Part One: The First Shah of Iran

Robert sits down with Dr. Kaveh Hoda to discuss the first Shah of Iran.

(2 Part Series)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone media, what's illegal, my US invasions of several
countries actually that have been happening recently, and also my
entire life.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast
about bad people, the worst in all of history, several
of whom are currently in the Trump administration, where they
have recently orchestrated what is already ramping up to be
a bloody war with Iran. We're covering what's happening in
an ongoing basis on our daily news podcast. It could

(00:39):
happen here, but you know that's not what we do
overt Behind the Bastards. You know, we're not breaking news here.
Our specialty is like pieces of shit, and that makes us,
i think, well suited to talk about why is stuff
like why is the Western world's relationship with Iran? What

(01:01):
it is?

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
How did all of this shit start? Like what was
going on that kind of led to the present situation?
And if you want to tell that story, you have
to start with the seventeen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds
in the period of like particularly what's called the Great Game,
which is, you know, kind of this thing that happens

(01:22):
at the height of British and Russian imperialism, and you
have to talk about the Shaw, the very first Shah
of Iran, because it's the Shaws of Iran that lead
us to the current regime in Iran, and that lead
us to a lot of things about the current conflict
and like why it's taken on the dimensions that it's
taken on. So in order to talk about all of this,

(01:44):
we're bringing on my buddy and doctor Kavejoda also podcaster,
much more impressive than doctor. I should have led with
podcaster Kava I'm sorry, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
And musician, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
And musician many things. You're a multi till apology.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
The key is to be bad at all of them.
That's the key to doing this right. If you want
to do more, that's a polycraft, not mess.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
But yeah, you want to you want to know what
you are good at?

Speaker 4 (02:11):
Though?

Speaker 5 (02:12):
What what am I good at?

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Being my friend it's.

Speaker 5 (02:15):
My best job.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Also being a doctor and a podcast.

Speaker 4 (02:21):
I'm good at one of those three things.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, I'm hoping it's doctor.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
That's that's the one that's especially sort of the one
good at. The rest is you're going to find out
listener and viewer not as much, but you know, give
it my darnedest.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, well, I mean this is obviously like what's going
on right now the United States is doing. I mean,
we we've just killed a school full of little girls,
like a lot of really ugly stuff. But if you
want to like the story of like why did the
US start fucking around with Iran? Like why why is
the current Iranian regime the way it is, that all

(02:56):
starts well before the US gets involved, right, that that
starts with you know, like most of our imperial ambitions,
we cribbed off the notes of the Brits and the
Russians from like a century or so ago, and it's
those imperial powers who made sure that Iran wound up
with a shah in the first place, which is why
you know, we have a revolution, because the Shaws rule
so badly that they inspire revolution, which brings us the Ayahtolas.

(03:20):
And all of these are our stories in and of themselves.
But this week we're going to be talking about like
the first Shah of Iran, of the Palavi dynasty, right,
Like that's where we're obviously Iran had previous shaws, but
we're talking about like the dad of the guy who
got exiled when the current government of Iran took over,

(03:41):
And how much do you know about the first about
Reza Khan, like the first of that line of shaws.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
That's so first of all, the thank you for having
me back on first of all.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Second, oh shit, I talked right over that.

Speaker 5 (03:53):
Yeah, I'm so happy.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
No, I'm so happy that you're covering this topic because
you're exactly right. There is a long history of involvement
of Western powers, and as an American, the American powers,
you know, really explicitly in nineteen fifty three, as we're
gonna I'm sure talk about that really set off a
chain of events that led us to where we are now.

(04:17):
And you know, you could argue did a lot of
damage and destabilize the region. So what bothers me the
most is that it's a story that most people in
the United States.

Speaker 5 (04:28):
Do not know.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
They don't know the real reason why people in Iran
may have taken over that embassy back in seventy nine.
You don't really know some of the anger, the anti
American feeling that happened at that time, because before that
there was great relations you know, for a while between
the two countries. So I think it's a really important story.
I do know more or less the basics of it.

(04:53):
I never was that interested in the Shaws because, like
I'm just the concept of a monarchy just rubs me
the wrong way. In general, it seems like a terrible idea.

Speaker 5 (05:06):
I'm not into it.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
But there are these characters in there, which I'm sure
we're going to talk about, like Moza Deech, who are
really interesting people. And there is a story here that
really explains a lot about what's happening here. The reson
his son Mohammed Reza Khan and now his son who's
now a player, and what's happening currently the news. So

(05:33):
it is, it is, It's something I know a little
bit about. But part part of the thing is like
when you grow up Iranian and your parents came over
after the revolution. A lot of these parents are very
politically savvy, well read, studied, We're politically active, but getting
a lot of information from them was hard about what
happened during the revolution, not just because everyone has only

(05:55):
their side of it, but because Irani's get so upset
about it. It would just be like, did that bastard
did this, and that son of a bitch did this,
and then you're like, you're losing the story here with this,
and you can't really get the story from your family.
So it is nice to I think we're going to
go into more depth about what actually happened now.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
And I get that in part. I think because if
I had to, if I got exiled and had to
explain overseas like a bunch of the different infighting around
leftist movements, or like a bunch of the different right
wing grifters who got us here, I would probably just
wind up cursing, like right after a while, right, and
this son of a bitch and this piece of shit.

Speaker 5 (06:35):
There's a lot of that.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, Yeah, you have to really work to be and
I want to clarify we're not even getting past We're
only gonna up to nineteen forty one in these episodes.
I wanted to do both shows at once, but there's
so much behind how the British and the Russians like
maneuver the situation that leads to this dynasty into being,
and how the oil situation gets started that you have

(06:57):
to really talk to. So we will come back and
we will do the sequel to these episodes, which we'll
talk more about Mozada as well. We're going to talk
about him some of these episodes, but he's like it
becomes the prime Minister, I think at fifty one, so
that's even a little past the era we're talking about.
But this, this is really important because this is what
sets this is what starts like everything into motion that

(07:19):
we're seeing, unfortunately come to very like a very bloody
head right now. Right, So we're going to start these
episodes talking about a period of time. This is going
to be kind of over to the to the US.
This is like happening in like the Civil War reconstruction era, right,

(07:42):
and in Europe that's also a time of great change
and of war. You know, not only is Europe industrializing
rapidly in the eighteen seventies, Germans beat France in eighteen
seventy in the Franco Prussian War, and the British Empire,
you know, is kind of watching this. They're seeing Germany
become a major world power because Germany becomes a country

(08:02):
in eighteen seventy one as the result of that war,
and very suddenly France isn't the primary land power in
Western Europe. Anymore. Germany is and so Britain, which had
primarily been worried about France previously, has two growing and
major concerns in this period after eighteen seventy. One is
that you've got this Kaiser and he seems really interested

(08:25):
in expanding Germany's military capacity, right, And the Brits are
kind of fine with the fact that Germany's got the
most powerful army in Europe. You're like, Uprussians can have
your big army, right that that's fine as long as
they stay on the continent. But once you start building boats,
that's when the Brits are not happy with you. Right, Yeah,

(08:46):
no one else is allowed to have a navy. That's
really the British Empire's primary like foreign policy during this period,
vise of the Europe is like other people want boats?
Wait a second, like, hold the fuck up?

Speaker 5 (09:00):
Can I can?

Speaker 4 (09:00):
I also make a quick note, I love the way
when you say the Germans. I don't know if you've
been meant to do this. You slipped into cid Germans.

Speaker 5 (09:08):
Germans. It's very good.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
And there's a beautiful, beautiful case of a small town
German Man who went to New York City recently and
had some salsa verde on a taco and is suing
because like the spice like destroyed his body and like said,
like for days made him ill. It was like New
York City Salsa Verde. I was just thinking, motherfucker, I

(09:30):
canned some Barbera CoA last week that could wipe out
all of Germany. If that's if that's really the level
of spice tolerance over there. I know this guy's just
a hay seed grifter from a small town. Sorry, my
German friends, I know you can handle spices.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
No, no, listen. We had a whole series of commercials
in the eighties, remember where they're like pace made in
New York.

Speaker 5 (09:50):
City, New York City, got a road New.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
York City salsa.

Speaker 5 (09:53):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
It was like a whole fairy offensive to me. Yeah,
I don't think it would be allowed to have salsa.

Speaker 5 (09:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
So anyway, Yeah, so the Brits are looking at the
at the Germans start to expand their navy and they're like,
well fuck, Like if Britannia doesn't rule the waves, like
what do we really have right? We can't the home
islands are in danger if we can't keep if we
can't keep control of the sea. So that's one of
Great Britain's major concerns in this period. The other thing

(10:21):
that's really freaking them out is India, right, protecting India.
That is the jewel in the British Empire's crown. It's
their most valuable possession, right and the Germans are nowhere
near India, thank god. But over the course of the
nineteenth century, Imperial Russia starts expanding troublingly close to India.
Right like they start, there's a couple of different fits

(10:42):
and starts where the Russians will you know, expand their
territory and they keep getting closer to the British raj
I want to quote from the article a very British
Coup in the World Policy Journal by Sharen Brisik, quote,
the British watch nervously is the distance between the Russian
Empire and India, too, thousand miles at the beginning of
the nineteenth century, shrank so much that by centuries end,

(11:04):
as the Russian Empire expanded eastward at the amazing average
of fifty five square miles per day, as little as
twenty miles separated the two empires in Central Asia's premieres
squeeze between these expanding powers was Persia, described by George
Nathan Curzon, one time Viceroy of India and subsequent Foreign Secretary,
as one of the pieces on a chessboard upon which

(11:25):
is being played out a game for the domination of
the world.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
We're real proud of being upon, real proud of that one.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Great thanks for calling us pieces on a chessboard.

Speaker 5 (11:36):
Fantastic.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Purson Is We're talking about him a lot in these episodes.
I should do an episode on just him. He's one
of these, like when we talk about British imperialists, he
is like one of the imperialists of imperialists in the
British Empire's history. And this is why Curzon's comment is
why participants came to call this struggle in what's often

(11:59):
I referred to as like the Near East right between
Russia and Great Britain, as the Great Game.

Speaker 5 (12:05):
Right.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
This is a diplomatic, propagandistic, and sometimes military struggle between
the British and Russian empires over Central Asia. One part
of the Great Game is that the Great Britain invades
and occupies Afghanistan for a while. Doesn't work well, right,
But that's part of why that happens, right, is it's
part of the stupid game they're playing with the Russians,
and it's all in the name of keeping India safe.

Speaker 5 (12:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
They don't want Russia to get Afghanistan and they don't
want Russia to get.

Speaker 5 (12:31):
Persia, right. Perfect.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah. The actual name the Great Game, I think comes
in eighteen forty, is the invention of a British spy
named Arthur Connolly who was corresponding with a colleague in Kandahar, Afghanistan,
and wrote, you've a great game, a noble game before you.
Now obviously again everyone dies, like a lot of the
British Expeditionary Force dies, So I don't know how great

(12:55):
a game they thought that was. By the end there,
this is the thing.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
This is the thing that bothers me. I don't know
much about this time period, so this is really interesting
to hear. I do know a little bit more about
the coup, as we mentioned that you'll get to at
some point in the future. In One nauseating fact about
that is the callous nature in which these like British
and American spies and propagandists, how they talk about it afterwards,

(13:23):
like how much fun it was to overlay great game.

Speaker 5 (13:26):
It was a game.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
It's so much fun, and they were good at it
and we won. It's just the it drives me a baddie.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, then the millions of people's lives, and I take
some satisfaction that. Connolly in eighteen forty writes his colleague,
you have a great game, a noble game before you
in eighteen forty two, like the shattered remnants of the
army that had marched into the first angle Tic Couple
during the First Anglo Afghan War, like flee because you know,
they get massacred, like very badly. So at least a

(13:55):
lot of times these guys got shot, but not nearly
an often enough cava, that is to be, not nearly
often enough.

Speaker 5 (14:01):
It's a recurring theme.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
A lot of people get shot this story, but not
the right ones. Generally, usually some teenagers who got drafted
from farms.

Speaker 5 (14:10):
So always the kids.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, Now, before that term was invented, the great Game,
the Russians did have one of their own. They called
it the Tournament of Shadows, which is objectively cooler, Like
that is a cooler name.

Speaker 4 (14:23):
That sounds like a fantasy novel that I would probably read.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, a tournament of shadows. Right, it's a great name
for like a prestige TV show, right, that will really
disappoint you in maybe like the seventh season, and it's
gonna get weird. Yeah. So for the British again, the
whole goal of this stupid game is to protect their
territory in India. And the whole name of the game
for the Russians was for the Tzar, each subsequent zar
to prove himself a good ruler. And the main thing

(14:48):
you had to do as Tzar to be a good
ruler is expand the borders of the empire. That's why
people forget this because of how weak Russia seems entering
World War One and is. But through the eighteen hundreds,
again fifty five miles a day, the Russian Empire expands
over the course of like years. It's crazy how fast
this I mean. And you look at the size of

(15:09):
the Russian Empire at its maximum extent, it's not that weird.
So the Brits have a hard line of how close
they want anyone, any European power to get to the
Raj and the Russians feel like we have to expand constantly,
and it ultimately Persia winds up standing in between both empires.
So in Persia in seventeen eighty five, you're gonna help

(15:30):
me with the pronunciation here. I think it's the the
Quahar dynasty or Qajar dynasty.

Speaker 4 (15:35):
Qaj j Ar.

Speaker 5 (15:36):
I think it's Kajar Kajar.

Speaker 4 (15:38):
I think it's an actual j I'm going to preface
this by apologizing to how many of our actual Iranian
listeners you have that my Parsi is only nominally better
than Roberts. I mean, it's better, but not as good
as yours. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was born
in Indiana. You're lucky I speak English much less Farcia.

(16:00):
So just so sorry.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, the Qujar dynasty took power seventeen eighty five, and
they are the descendants of Turkomen from Central Asia and
aren't seen as authentically Persian by a lot of people, right, Like,
authentically they're not seen is belonging in what's called Persia,
right because there's a lot of different ethnic groups there. Now,
because the first Kajar king doesn't have like a really

(16:23):
solid hold on power, he decides he has to put
on a show in order to convince everyone he belongs
in the job, right. You know, a lot of people
don't think I should be in Tehran at all. I
have to really like make everyone believe i'm legitimately like
God wants me here, right. And so this first Kujar
king is Fathali Shah and he's known his nickname is

(16:45):
the super procreant because he has a lot of kids.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
But by the way, and just just so it's if
it's not obvious, the word shaw translates to like emperor, ruler, king, right,
just in case people weren't aware of that. Somebody asked
me that question like a few years ago, and I
was like, that's what I mean.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
So just a case.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
And it often in these names it will come as
like a last name, but that is his title, right,
He's fath Aly Shah, is faf Al is the Shah. Right,
Reza Khan will become Resis Shah like when he becomes
the Shah.

Speaker 5 (17:19):
And he gave the name Paula Vi.

Speaker 4 (17:20):
They because it was like the I think it was
like the ancient Lang written word Persian.

Speaker 5 (17:25):
Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, things like that.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah, and we'll talk about that because that's that's important
to this. There's a lot of ethnic groups in Persia
at the time, and he's only really the sha is
only going to be really interested in one right, and
that's kind of a big part of like what occurs
in his reign. But so the first Kajar king is
known as the super procreant because he's he's fucking constantly.
And that's also why the throne of the Shahs of

(17:48):
Iran gets its name, because it's called the peacock Throne.
Now for an explanation of why it's called the peacock Throne,
I'm going to quote from a Boss Milani, the author
of a book called the Sha Here's how they describe it.
That superb and barbarous devon of enamel and precious stones,
with its airbesque designs wrought of twenty six thousand gyms
brought back from India as spoils of war. It uses

(18:10):
bright red rubies, deep blue sapphires, and verdant greened emeralds,
and is flanked by two golden snakes, each peering from
one side. In the beginning, the peacock Throne was called
the sun Throne. Its name was changed because the Shah,
who had close to one thousand wives of quote diverse
origin had a favorite concubine. This concubine was named Taboo,

(18:31):
and that name literally means peacock in Persian. And so
this throne the sun throne. They fuck on it the
night they get married, and he starts calling it the
peacock throne because he has sex with this lady whose
name is peacock on it. That's why it's the peacock throne. Hey, guys,
I just want to clarify. This is one explanation I

(18:51):
found in one book for why it's called the peacock throne.
And this represents like a popular story more than it
does kind of the literal truth, because you know, there's
peacocks carved into the throne. There's some I think I've
heard some other stories as to like why it's called that, right,
and Iran is called the peacock Kingdom or Perge is
called the pincock Kingdom at around this time too. This
should be viewed as kind of a story that a

(19:13):
lot of people told as to why the throne got
its name, as opposed to like the absolute reason. Pretty
cool name for a story for a throne's name.

Speaker 5 (19:23):
Actually, that is pretty.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
That is real game of Thrones. E that is very game.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
I like it better than the Iron Throne. It's a
nicer story than a bunch of swords getting a meltzed
together a fun night.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
Yeah, the Peacock Throne sounds better. The reality of these
thousand women actually being into this guy pretty low, probably
not great, so it makes it a little bit less
charming for me.

Speaker 5 (19:45):
But yeah, yeah, it's a great name.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
When you think about Yeah, the relationship dynamics, it's less fun,
but yeah, it's probably more comfortable than the Iron Throne.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
Way better than the Iron Throne.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
You wouldn't want to have sex on the Iron Throne,
like you'd get like tetanus pretty badly, I think. I
don't think wester Ros has vaccines for that.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
And it's really cold, I think to be I think
if you were naked, I think it would be really cold.
I mean, there are things to hold on to, which
is nice.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
There's a lot of a lot of grips. That's a
good side.

Speaker 5 (20:14):
There's a lot of bricks.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Did either of you watch the Night of a Seven
Kingdoms Game of Thrones show.

Speaker 5 (20:20):
I did.

Speaker 4 (20:21):
It's my first time venturing back into the world of
west ROAs since the original series.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Do I need to watch it? What's the vibe?

Speaker 4 (20:28):
It's fun, it's good. I mean, it's a much lighter
I think they kind of read the room and they're like,
people don't want so much rape and incest and all that,
and they kind of like they tried to mix it
up a little bit, a little bit less castration in
this one, which is a big plus for me.

Speaker 5 (20:46):
I was trying.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
We could talk about this for hours. We were talking
about the.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Sorry sorry, sorry, my friend, my friends are here, We're
going to talk about game of Throws.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
I could totally do that for like an hour, because
sat speaking, I have a lot of thoughts about it.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
But yeah, oh yeah, solidly an hour. So we've got
this new king. He's incredibly horny, famously horny, so horny
that the throne is named for his horniness, which is
again the coolest anyone will be in these episodes.

Speaker 4 (21:17):
Sorry, guys.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
From there, it's all downhill from the peacock throne getting named.
One of fath Ali Shah's most consequent little decisions was
that he signs a treaty in eighteen twenty eight that
gives a big chunk of Persia away to the Russian
Czar in exchange for protection. Persia is not a strong country.
It doesn't really have a functional military. Like the military
is kind of capable of keeping like the people from

(21:43):
rebelling against the Shah, but it can't defend the country
from other countries, right, And a lot of critics complain
that this eighteen twenty eight treaty makes Persia a virtual
satrap of the Tzar. Right, basically, Persia's just like a
satellite state of the Russian Empire now, and so subsequent
rulers in the Shaw's line would veer towards the British

(22:05):
whenever they get worried that like the Russians are getting
too much power, and part because they're getting criticized by
the people, Like the people are pissed that, like you're
giving everything away to the Russians. So they'd be like, well,
maybe i'll make friends with the British and then you know,
the Russians will have to kind of fight for my
affection with the British and maybe we can gain a
little more power that way.

Speaker 5 (22:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Really, with the Shah and their success, they just are
getting bribes from both these sides, right, and they're getting
a shitload of bribes from the British, who are gained
more and more power over the Persian Court over the
course of the eighteen hundreds, basically by being like, hey,
those Russians, I don't think they're going to stop at
the stuff they got in that treaty. But you know,
we've got British guns, and we've got we can send

(22:44):
some suppoies over from the colonies, and you know, we
can really keep an eye on your back fellow. You
know if you just give us this little bit of
some mineral rights here and there, that just build a
factory here and then you know, expose these these raw materials.
You never regret your dealings with the British Empire. That's
kind of what's going on over like the seventy year period.

Speaker 5 (23:06):
You like G, we like G.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
There's no harms that could come out of this relationship.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Ever, two groups of people who like tea could never
hob one another.

Speaker 5 (23:16):
You will say.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
Actually, fun fact, Iran is known famously for its tea consumption,
like an insane amount of tea consumption. But we were
the old school coffee like all we used to be
all about coffee. I blame the British for becoming a
tea country, which is in my mind something I'm not
proud of. I want to go back to being a
coffee country. I don't want to be a tea country.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
He must return.

Speaker 5 (23:39):
God, it really bothers me, I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
No, because because Syria, the Syrians are really like kicking
y'all's asses in the coffee department.

Speaker 5 (23:46):
Right, Oh, no, we lost our coffee.

Speaker 4 (23:48):
Must return, I know. Well, they have hipster coffee shops
now in Iran. You can go to Iran. They'll do
like the the hipster latte sort of art and stuff.

Speaker 5 (23:56):
They have that.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
But I mean, we used to it used to be
like our thing, one of our things.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Right, yeah. So the situation going on between these British
agents and these Russian agents all competing with these various
shaws is complicated by the fact that this isn't just
a contest for influence between England and Russia. Within the
British Empire, there are two sets of competing envoys that
are in Persia and are fighting with each other as

(24:21):
well as with the Russians. One set of British envoys
are answering to the Foreign Office back in London, and
another set are sent by the government of the British
Raujian Calcutta and these guys, so they're like representing British
India in Persia, and they have this huge office on
the Gulf coast in a place called Boucher. And here's

(24:42):
Sharen Brysak describing, like the ministry from Calcutta. The Government
of India preferred a highly decentralized Persian regime that means weak.
So from the outset, successive residents, including Major supercy Cox
and Lieutenant Colonel A. T. Wilson, cultivated ties with nearby Shakedoms. Kurzon,
an eventual Viceroy of India, visiting in eighteen eighty nine,

(25:02):
spotted the Union jack fluttering from the summit of the
residency flag staff and wrote that it was no vain
symbol of British ascendancy. The British resident is to this
hour the umpire to whom all parties appeal, having at
his command an effective naval force imposed it will he
may be entitled the uncrowned King of the Persian Gulf.
So basically Kurzon realizes that like, because we've like we're

(25:26):
running the show by eighteen eighty nine in Persia outside
of the areas the Russians have like literally taken over
by treaty. We are governing the country in all but name,
because we have all of the weapons here, right, That's
what he's bragging about.

Speaker 5 (25:39):
Yeah, so you do.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
That to show that really well. And it's weird, like
you you like get into that British character. It's not
just the voice, it's the you. You can get that
entitlement like.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
You're channeling, you channel it.

Speaker 5 (25:55):
It's yeah, brilliant.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
So the Shah benefits from having a close relationship with
Great Britain because British naval power is effectively his as
long as he does whatever they asked, right. As one
such envoy wrote of the Shaw quote, he and his
Prime Minister were worried by the Russian threat to Persian independence.
They believed or hoped that by giving the British a
large economic stake in the country, they would become committed

(26:19):
to defending that independence. Basically, if we make it, if
Great Britain feels like we're an important part of their
security and economic apparatus, they won't let us get taken
over by the Russians right now. The Russians, meanwhile, are
stoking unrest within Persia, often by bribing or otherwise encouraging
Shia clergy to preach against foreign involvement, basically to be like, hey,

(26:41):
these Brits are taken over your country, guys, and they're heathens,
you know, Like aren't you should be angrier about this?
Why is the Shaw letting them get away with that?

Speaker 5 (26:50):
Right?

Speaker 2 (26:51):
So, the Russians are operating a very effective propaganda. Like
it's propaganda, but it's also accurate. Great Britain is running
things in Persia that is pretty messed up. Now the
Russians also want to run things in Persia. They're not
any like better people here, really, but like this is
how they're choosing to kind of like it's actually kind

(27:11):
of similar to what Iran does in Iraq when the
US invades with Shia clergy and like Baghdad. Interestingly enough,
where they're they're realizing, like this group of people are
particularly unhappy with the foreign power that's occupying the territory.
So I'm going to like basically fund them to build
support for insurrections and like rebel movements within the country.

Speaker 5 (27:31):
Yeah, we learn how to play the Great game.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Learn playing the Great Game. Yeah, yeah right, Unfortunately, Yeah,
it's it's never been that great a game and always
gets a lot more people killed than anything else. So
these like Russian propaganda, like instruments and whatnot within Persia,
these attempts to stroke unrest within the clergy succeed in

(27:55):
getting the Shot to cancel a number of projects, including
a railway project that he'd taken on that was support
by British interests. However, they failed to stop a British
agent from creating the Imperial Bank of Persia. In fact,
the Russians are so jealous of the British Imperial Bank
that they create a bank of their own in Persia,
subsidized by the Tsarist state, where the Imperial Bank was

(28:18):
actually a functional banking institution that you could trust. That
was the upside of it is the British do know
how to run a bank that doesn't like go bust
every ten seconds. The Russians are not as good about
running like a legitimate bank, and the Russian Bank of
Persia its primary purpose is to bribe the Shah's top officials,

(28:38):
like it's not a real bank for people to use,
it's a bank to issue loans to members of the governments.
That they do what the Tzar wants them to do.
So basically, what you've got here is great Britain's holding
kind of the whole country hostage by running the bank
that the people who have money use, and the Tzar
is influencing shit within the country by using the bank

(29:00):
that he's created to bribe government officials. So this is
what we've got going on here.

Speaker 4 (29:07):
This is like where the sort of Archie being courted
by Betty I think and Veronica, where they're two people
are fighting for Iran is like nice. This is like
so far, yeah, not so bad, but I also know
that it just it gets worse and worse, So like
right now, it's almost kind of cute.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
It's gonna get worse than banks. Yeah, it's gonna get
a lot worse than banks. So Russia's fortunes in the
area EBB and flow on a daily basis, and they
depended largely in the attitude of the reigning sha. For example,
in eighteen seventy nine, Naser al Din, who's the show
at the time, visited Czar Alexander the Second in Russia.
Alexander the Second, intent on staging a good show for

(29:47):
his neighbor, ensured that the Shaw was wowed by a
mass presentation of Cossacks. The elite cavalry unit who had Cossacks.
I mean, they're also like an ethnic group, right, but
they primarily known as like a military unit or a
series of military units. They'd started out for a long time,
had been enemies of the Tsar, right like Cossacks had

(30:08):
fought the Tsars for a very there had been a
rebellion not all that long ago, and they had been
converted over time into the Tsar's red right hand. And
we're going to talk a little bit more about that.
But first, my red right hand these sponsors of our podcast,

(30:29):
and we're back, yay. So I want to quote from
an article and seeing in world news about the evolution
of the Cossacks within Russia. During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth centuries, the Cossacks fought for the Russian crown in
regional wars against the Russian people, garnering a reputation as
the Tsar's henchmen. Acting on behalf of the Russian Empire,
the Cossacks carried out pagrams or massacres of the Jews

(30:51):
in nineteenth century Russia. The Cossacks go from these people
who were these like nomadic horse warriors and didn't want
to be governed to the government being like, but what
if we give you money in exchange for murdering anyone
who stands up against the czar? And the Cossacks eventually
are fine with this, right, and they do a lot
of there's a lot of genocide done by the Cossacks

(31:13):
on behalf of the Russian Empire in this period, right,
Like these pegroms are very ugly. There's there's one that
kills something like a million people in the eighteen hundreds,
like seven hundred thousand or something like that. Pretty hideous stuff. Now,
there had been a Cossack rebellion led by a dude
named Pugachev in the late eighteenth century, and in general,
any expert on Russian history would have told you that

(31:34):
a powerful, autonomous cadra of warriors with zero accountability sometimes
rebel against It's not always a good idea for the
government right to have like this group of warriors that
you can't really tell what to do. Yes, it seems
like idea, right, And the Cossacks had always been a
double edged sword, even for the czars. But Naser al Din,

(31:54):
the Shah at the time sees all these Russian Cossacks
and he's like, these guys look cool as hell. I
want some Cossacks. And so he founds his own Persian
Cossack legion. This is kind of in the late eighteen
or the yeah, the late eighteen hundreds. He founds the
Persian Cossack Brigade. I had not known there were Persian Cossacks.
I thought that was just like a because like Cossacks

(32:15):
are like from like Ukraine is where a lot of
like Cossacks origidate from. So the fact that there's a
Persian Cossack brigade is kind of wild.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
We think we will take any concept and then we'll
take it to an extreme. That's sort of what we
do as a people culturally. If you've been to Los Angeles,
you'll see that.

Speaker 5 (32:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
But this Kajar dynasty, what's interesting about is I know
very little about it other than the way they are presented.
The narrative is that they were just an incompetent, ridiculous
group of like people who are only interested in, you know,
pro creating and spent wasting money on things. And Naser
el Din is like the one name I recognize as

(32:56):
like the epitome of that that this is the most wasteful,
terrible Dinoshras saying something for all the other dynasties that
have been around and went on.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
And it's important to note that they are this terrible
because they're all from the entire time this dynasty exists,
they're not. They're always puppets of two different competing powers, right,
Like they're never like from the beginning, any of these
For one thing, anyone who might be a decent ruler
is not going to be allowed by the Russians or
the Brits to do fuck all, right, so they're going

(33:27):
to make sure that guy never gets close to power
in the first place, because they're orchestrating who is in power,
and they're doing that based on their own interest, not
what's good for Persia and.

Speaker 4 (33:36):
Not time and time again, this is the story. This
is how it's laid out from time time thereon.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, And obviously like these individual shaws and their officials
suck too. These are all really corrupt bad people. But
they're corrupt bad people who are being bribed by someone,
and that is completely dominating the course of politics in
Persia during this period of time. And it's not entirely
on the regime, right, like these two foreign powers have

(34:02):
a lot to do with it. So the Czar Alexander
the Second had had the Shaw over and impressed him
with these Cossacks because he wanted something like this to happen.
He wants Persia to have a Cossack brigade because the
point of having Cossacks is that they're supposed to directly
support the ruler, like these are your I've had a rebellion.

(34:23):
I need someone to go in and massacre them. That's
why you have an elite group of horse guards like
the Cossacks. And so the Shaw is buying these Cossacks
thinking like, shit, this will help me anytime there's unrest,
I'll be able to have these guys just murder my enemies.
And Persia does in fact pay handsomely to equip, train,
and maintain a brigade. And this brigade is pretty much,
for a lot of this period, the only effective military

(34:45):
unit Persia has, and it's led by Russian officers. Right,
the Russians are kind of subsidizing this effort, and they're
sending their own military officers who report directly to Russia's
Minister of War So if you're Russia, what you've done
as soon as the sha Ah starts adopt this idea,
starts hiring Cossacks, You've ensured the Shaw's bodyguard unit basically

(35:08):
is in controlled by your guys. That's a big win
if you're Russia in this period, right.

Speaker 4 (35:14):
No, I think this is it's so interesting to learn
about this. I'd heard about the Cossack Brigade and yeah,
a little bit of the connection to the Polavi family.

Speaker 5 (35:23):
But it's a big don't. Yes, I don't.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
I don't entirely understand, Like the constant. Is it like
the Hessian soldiers that were in America that came over
from Germany, Like they're kind of a mercenary force or
is it more of like a yes, but it's a
formal like oh, what are the bad guys in Dune?
The member like the one, they're.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
More like kind of more startokar. Well, the because Cossacks
are there is like kind of an ethnic group like
these are basically these start out as like tribal groups
of where Cossacks come from. Is you know how through
most of human history you have like your settled civilizations
and then these groups of like nomads on horses who

(36:02):
periodically take over everything. Right, Well, Cossacks are one of
those groups of people. They just happen to be around
at the time that the modern world comes into being,
and so they're those guys. But instead of like bows
and arrows, they've got like rifles and eventually machine guns.
And as a general rule in this period of time,
if you're going to brutalize a protest, you're going to

(36:23):
use guys on horseback, because horses are really good at
breaking up mobs. It's very scary to be charged by
a bunch of guys with sabers on horseback. And that's
the real the Russian Cossacks, that's what they do. These
are the guys you send in when these villagers are rebelling,
kill them, or we've decided we're going to ethnically cleanse
this area of this group of people, send in the Cossacks,

(36:45):
right and once the Shah gets his Cossacks, that's what
they're going to be used for, is brutalizing peasants to
scare them away from doing disorder. Right now, they're not
much good for much else. They're supposed to be bodyguards
to In eighteen ninety six, Nasa is a assassinated while
at a shrine, and his Cossack bodyguards failed to protect him.
As a general rule, they're not great at that part

(37:06):
of the job.

Speaker 5 (37:08):
We don't protect, we hurt.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Oh no, all it cuts tot. Was that a hit people?

Speaker 4 (37:14):
We're a more offensive thing, less defense.

Speaker 5 (37:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
But once you've got these guys, you've got this unit
of powerful horse guards that are close to the Shah,
they're going to remain a powerful force in Persian politics,
which by the turn of the century, once the nineteen
hundred start going, are in a chaotic place, to say
the least. Sharen Breysak describes the country during this time
as a playground of Russian and British spies. Tehran is

(37:38):
very much the way Berlin is going to be during
the height of the Cold War. Right, It's this city
where all like spooks from all over the world are
coming and executing plots as part of these different great
power games. And neither Russia or Great Britain trusted the
local state security forces as far as they could throw them,
so they brought in their own troops to protect their

(37:59):
own agents in the country. The Russians brought in their
own Cossack guards right, or used Persian Cossack guards which
were led by Russians right, whereas British consuls in the
country brought sapois in Bengal lancers from India to protect
their guys. At the start of the twentieth century, Russia
and England had reached an accord which Brysac writes was
settled without informing, much less consulting the leaders of Persia.

(38:23):
They split the country up into three spheres of influence.
The British control southeast Persia, Russia runs the north, and
the Southwest is like a neutral zone where they're both
allowed to do like certain things as long as they
don't like cross other certain lines. And again no one
asks anyone in the Persian government about this. They're not consulted.

(38:44):
Their consent does not matter. Russia's chunk of Persia is
most valuable during this period of time. They seem to
get off better like the best of this treaty, right,
because they get the chunk of Persia with the largest cities,
including Tehran. But here's the thing. In nineteen oh one,
when this agreement gets kind of inked, neither power is

(39:04):
really interested in Persia's oil fields. There's not a lot
that's known about them. We'd only really figured out there
were oil deposits in southwest Persia in like eighteen ninety two.
That gets discovered thanks to the work of a French
archaeologist whose findings are brought to This French guy who's
digging for evidence of earlier societies finds oil and he

(39:25):
his findings get sent on to the Commissioner General of Persia,
so an actual Persian government official, and this says a
lot about who was bribing the Commissioner General of Persia.
He goes straight to Sir Henry Drummond Wolf, who's a
Conservative parliamentarian in London, and he says, hey, we found
oil in our country. I figured i'd go to London first,
and Wolf introduces the Persian Commissioner to a guy named

(39:47):
William Knox D'Arcy. I assume he's an actual descendant of
mister Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.

Speaker 5 (39:56):
Much less lovable.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Honestly, he probably is, because William Knox Darcy is a
millionaire who's gotten rich speculating on gold in Australia. He
sounds like that guy's kid or something.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
Still blows my mind. That mister Darcy's also Tom Loan
scams from Succession Blows by Subsession.

Speaker 4 (40:12):
I don't know that show.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
But they're apparently doing a new Pride and Prejudice and
it looks like, I.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
Know, women love mister Darcy, and I don't entirely understand.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Why I love mister Darcy.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
They love that scene where he like she brushes his
hand and he like twitches like crazy, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
big scene. So William Darcy gets introduced to the Persian Commissioner,
and you know this guy loves speculating, so he decides
he's going to branch out in oil speculation as well.
In nineteen oh one, he offers the rulers of Iran

(40:44):
twenty thousand British pounds and sixteen percent of annual profits
gained from exploding their oil reserves. This draws little initial
outrage within Persia, as regular people have a lot bigger
fish to fry, right, and nobody's thinking about oil as
a huge industry. Yet it's nineteen oh one. The number
of people who have like used gasoline for anything is
very small. The vast majority it's horses are walking for

(41:08):
most people, right, and trains are a thing obviously. So yeah,
you've got this guy Darcy who gets involved and he
basically bribes the rulers of Iran with twenty pounds and
a chunk of annual profits to exploit as much oil
as he can find there. And nobody cares because oil
is not worth all that much yet. In fact, Darcy

(41:28):
nearly bankrupts himself paying for the deal and trying to
build the infrastructure to start taking Persian oil to market
because there's nothing there. Nobody's been digging or ext like,
nobody's been drilling or anything. He has to do all
of that, like from the ground up. It's very costly
and even a very rich dude like Darcy can't bankroll
the project on his own, so he partners with a
company called Burma Oil, which is, despite the name, based

(41:50):
in Glasgow, and Burma Oil has the capital necessary to
make Darcy's rooms reality. So Darcy's now in business with
this Glasgow based company, starting to build oil wells and
whatnot and drill in Persia. And at the time, this
is one of a bunch of innumerable deals by which
Persia's natural resources are being sold off for the benefit

(42:12):
of foreigners. This is not just happening with oil. Everything
valuable in the country is being sold to Russia or Germany,
right like, that's the way it's working for everything. So
regular people in the country know they're being fleeced. They
are not unaware of that. There's actually a very because
the press is starting to become an increasingly significant thing
in this period of time, and literacy is fairly high

(42:33):
in the cities. Regular people are very aware that they're
being robbed by both the British and the Russians, and
that their leaders are selling the country out for what
amounts to middling bribes. The current rulers the dynasty had
their origins in a tribe of Turkomen warriors who served
as the bulk of the Safavid military, and the Qajars

(42:55):
had a Russian branch, which, again, because these are Turkubin people,
this is all very compplicated ethnic stuff. But the ruling
dynasty in Persia at the time are Turkomen, which means
they have Russian cousins who are nobility in the Russian Empire,
which means the Shahs of Persia are related to the Tsar,

(43:17):
which endears them to the Tsar. Right, they're not directly
related to the Czar, but they're directly related to other
royals within the Tsar's empire, right, and this so a
lot That's part of why a lot of people don't
trust them, right, is they're both stooges of the British,
and well, you don't you're not really like at least
a lot of Persians feel like you're not really Persian.
You're more Russian. Unlike, you're much more aligned with the

(43:38):
Russian government. So there's a lot of reasons why people
are getting increasingly pissed off at their rulers at this
period of time. They're selling off the entire country, and
they're doing it as if they're agents of other countries. Right,
That's increasingly how this dynasty is seen. As shariir Kia
wrote in an article for the National Council of Resistance
on Iran or in CRI, the Quajar crisis, influenced by

(44:02):
Russia and Britain, had led Iran the financial ruin and
a political crisis. They were weak against foreign influence and
oppressive of citizens. So by nineteen oh five people are sick.
They are fed up with this shitty ass dynasty and
the king is because Nasar had gotten assassinated, and his
successor by this point is aging and ill, and there's

(44:24):
enough unrest with elites in the capital that they form
a parliament. Right, there's this like national assembly formed in
Persia called the Mazles, as the result of a lot
of work by a lot of different activists within the country,
a lot of differently very brave people who want the
government that the people of the country deserve, that will
actually functionally govern and modernize the country and won't be

(44:48):
taken advantage of as hideously as the Shas regime had.
And the Mazles draft a constitution which was approved regretfully
by the Shah right before he died, and the Shaws
kind of in this position of like, if I don't
approve this, it's it's allow this bit of democracy or
have a rebellion, right, That's that's the dire situation he

(45:09):
sees himself in. So once this parliament gets going and
starts passing a constitution, the Russians are like, well, we
can't have this. These guys aren't working for our best interests.
They're working for their own best interest. That's not great.
So they immediately set to work pushing their allies in
the Shia clergy to sabotage this new experiment and functional
self governance. Historian Ruhola Ramazani writes that they quote destroyed

(45:33):
the foundations of this new government twice in about four years. Right,
So the Majlis keep trying to install functional parliamentary governments,
and these clerics and other agents of the Russians that
are working with in Persian society keep sabotaging these efforts
because they don't want this to happen.

Speaker 4 (45:51):
And this is the same thing. This is the same
thing that happens with the National Front later.

Speaker 5 (45:56):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (45:56):
Yeah, same sort of dynamics they use to play against
the second more secular elements, the religious elements. They use
them the same exact manner. God, Yes, in such an
easy playbook.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
It's always so, it's really frustrating when you lay it
all out like this. So in nineteen oh eight, Russian
interests install a new shaw on the throne Mohammad Ali Shah,
and he celebrates his newfound power by imprisoning his own
prime minister, who had been semi democratically elected by the Mashli.

(46:27):
Per Sheren Brysac's article with a loan underwritten by the
Russian Bank and with his own crown jewels of security,
the Shah hired rioters to storm the Mazle's. When the
assembly successfully resisted, the Russian Officered Persian Cossack brigade moved
rapidly to dissolve parliament and to impose martial law. The
Cossacks shelled the parliament building, igniting a blaze that destroyed

(46:48):
its records and killed eight people. The Russian commander proclaimed
himself military Governor of Tehran. That's fucking nuts. So the
new Shah hires rioters and the parliament fights off the rioters,
so they have to blow up the building with our
It's fucking nuts. It's insane and obviously very sad.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
Yeah, and the the Masli's. I mean, I don't know
if you know this, but like, so there are parliaments,
because I know that. I always thought they're like a
senate or something, but I don't entirely understand they were
like the parliamentary force.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
It's partly like I don't think any of these are
like quite perfect term, but it's like a national assembly
type deal, right, Like it's a semi democratic body basically.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
Yeah, yeah, okay, but doesn't translate perfectly to senators and
senate and that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Not I mean, it's kind of its own like thing.
Like I think the word literally means like like a
place to sit basically, and it comes out of tribal councils.
But yeah, it's like a it's a it's a type
of parliament basically, it's that's that's close enough for our purposes. Right,
So the Russians have massacred a bunch of people and
shelled the parliament building and installed Asian military commander as

(48:01):
governor of Tehran, and this is not popular. In fact,
it inspires a mass uprising. And this is one of
these beautiful moments where regular people in Tehran and in
the areas outside of it are so fucking pissed off
at what the Russians have done that all of these different,
normally normally opposed political groups unite together in resistance of

(48:21):
Russian domination. And there's this mass uprising that pushes the
Cossack guards out of the capital, and Muhammad Ali Shah
becomes one of the shortest reigned shaws in history. He
is not around much longer now because feudalism is a
really bad system at the best of times. He is
succeeded by his son, Ahmed, when Ahmed is twelve years old.

(48:45):
The reason why this is generally seen as good by
the power that's backing this succession, the British, is that
Ahmed is too young to rule on his own. That
means he needs a regent, and the regent who gets
picked to rule in his stead is a very close
friend of British Foreign Secretary Nathan Kurzon. So we have
gone from haha. The Russians took over and basically this

(49:09):
mass movement forces them out of power and forces the
shot to abdicate. But then the guy who takes over
is a stooge for the British government again, right, it's this.
They can't get out of this, you know.

Speaker 4 (49:22):
And in the movie, the regent is played by Ben Kingsley.
That's exactly who plays that that character. He's half Indian,
half white to my understanding, and he has played an
Iranian in like four movies and.

Speaker 5 (49:39):
They're never good.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
They're never good characters, never No.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
So what you've got now is a fucking regent who's
running things in Tehran and everybody's tired because they've just
thrown the Russians out and the British are kind of
come in as the winners, and this this round of
blows in the Great Game and shit like this. The
fact that Great Britain kind of sits back while Russia
commits a bunch of horrible war crimes and then winds

(50:04):
up in charge is why England. Part of why they
get their reputation being perfidious Albion is everyone's like, how
the fuck did you wind up winning? Wait a second,
like we were fighting them, how are how did you win?

Speaker 5 (50:15):
What the fuck?

Speaker 4 (50:16):
Like?

Speaker 2 (50:16):
That's that's that's that's the way the British place stuff
per time.

Speaker 5 (50:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Now, one reason why you had this popular uprising against
the Russians and why like the Mazles are able to
gain and maintain a degree of power is that regular
Persians are fairly well informed about what's happening in their
country or starting to be in this period, because especially
once the Majlis come like into power, Persia has a

(50:42):
shockingly free press. During this whole period of time, from
like the about this point in the story forward up
until we get the last dynasty of Shaws, there's like
a really vibrant media ecosystem, particularly in Tehran. The first
Mazles had put an end to the stifling controlled the
erastocracy had exerted on media, and so even when the

(51:03):
Persian people lacked the power to stop Great Britain or
Russian from doing something, they at least knew that they
were being fucked right. That's an important dimension of the
story is that people are not in the dark because
there's a pretty good media at the time, which I
was also unaware of. So folks are especially aware of
the rampant corruption within the Shaws Court. Public opinion of

(51:23):
it is so negative that the regent's foreign minister sends
men out to find him a disinterested American expert to
come to Tehran and fix the Persian economy. Now, that
fact alone should give you an idea of the very
different regard Americans were held in during this time. That
like foreigners who are meddling in still other foreign countries

(51:43):
economic system are like, we need someone reliable, trustworthy and
unbiased to fix this economy. Let's find it American. The
fact that that's the way things work back then is crazy.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
It is wild, But I will say, you know, until
the whole nineteen fifty three coup, like the there was
a real there was and then afterwards, you know, if
you talk to your rank and file Iranian now they
do and they have for many years now loved Americans.
But before this they used to have a lot of
contempt for the British. They used to have a lot

(52:20):
contemp for the Russians, and they used to always sort
of know that they are meddling. But there was like
a real warm spot for Americans because of the Americans
that would come over and help them with the finance stuff.
Mcluskey Afrigat's name, But like there's a there's a few, yeah, yeah.
So then there was a real like, you know, warmth.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
And this guy, this guy isn't bad at his job.
I don't think. His name is W. Morgan Schuster. He's
a middle aged lawyer who had worked and he'd been
like a customs guy after the US had taken Cuba
from the Spanish, and he basically rebuilt the tax system
for the Philippines after the United States took over the Philippines. H.
Schuster is the first American that I'm aware of who
has a significant political impact in the Persian government, and

(53:00):
his experience couldn't have been more different. From the Americans
who would follow. For one thing, Shuster seems to have
been genuinely welcome and desired by many Persians because the
economy is completely fucked up right, and he's as popular
with like the local people as much as he is
hated by European expats living in Tehran, who rightly see
his crusade for financial solvency as something that's going to

(53:22):
cut into their graft. Because Shuster actually wants the Iranian
people to have a functional economy, and when he realizes
they're being robbed blind, he's pissed about it. He's like, well,
they're never going to have like you're never going to
have a happy country with a good economy if you
rob them blind like this. If the goal is for
the like the Persia to be a functional country, you're
screwing them. In nineteen eleven, Shuster, who's now the Treasury Secretary,

(53:46):
sparks outrage with the Russians when he confiscates the home
of the former Shaw's brother, who was a Russian citizen.
Shuster was in the right by any rational observation. The
exiled Shaw's brother had not been paying taxes for years,
but the British and the Russians file formal complaints against
this guy with the Mazles, who ignore the complaint to
their peril. The Czar sends his army in and he

(54:09):
shells Tehran, killing many pro independence liberals and clergy members.
They shell the capital and kill a bunch of people
because this guy Shuster takes one dude's house for not
paying taxes. The Russian army also shlls Shia holy sites
as the British look on but avoid direct intervention themselves.
On Christmas Day nineteen eleven, Shuster is forced to leave Persia.

(54:33):
He goes back to the United States and he writes
a book called The Strangling of Persia, which is all
about how European powers are robbing the country blind and
murdering any chance of it having a functional government. Like he's,
as far as I can tell, he seems to genuinely
be like offended on behalf of the Persian people.

Speaker 4 (54:49):
Yeah, and there are I mean, in this whole story
of all these terrible people, Like it's there's not a
lot of heroes, but there were a couple on the
end they were I mean nice guys. Yeah, yeah, there
was a couple yeah, yeah, right at the end of
the day, most of them couldn't affect things in a
positive way. But there were a couple of Americans that
did try to do the right thing.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
They tried to do the right thing, like the Spike
Lee movie. And you know what else is like a
Spike Lee movie.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
It's these It's probably and you know, I'm a good
test taker. I learned that in medical school. Probably the
ads and services that are going to be presented in
these commercials bingo manga and we're back.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
So while all this is going on, and while Persia
is both finding itself split between British and Russian influence
and fighting for its own autonomy, a boy was born
and starts growing into a man. His name was Reza
Khan Mirpanji, and he came into the world on March fifteenth,
eighteen seventy eight, in a town called Alasht in the

(56:00):
province of Mazandaran. His father, Abbasali, was a Persian man
and a major in the army. His mother, nush Afarin,
had immigrated from either Georgia or part of Armenia. Both
were owned by the Russian Empire at that point, but
she's Caucasian like literally from the Caucuses region. We don't
know exactly where she's from, because paperwork is in anybody's

(56:22):
strong suit. But Reza from the beginning is like an
example of how mixed Persia is at this point in time. Right,
he is himself mixed, and that's interesting because he is
not going to govern in that way. Res's dad is
a war hero, but he's the kind of war hero
who dies when his son is eight months old. After this,
Nush moves the family to Tehran to live with her brother.

(56:43):
When she remarries in eighteen seventy nine, Res is a
year old and she abandons him to start a new
family and leaves her firstborn son in the care of
her uncle. This is not a wildly uncommon thing for
a lot of people to do at the time all
over the world. I've read a bunch of stories like this,
but it is pretty fucked up, right. She's basically like,
I gotta try with a new family kid. Sorry, here's

(57:06):
an uncle you know, hopefully he'll take care of you.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
Explains a lot.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Yeah, my goodness, it's not great.

Speaker 5 (57:12):
Now.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
From what little detail we get about his early life,
we can conclude that Resa's family saw him as an
opportunity to increase their fortunes in little else. In eighteen
eighty two, his uncle sent him off to live with
a family friend who was a rare Persian officer in
the Cossack Brigade. This helped him get entrance to the
Cossack Brigade when he's well, not an adult. It's unclear

(57:34):
exactly how old Resa is when he joins the military.
I've heard both fourteen and sixteen, and either is really plausible.
You can get a hint of why by looking at
this nineteen oh nine photo of a unit from the
brigade and look at the differing ages of those soldiers,
because one of those things much that is clearly in

(57:56):
like their fifties, and there's like a nine year old
people who look like kids.

Speaker 5 (58:04):
Straight up. Boy.

Speaker 4 (58:05):
Yeah, that seems to have medals, which is pretty cool.
There's a story there.

Speaker 5 (58:09):
I'd like to hear.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Nine year old kills has killed a lot of men.

Speaker 5 (58:13):
He's seen some things.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
He's a hard nine. So Rezzo was illiterate as a
young man. He had basically no formal education, and his
first job in the Cossacks was as a stable boy.
He was, however, tall and handsome and extremely charismatic. He
is very good at making the right friends, which assures
that he eventually rises to have a cushy job guarding

(58:36):
the Dutch console General. He does fight in a couple
of wars. He's a good soldier. He's particularly good with
the machine gun, and he becomes like his unit's machine gunner.
They call him machine gun Reza. That's his nickname, which
is pretty cool.

Speaker 5 (58:51):
Tang clan, so right right.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
He rose rapidly through the ranks, and by the nineteen
teens he's one of the highest dranking officers in the
Cossack Brigade.

Speaker 5 (59:02):
Shari A.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Kiah writes that he was also quote known for his
role as a leader of religious bands and as a
community enforcer in religious ceremonies. In her article, Sharen Brysac
ads he earned a reputation of being a fireman, someone
who was sent to quell disturbances or round up thieves.
So basically, this guy's kind of stupid, but he's well
liked by his peers, which are the most functional military

(59:24):
unit in the country. And he's also he's also kind
of like known as being a religious hardliner, like he's
in very good with the clerics. He spends a lot
of time like making sure other people are doing the
things they're supposed to do, like religiously in his community,
so that the clerics like him, and he just generally
he's the guy who if people are breaking the rules,

(59:47):
he'll kick their asses. Like that's that's who this heavy is,
and that's the reputation. He's the heavy, right, he's the
tough that you send in r So basically he was
cooked up in a lab to become a we Western
back dictator. Right, all that was needed was the proper impetus.
And this brings us back to William Darcy and the
question of Iran's fast oil reserves. Anglo Persian oil. The

(01:00:11):
company Darcy eventually establishes enjoyed a monopoly on Persian crude
oil for years, but it's not until nineteen fourteen that
the world gets a good look at just how big
a deal this is going to be, because in the
lead up to World War One, Great Britain is hungry
for any advantage they can get over the rising power
of Imperial Germany. I talked about that at the start

(01:00:32):
of the episode. Right, Germany's building a fleet that can
compete with the British Royal Navy, and so Great Britain
needs an advantage. This enters into the picture Admiral Sir
John Fisher. He was described by the press and in
his time as Britain's primary naval oil maniac. This means
he was the first admiral with power in Britain to

(01:00:54):
be like, we should switch to oil from coal. Right,
that's a good idea to become an oil based navy.
There's benefits to doing this, right. Your ships can go
further on oil than they can on coal without needing
to refuel. They can go faster. There's a number of
like logistical benefits to eventually doing this, but it's a
hideous cost. When you're thinking of the whole moving the

(01:01:15):
whole navy over, you're spending a shitload of money. And
there's not a lot of oil exploitation yet right either,
So Great Britain doesn't necessarily have it on oil to exploit.
Darcy seeks out and befriends the admiral in nineteen oh
three at a Bohemian spa where Fisher engaged in his
main pleasure outside of being an oil maniac, which was dancing.
So Darcy basically is that something or is it legitimately dancing.

(01:01:39):
I think he's just a dancer, and I think Darcy
befriends him dancing at this spa saw and they've begun buddies. Yeah,
straight buddies.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
I'm sure I've been to a lot of spas. Don't
remember or anything about dancing, just saying.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
A lot of dancing at spas. They were different back then.

Speaker 4 (01:01:53):
So let's be real. That sounds pretty fun, like a
spa where you just like relax in the hot tub,
dance a dance.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
I think that's what dirty dancing is pretty much about.

Speaker 5 (01:02:05):
Right. It's a dance spot, it's a dance spot.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
So there's a dirty dancing scenario, right, that's very integral
to this story.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
And he had the time of his life, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:02:16):
At the time of his life, and Darcy's this is
Darcy And I'm sorry, who's a person again that he
is recording.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
His Admiral Fisher.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
Yeah, Admiral Fisher, Admiral Fisher, the oil maniac.

Speaker 5 (01:02:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
And in nineteen oh four, after he and Darcy become friends,
Fisher becomes the first Sea Lord, which is a real
job in the British military.

Speaker 5 (01:02:35):
Higher oil maniac to sea lord. That's not bad, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
He's the first sea lord. That's crazy. I thought was
a job for aquaman.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
But okayaking l Ron Hubbard, it's the commander.

Speaker 5 (01:02:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
So Fisher keeps on talking up this idea, and by
nineteen eleven or so, Winston Churchill has come around and
Churchill is like, we need to switch the navy over
to oil, right, And so Darcy has by nineteen eleven
successfully gotten this idea that primarily financially benefits him because
he bought access to all of Persia's oil into the
halls of British power. In nineteen fourteen, the House of

(01:03:11):
Commons supports a proposal to switch the Navy over to oil.
Per an article in The Fair Observer, the goal was
to ensure energy security for Great Britain, where the Royal
Navy switched from coal to oil to compete against the
fast rising German navy. After World War One broke out,
Persia remained neutral but supplied oil to Britain. In fact,
Persian oil arguably led to Allied victory. The conversion of

(01:03:32):
the British fleet to oil gave them advantages over the
German fleet powered by a coal greater range and speed
and greater refueling and keeping with their imperial tradition, Britain
paid a pittance to Persia for oil. So that's fucked
It plays a role in their victory. I wouldn't say
it led to it because but it's certainly not an
insignificant factor in the efficacy of the British fleet. The

(01:03:53):
fact that they've switched over to oil and again Great
Britain is fucking Persia. They're bribing the Shaw. The Persian
people are getting very little for their resources.

Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
Again, something real the pattern that will play out many
for a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
This is fucked up, but the real fuckery is still
to come. During the war World War one, Persian territory
is a battleground between Ottoman forces and Russian and British forces, right,
and Russian and British are on the same side this time,
so they go from competing to being on the same side.
But they're fighting the Ottomans in parts of Persia right now.
The realities of the war massively disrupt agriculture in Persia

(01:04:32):
because farmers are constantating dudes fight over their fields and
shell them so they can't grow as much food. And
also all of you have three different armies in the area.
They're not growing their own food, they're confiscating it from
the people who live there to feed their own soldiers.
So people in Persia start to starve in huge numbers,

(01:04:52):
as Zara at A Latti and Majide Imani write in
an article for Third World Quarterly. Ain Old Sultana, a
well known o An Iranian chronicler, wrote in a newspaper
entry of nineteenth April nineteen seventeen that famine and hunger
prevail in all parts of Iran. Muslims and people of
all faiths are dying and kum in the center of Iran.
Currently fifty die each day. In Hammadan, thirty thousand have

(01:05:14):
registered as destitute and this heart renting description. He further
stated that people in Tehron were taking sheep's blood from
the slaughterhouse to feed themselves in their children. In fact,
several Iranian newspaper reports in nineteen seventeen to nineteen nineteen
highlighted the occupying forces attempts to seize food and grains
and block people's access to food. So no one really
debates that what happens next is a human engineered or

(01:05:37):
at least a human influenced famine. Right, is this intentional
or is this just a byproduct of armies being armies? Right,
there's debate over that, but it's caused by the fact
that these foreign forces are in the country right now.
There is a huge debate as to who is more
at fault. Given the similarities between the Great Persian Famine
and the Bengal Famine of nineteen forty three, a lot

(01:05:58):
of people understand and blame the British From that same
paper quote highlighting the role of the occupying powers and
the Great Persian Famine, Some scholars have pointed to the
issue of oil capitalism during the twentieth century the financial
policies adopted by Britain, For instance, their refusal to pay
oil revenues to Iran in the middle of the Great
Persian Famine indicates their lack of concern for ron starving people.

(01:06:20):
For the occupying powers, Iran was mainly a strategic military asset.
The dominant consequence was a lack of access to food
among large parts of the population and what a Martsian
called entitlement failure. Thus, besides natural factors, pandemics, sociohistorical context,
and the incapability of the central government. The Great Persian
Famine was also caused by the occupying forces that pursued

(01:06:40):
the war at the expense of the lives of many Iranians.
And there's a lot of people involved in this catastrophe again,
as well as some stuff that is just happening at
the time. There's disease which is still related to the war,
and there's some environmental concerns. It's important I emphasized that
the Russians are also hugely involved here too. At the
early stages of the Russian Civil War. Once that kicks off,

(01:07:01):
various Russian forces start seizing like housing materials, roofing and
firewood and other basic supplies for their bases. And these
are things that thousands of Persians need to keep their
homes habitable. And like one hundred thousand Persians are made
effectively homeless just by this. Ten thousand villages are abandoned,
largely because Russian forces are seizing everything that makes them habitable.

(01:07:23):
Ten thousand villages abandoned.

Speaker 4 (01:07:26):
I'm just I've never heard. I'm sure there's a listener
right now, some auntie who's going to be yelling at
me right now because I didn't know this, But I
never I never knew about this.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
Oh wait till you hear the scale of this disaster.
So British diplomat Herold Dickolson wrote, quote, Persia had been
exposed to violations and suffering not endured by any other
neutral country and World War One, and it's hard to
argue with that point. Eight to ten million people, roughly
half the pre war population of Persia perish in the

(01:07:57):
Great Persian Famine.

Speaker 5 (01:07:59):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
About forty percent of the pre war population die over
the course of like World War One up to like
nineteen nineteen.

Speaker 4 (01:08:07):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
As a result of all this, Hey, guys, I just
want to let you know, the Great Persian Famine is
vastly understudied, and there's a wide range of scholarly disagreement
over the death toll. At the time and for a
very long time, contemporary reporting suggested two to two and
a half million dead was a very reasonable, you know range,
But there's also scholars who are arguing with that more

(01:08:32):
like eight to ten million is very likely. So this
is not a kind of thing where because of sort
of the paucity of the scholarship on this at the moment,
I don't feel comfortable saying like one is definitely right.
I do kind of tend just on other because of
other famines i've read about, to lean towards the larger numbers,
but we don't really know perfectly. I did not realize

(01:08:52):
the scale of this. We don't talk about this because
it's a very complicated famine. It's not as simple as
just Russia or Great Britain starved iron. There were a
lot of factors, including some environmental ones and aspects of
local government. But like Russia and Great Britain and the
Ottomans play huge role in why eight to ten million,
half a fucking Persian nearly starves to death and nobody

(01:09:15):
talks about it anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:09:18):
It's not yeah, wow.

Speaker 4 (01:09:21):
I have to say, I really appreciate this is a
total This is the kind of thing I'm supposed to
say at the end when we're off air. But I
really appreciate how you synthesize all this information. This is
not easy.

Speaker 5 (01:09:34):
There's so many.

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
It's a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
I know I've left stuff out, and obviously, like we're
only going up to like nineteen forty one, but like
this is like when we're we're looking at the hideous,
the heinous death toll of US actions already in Iran.
It's also important to just like know like this is
the latest in a long string of of just like

(01:09:58):
the horrific human concept quinses to imperialists fucking around in
that part of the world. It's all bad stuff. So
it is not until nineteen twenty one that Britain and
Russia fully withdraw their forces from Persia, given that the
Tsarisk or largely given that the Tsarisk government had collapsed
by this point, leading to civil war in Russia throughout

(01:10:19):
most of the worst of the famine. Educated Persians blame
the British for it, because they saw the British as
being the controlling power in their lives. And there's an element,
a sizeable degree to which this is fair. The British,
for their own part, are less concerned with Persia for
its own sake and more worried about something else, which
is that the Bolsheviks are now in charge of a

(01:10:39):
lot of Russia. They're fighting a civil war for control
of what had been the Russian Empire, and it sure
does look like Persia might become communists too, and that
is going to tee up Part two. Gom it well,
how do you feeling.

Speaker 5 (01:10:54):
I can't wait. I want to hear it now.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Oh well, you'll hear it in the second. You'll hear it,
yes a minute, but first let's hear your pluggables.

Speaker 4 (01:11:03):
So my podcast is called The House of Pod. It
is a medical science podcast. It is a look at
the world of science and health through an approachable manner.

Speaker 5 (01:11:16):
We've tried to make.

Speaker 4 (01:11:17):
Things as fun and as less scary, if if that's
a word that I can use. Them do a terrible
job explaining my show. You think after five years of
doing this, I'd be much better at it. I'm not.
But the show is actually fun. If you like this show,
you're gonna like the podcast The House of Pod because
we also take a look at medical grifters, and we

(01:11:37):
look at all kinds of different medical malarchy that's out there,
try and present you the science in a way that
is I think honest and nuanced and clear. So I
think you will enjoy it. You should listen to it,
and you will hear some episodes with both of these
lovely people on that podcast, The House of Pod.

Speaker 5 (01:11:55):
You can find it anywhere you find podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
All right, excellent, Well, listen to the House of Pod.
And you know, do something nice in your own house
or not. I don't control your life, neither do you?
Probably wall did any of us? Are we all just
flocks them floating through cosmic debris?

Speaker 3 (01:12:18):
Yes, goodbye, maybe, but I'm definitely in control here bye.
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(01:12:40):
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