly anti-Israel and anti-US. It now sponsors state terrorism, anti-US and Israeli behavior, and it started its journey towards nuclear power, all of which we'll cover in the next episode. The result of all these actions was a series of sanctions on Iran decimating its economy. Along with a desire for secularism and democracy, many Iranians took to protesting against the regime, the economic hardships and the regime's policies. To date, none of these uprisings achieved regime change. Yet, we have the US and Israel attacking Iran with thousands of weapons and sometimes claiming that the bombardment's end state is regime change. Now, I'm a military planner by training, and I can tell you that not having a clear end state is very poor planning. I'm a bit dumbfounded as to what I'm seeing in the media, because surely the American military would have said to the Secretary and the bureaucrats in Trump's administration that you shouldn't be doing an attack without a clear end state. I'm guessing they thought it was regime change, and maybe now the tune is changing because the bombardment isn't working. We haven't seen a leader stand up, even though they've tried to encourage people to stand up and fight the regime. Anyway, we will cover more of that debate and that topic in a future episode. If you follow the trail of Iran's history, there's actually a lot of solid reasoning to be had there. Basically, the West had Iran on its side and lost it through greed and mismanagement. And the question is, now that Iran is known for state terrorism, seeking to build nuclear weapons and suppressing its people, what should the world or the West do about it? The answers and the end state to that war that we have right now with Iran are murky at best. I hope you enjoyed this look at the history of Iran. If you enjoyed the podcast, please send it to a friend. And as a reminder, Rescuing Reason comes out monthly, somewhere around the first of every month. Thanks for listening.