Part Two: The First Shah of Iran

Robert discusses what Reza did with power once he ascended to the Peacock throne, and how he ultimately lost everything.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
As media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the
worst history in all of people or people in all
of history, whichever is accurate. I don't know. I randomly
put words together based on a predictive text algorithm, much
like an LLM, except for I use this collection of

(00:28):
bones with runes inscribed on them, and that's how the
podcast comes to you every week. Thousands of bones with
runs inscribed on them that I pick at random. Kava,
how would you like me to read some random bones
that might be about the Shah or not.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Let's do it. Let's roll the bones.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
But also welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Here. Sorry, yes, thank you again for having me. My
name is Cave Joda. I am a physician. I'm a gastrointrologist,
and I'm also the host of a podcas ask called
The House of Pod. It is a humor adjacent little
medical podcast we look at well in the scrifter is
we look at what the MAHA community and the administration
is doing to our current healthcare and have a little

(01:13):
fun when we can with it. So you should check
it out anywhere you get your podcast after this, listen
to this. This is more important than afterwards listen to you.
You'll probably like it or your money back.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Have you done an episode about our mutual enemy yet?

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Which one? I feel like we have a number rfk
jor I've done a number one?

Speaker 1 (01:32):
No, no, no no. Our mutual enemy that we talk
about on the side often.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
We did talk about can I say his name? Is that? Okay?
I don't like to give him more airtime than he
but Vine pissad Yeah, yeah, I like him. I like him.
He doesn't like me. I have no problem with him.
But he's been involved in a lot of aspects of
medical or medical care recently in the country that I've
disagreed with. And we actually did talk about him recently

(01:58):
in our of our more recent episode, So yes, you
could listen to the podcast and here are The episode
is influence versus Evidence, and we talk about kind of
what's happening out there right now in our current healthcare administration.
He's not a fan of his. It's mostly good, right, oh,
I mean ninety nine percent great.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Everything's fine, Everything is great.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Everything is really If you're really into communicable diseases things,
this is a good time.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Excellent. I love communicable diseases and my favorite communicable disease
is knowledge.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
I was going to say it, I swear to God,
I was going to say.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
It, let's spread some together. Yeah. So, in the four
years after the October Revolution in Russia, Persia had been
the site of bloody and constant conflict between Britain and Russia. Again,
there's this brief period in World War One where they're

(02:57):
kind of fighting together against the Ottomans in Persia as
opposed stuff fucking with each other, and then we've got
our revolution and the Bolsheviks are fighting the Whites, and
Britain goes right back to fight in Russia. Right now,
I guess it's a little different in that they also
have allies who are Russians in this case too, so
they're not fighting all of the Russians, just most of

(03:17):
the Russians. And basically the kind of broad strokes of
this conflict are the Brits see Persia because they've already
got a good base in the area, and they get
resources there, they have interests there, they have a lot
of forces that they can get there. It's a great springboard.
It also borders Russia, so it's a great springboard for
them to use as a base from which to support

(03:38):
the White Army and the Russian Civil War.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
The Soviets meanwhile, don't want Britain doing that because it's
bad for them. Right, So the Soviet Union annexes chunks
of northern Persia and they create a the Persian Socialist
Soviet Republic. Right, there's like a I mean, it's more
complicated than that, right, there's and obviously there's local and
like within like Persians who are communists who are part

(04:03):
of this and like want to There's partisans and stuff.
It's much more complicated than all that. But broadly speaking,
you've got the Brits and the area they control in
Persia that they want to use as a base to
support the White Army in Russia. And then you've got
this chunk of northern Persia that is aligned with the USSR,
that is itself at least nominally Bolshevik, that the Bolsheviks

(04:23):
are using as a base, right, and there's fighting betwixt
the two. Now. The Quajars are still like that shot them,
that line of Shaws is still in control technically at
the point at which all this is going on, but
they fail to exert They can't. They don't have any power, right,
Like the Shaws are useless in this conflict. They don't

(04:46):
really have any ability to influence what the Russians are
doing because the Bolsheviks had just killed their czar, so
they're sure as hell not going to listen to some
Shah in Persia that they never respected to begin with. Meanwhile,
the Shah like personally like the guy who was Shaw
now is that dude who was like twelve when he
came to power and has been ruled like a regent,

(05:08):
was running things And there's like a triumvirent of guys
who aren't the Shah who are mostly running things in
the Persian central government. And so during this period after
World War One, the central government's like bleeding provinces and
big chunks of the army just kind of disappear into
comical puffs of smoke because they didn't really want to
be in the army and when push came to shove,

(05:28):
they're like, nahhh, go back home, no, no thank you.
So the only meaningful force opposing the Soviets are the
Cossacks and the Cossack Brigade, and they're British backers. Again,
it's a little more complicated than that. But that's the
broad strokes now.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
But the Cossacks at this point, the Cossacks are not
reporting back.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yes and no.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
So that's the part I don't understand here.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Well, it's weird again. Russia's not everyone in Russia is
a Bolshevik. There's a there's a civil war, right, So
you've got a bunch of Russians or white Russians who
support at least not the Soviet Union happening, right, generally
they support some sort of return to the monarchy or whatever.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
So, and a lot of Cossacks support the white Russians.
Because the Cossacks had been the Tsar's shock troops, a
shitload of them wind up in the White forces, right,
and when during this period of time, the Persian Cossack
brigade is still led by a Russian officer, Like, it's
still a Russian colonel who's in charge of the brigade.

(06:34):
But that russian's a white, right, so he's siding with
the British in their efforts to help the whites against
the Bolsheviks. These are very messy wars. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (06:45):
You know, as someone who is currently living through the
Iranian diaspora dealing with the Iran War, I think I
can understand a little bit of the complexity of this,
and this is all starting to make sense in a
historical context.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
To me, it's fucking messy this whole period, because it's
not just Britain that's intervening in the Russian Civil War,
like the United States has forces too, Like there's a
whole allied intervention force. This is number one, barely talked
about anymore, but really complicated everything that's going on in
this period of time. I'm really smoothing the edges down

(07:20):
just because we can't get into too much detail about
all of the shit that's going on. But right, that's
why the Cossacks are on the side of the Brits here,
you know. So this is not nineteen nineteen, nineteen twenty,
nineteen twenty one. This is not when like Domino theory
doesn't really exist in the form it's going to exist.
But conservative reactionaries have already started sessing out the basic tenets, right,

(07:42):
They're already telling people, well, look, if Persia falls to communism,
where all it stop?

Speaker 3 (07:48):
Right now?

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Obviously, Great Britain's real interest here is that if Persia
falls to communism, they're not going to get cheap oil
anymore for the Navy, And that's the real.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
Problem, right, love that oil.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Their other problem is they have to keep troops in
Persia during this whole period of time, like their own guys,
the Cossacks alone can't hold shit. If they want to
know that that oil is safe, they have to have
their own dudes there and that costs a lot of money.
So in nineteen twenty one, Great Britain's two main interests
in Persia are stop it from falling to the Communists
and if we didn't have to keep our soldiers here

(08:22):
to do that, it would sure be great. Right, those
are their primary concerns. Now, I want to take you
back in time. I know, I just was talking about
the Russian Civil War era to talk a little bit
about how things within like the oil company working in
Persia evolved over like the early nineteen hundreds up to
nineteen twenty one, right, because we didn't really talk about
that so much in the last episode, and it does matter.

(08:45):
So in nineteen oh nine that entrepreneur Darcy and the
company that he partnered with had transferred their rights basically
had gotten in bed with another company because they needed
more money to do the infrastructure necessary to get oil
out of Persia. And this new company is called Anglo
Persian Oil or APOC APOC. Remember these names, you're it's

(09:06):
gonna be real interesting what happens to Anglo Persian Oil
in the modern era. Now, The way in which APOC
functioned from nineteen oh nine to nineteen twenty one does
a good job of showing how dysfunctional the central government
of Persia was by this point, how bad the Quajar
monarchy is at actually like governing the country because APOC

(09:27):
doesn't deal with Tehran at all. They don't talk to
the Shah, They ignore the capital completely because their oil
wells and shit aren't near the capital, and the royal
wells are in the territory of a bunch of like
there's a mix of like sheikhs and baktari cons which
are like different like basically tribal level leaders who actually
control the territory where they're drilling for oil and transporting oil.

(09:50):
And so the oil company is like, why would we
talk to Tehran. They don't have any power here. They
can barely keep the capital. I'm gonna make deals with
these local guys. They have the guns and the labor force. Right,
the capitol is not gonna do anything but take bribes
for me buck them. Yeah, so that shows you how
weak the government is at this point in time. As
a matter of fact, when the deal between Apok and

(10:11):
these different tribal groups was concluded in nineteen ten, the
company illegally imported a thousand laborers from India without talking
to anyone in the Persian government. They take a thousand
Indians and make them work in Persia and they don't
ask anybody in the fucking government. It's like they don't
talk to the first there's no visas for these motherfuckers.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
They just don't look. They don't they never do. They
never look at Persians as real people. It kid this
colonial mindset and it doesn't it so never goes away.
I mean, I mean maybe now it's gone away, but
like it was so intrinsic to who they rte intrinsic

(10:50):
to who they were as people that they just couldn't
see the people living there as being worthy a warranting
even that kind of dis.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, it's fucking nuts. And it's it's really like it
as an idea for like how messed up their attitude
towards like Persians is period they part of the agreement
with these like local shakes and cons is will hire
a thousand locals to work in the oil plants. Right,
but they legally start bringing in a bunch of Indian

(11:22):
workers to do most of the work, Like they aren't
going to hire any more than the minimum they have
agreed of local people. Right. I want to quote again
from that piece Sharen Brysac wrote for the World Policy Journal,
and what became a chronic grievance. APOK gave Britains and
Indians the best jobs, relegating Persians to menial roles. Foreigners
occupied the best houses, claimed to membership in the exclusive

(11:42):
Persian Club, and sent their children to schools and segregated cantonments.
There were even fountains marked not for Iranians. Feeding the
cycle of and during resentment that was to characterize subsequent relations. Wow,
Basically they're not giving like they they'll let you like
transport shit, but they don't give you anything. They're not
getting like the most dangerous jobs. But they're not getting
good jobs either. They're not getting anything that pays well.

(12:03):
And in the areas where the company is activated, there's
segregation against the indigenous people who live there, like.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
And they're they're so smart, they're never gonna let the
Iranians that are there, yea, get to higher positions where
they can actually learn the oil industry, where they can
actually learn how to do this, because heaven forbid if
they were, yeah, they would run it themselves, so purposely
keeping them in the dark.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
And then imagine there's segregation in your country because a
guy came in last week and is like, nah, you
don't get to use the same like water fountains because
we're getting oil out of here now. Like if it's
just if it's just a thing that happened a week ago,
like how that would like like piss you off? Like
what you guys just got here?

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Like we are so easily offended. So people, I have
to tell you this.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Is like anyone would be in this auriating.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
I've seen Iranians get pretty offended for much less then
having a segregated water fountain.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
So this is nuts, okay, because some fucker just comes
in a week ago and is like, oh, no, this
isn't your place anymore. There's oil here. This is British property. So,
as I noted in the first episode. In nineteen fourteen,
the British Parliament had had voted for a proposal pushed
by Churchill to fuel the Royal Navy with Persian oil.
As part of this deal, the British government purchased fifty

(13:24):
one percent of Anglo Persian Oil, ensuring it would remain
an all British company, which is again them saying We're
not gonna let the locals run anything. We won't even
let them know how to run anything. This is always
going to be our shit. So by nineteen twenty one,
Northern Persia is a Soviet satellite and guerrilla fighters are
advancing on Tehran, which basically can't defend itself without foreign help.

(13:47):
There are the Cossacks, which are primarily made up of
Persian soldiers and they are functional, but the government can't
even pay them right like, the Cossacks are being paid
entirely by Great Britain by this point in time, and
Great Britain has to send her own soldiers to occupy
large tracks of Persian territory in nineteen eighteen just to

(14:08):
stop a total Bolshevik victory in the area. Now one
of these Cossacks getting paid by the British in nineteen
twenty one is our friend Resa Khan, who at that
point has been promoted to colonel. Right, this is machine
gun Resa. So there is Khan.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
From stable boy to machine gun Reza. That's right.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Still can't read, but he could shoot people.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
You shoot that gun. Good.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Khan and his men and about fifty five hundred British
colonial troops are holding the line against the communists. Right,
while British Foreign Secretary Kurzon drafts what becomes known as
the Anglo Persian Treaty. This authorizes the stationing of British
veterans to build a functional army for the central government. Basically,
Britain's going to send experts so that the central government

(14:51):
can build an army that actually works. Right, that's not
just the Cossacks. We want there to be a functional
army here so we don't have to keep ours here.
So we're going to send experts in and we're also
going to put a bunch of investment money into Persia
to build railroads and reorganize the economy. All of this
is to keep the oil flowing. None of this is
for the benefit of regular Persians. The army and the

(15:12):
railroads and the economy are also that this is a
stable place for the Royal Navy to get its fuel from.
Right now, this plan is to be paid for by
a two million pound loan issued by Great Britain, who
would collect customs duties to pay the loan back directly
from Persians. In effect, British tax collectors are now directly

(15:33):
taxing Persian citizens to pay for the things that they're
doing in order to make sure Great Britain has continued
access to basically cheap oil. Right the tax.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
So angry the more I learn about this history, it's
a it's a good thing. I love your colleague James
Stout so much because sometimes I learn about the things
of Britain and get so mad. But he's so lovable.
It's okay, it's okay.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
We are Americans. It's not like we can get We
don't have that much of a leg to stand on
these days.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
True, I'm so confused. I'm torn between two groups of
terrible things.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
That's right, that's right, it's the it's the team Jacob,
a Team Edward of colonialism. So yeah, Great Great Britain's
taxing Persia directly. And if it's not, if the British
aren't directly running the government. Most Persians sure as hell
think they are. At this point in time. Right at
the end of World War One, the Bolsheviks had published

(16:40):
a bunch of documents that they'd seized from the Tsar's
palace revealing secret wartime pacts. And one of these secret
wartime pacts was Britain offering Russia the Dardanels in exchange
for giving Britain Persia. Right, so this comes out and
people in Tehran, educated Persians are obviously like, oh so,
like they they just bought us. Basically, they bribed the

(17:01):
Czar for us, and they think they own our entire
ass country now. And this helps spawn massive resistance to
this treaty that Secretary Curzon has put together. Initially, Curzon
is not all that concerned. He states the case will
be settled by cash, and then he proceeds to organize
one hundred and thirty one thousand pound bribe to the

(17:22):
three man triumvirate governing Persia on behalf of the Shah.
These three guys agree to the bribe, and Kurzon, being
a genius, is said to have declared the treaty a
great triumph, and I have done it all alone, like.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
Great Brandy.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
He's like, so we're gonna we're gonna tax these people
to build an army to protect our oil basically and
to keep them oppressed. And the people are like, we
don't like that, and he's like, but I bribed three men,
solving the problem forever all on my own. But unfortunately
for Kurzon, that damned free press I mentioned earlier got
to work and they reported on the fact that Persia's

(17:59):
growing try It had sold the country for a song.
Next per Brysex article, the treaty was broocked by the
Mosleys and three successive Persian prime ministers fell. So basically,
three successive governments failed to gain whatever they need to
do in the parliament to be able to govern as
a result of resistance to this treaty, which gets it
blocked in Tehran. Now this causes chaos because the British

(18:22):
are this is fucked up of them, But also British
money and guns is the only thing propping this government
up at the time, right, so when the treaty gets blocked,
things aren't just like good.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
You know that could from that peacock throne they could
sell then it looks like.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
It's worth the money. Yeah yeah, so chaos envelops the
capital city and back home in London, the lords of
the Admiralty are really have real reason to fear that
they might lose their hookup to cheap gas. Now, Curzon
had basically been like, the fuck around and pretend we
care about international log Like he's bribing these dudes, but

(19:01):
he's trying to frame it as like a legal treaty
in an agreement between states. And since Operation Bride three
Guys failed, all eyes turned to one of the top
ranking generals in the Royal Army Field, Marshal William Edmund Ironside,
who was referred to as the Lord Ironside, a name
George Lucas would laugh at you for giving to a

(19:23):
character in a fictional story.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
Like the Lord. Okay, we get it much.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
It's he was also nicknamed Tiny William Tiny Ironside.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Ironside. That's pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
It's gonna suck to being born with that cooler name
and like knowing you're going to be a military leader,
but also being a little guy, like because people are
gonna call you tiny, Like Tiny Ironside is just less
cool than the Lord iron Side.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
With that name, your options are limited. You're like, if
you're an iron.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Size, you can only be in the military. He doesn't
care for joining the army.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Or you could be an actor from Starship Troopers and
that's it. Those are your two editions.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
That's it. That's right. And unfortunately Starship Troopers had not
quite been invented yet. We we we had barely harnessed
the technology to create Paul Verhoven at that point, you know,
he was he was still just stating, I believe.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
So.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
The best way I can describe the Lord Ironside physically,
if you're not looking at you know, the video version
of this because most people listen to it because it's
a podcast, the best way I can describe him is
that he had the face of a man who didn't
understand why other nations beside England should exist, Like like,
look at this guy's face, Like that is a face

(20:44):
of confusion that there are other countries.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
What are they doing? Look at them with the brown
the country smells coming off their food food.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
It's not all was there My British rib was going
everywhere there. I think you're more consistent than me.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
He's got Lord mount Batton energy.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah, yeah, he does. He has strong the iration have
blown up a both. This guy was on energy. That's
what I'll say about this fucker, although he has bad
luck with planes not boats. So, Ironside had been made
commander of the Allied Intervention Force in Northern Russia during
the Russian Civil War, and he had been reassigned to
Persia in nineteen twenty one, and basically as soon as
he arrives in country, he sees Colonel Khan or Reza

(21:35):
at the time, right, and he spots this guy, and
he's like, this dude looks like a good person to
charm and put in position as like a military strong man.
That might be what happened, or Resa might have looked
at this guy and immediately been like, all right, this
is the British dude I need to charm, right. I
don't actually know which is truer. There are two different versions,

(21:56):
one of which is that Ironside manipulates Reza because he
needs a guy. The other is that Resin manipulates Ironside
because it gets him what it wants. I think probably
both are true. Both guys see each other as useful, right.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
That's the typical narrative about Resion is that he was
not extraordinarily bright, not well resident mentioned, but he did.
He did have a sense for power, and it's really good. Yes, yeah,
and he could root out sort of a little bit
of Oh, this dude seems to be like a good
you know, ship took my you know whatever, I don't know,

(22:31):
the saying hook my ship to or whatever. What's the
worst again, sale, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Good, but probably pitch his boat to or whatever. That's right,
tie his horse to. I don't know, but this, I
think this is good. That is a good point about
Like I try to make this point often about what
intelligence is, because there's a bunch of climate scientists out there,
and any one of them is smarter than Donald Trump
in a million ways. But Donald Trump is smarter than
all of them at how you acquire power in a

(22:59):
democratic society and use it for your own benefit. Now,
part of why he's smarter at that is that he
has absolutely normal scruples whatsoever. But he's completely negated many
people's life's work who are much smarter than him because
he has that kind of intelligence. And Reza Khan is
also that kind of guy. He can't read. He's not
super bright in that way, but He's incredibly intelligent socially,

(23:20):
and he is very good at making every British guy
he meets love him. And that's all that matters in
Persian politics at this point in time.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
And that's what my wagon to.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
My wagon too. I can't believe none of us could
fucking figure. And there is evidence that the Lord Ironside
Tiny is charmed by Reza. He describes him upon meeting
him as quote a man and the straightest I have
met yet, the real life and soul of the show.
He doesn't mean that in like a sexual sentiment. It
is funny to be like, that's the straightest man I've

(23:53):
met yet. Almost is like, and I've been fucking my
way through this country too, so I can tell a
straight one.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
It's funny too, because, like you know, when Reza Hahn
is raising his son, Mohammed Reza, which goes on to
be the shaw that people think of as a shaw
in modern time.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Will say the shaw they're talking about this guy's son.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Yes, when he's raising him, he is he there's like
no emotional connection there of any kind. Absolutely, he doesn't.
He treats him as a subordinate because he was one
of these old school dudes who is under the belief
that showing your son affection would make them gay. That
was like, that was his whole.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Bag absolutely well. And again, to be fair, his mom
abandons him after her husband dies when he's eight months old,
to be like, go, I'm gonna try again with a
new family.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Sorry. Yeah, yeah, his uncle probably wasn't great either, me
if we're like, I'm sure his uncle was not like
a super enlightening guy.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
You know, this kid's first healthy relationship is with a
machine gun. Like, it's not shocking. He becomes the man
he is. You know who else had a healthy relationship
with automatic weaponry?

Speaker 3 (25:02):
Hello, fresh, I hear they?

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Oh yet they love them?

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Oh my god them. Can't genough of them.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
They own a lot of machine guns, a shocking number.
Why we can't tell you by their product. And we're back,
so we just let that happen. Huh okay, cool, so
uh yeah, good stuff. So Resicon, as we've noted, was

(25:31):
you know, not a bright guy in a lot of ways.
But he's very well liked by British people, particularly by
the Lord Ironside, who promotes Reza to brigadier general and
makes him commander of the Cossack brigade in nineteen twenty one.
He sits down with the newly minted general and the
British officer acting as paymaster for the local Persian forces,

(25:51):
and he tells both men Britain won't stop him if
he sees his power. Basically, he sits down with these
guys and he's like, look, if you want to take
control of the country, we won't do anything as long
as you don't depose the current Shaw. Right, that guy's
technically our friend. So I'll keep Ahmed Shaws. Is that
the current Shaw's name? Keep Ahmed Shah the Shah? But

(26:11):
you can't do anything else you want, right Basically, and
Res is like, hey, bro, sounds cool to me. You know,
I'll take that deal any day of the week. And
he takes that deal.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
Right. Is that the twelve year old? Is it that
the Ahmed Shaw is the twelve year old Shaw? Are
we onto a different show now?

Speaker 2 (26:26):
I mean he starts as twelve, He's not twelve.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
I recognize that people don't stay the age that when
you meet them, you know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, but yes he is that kid. That's how he
gains power initially, right, Yeah, So Ironside is like, hey, man,
if you want to be in charge, just don't depose
the sha. We'll back your play. And then he let goes,
claps his hands together, wipes them off, and leaves the
fucking country for Egypt. He's just gone right, He sets
up the dominoes and he fucking bounces so. Not long

(26:56):
after he leaves, on February twentieth, Resa marches a column
of six hundred men six hundred cossacks towards the undefended capital.
All other military forces in the local police were ordered
to stay inside and keep their goddamn mouth shut. And
the coup that follows isn't totally peaceful, but it's like
a fairly minimal amount of bloodshed for a coup detta, right,

(27:17):
but it is a coup d'ta now. Depending on which
historians you like best, Reza Khan is either a bold
opportunist who execute his own coup with a little help
from his British friends. Beside their promise not to intervene,
they don't do much other than not stop him. And
the other way to look at this is that Reza
is a total pawn of the Brits, a chess piece
maneuvered into position by the Lord Ironside to block the
Reds and keep the Royal Navy fueled. I'd never want

(27:40):
to argue for a reduced British culpability in all of this.
But if Ironside was the mastermind here, he was a
very hands off one, because as soon as he leaves
Iran for Egypt, he's grievously wounded in a plane crash,
and he's like recuperating in the hospital while the Khan
overthrows the government and takes power right Princeton historian Richard Olman,

(28:00):
it is idle to speculate upon whether or not he
would eventually have come to power had Ironside not singled
him out. But it is clear that Ironside and his
British colleagues were largely instrumental in placing Resicon in a
position to bring about the coup at Dah, and I
think that's accurate. Resiicon doesn't need much help from them
other than backing out right. He's got the guys and
the guns to do this, and he has a skill

(28:21):
for building an army. He's going to very effectively get
more guys and more guns because he doesn't have enough
at the start of this to control much more than
the capital.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Once he takes power in the capitol, he still has
a lot of shit to do, and there's a year's
long road before he becomes the Shaw. He's not the
Shaw after this coup. He's technically the War Minister for Persia,
which is a new position that makes him the commander
in chief of the military but also lets him basically
pick his own prime minister. And here's how he looks

(28:52):
at the time. By the way, this is like how
he looks when he's Minister of War for the country.
Great mustache. It must be said. Everyone was wearing hats
like that back then. I don't know why, but they
do look that. One does look comfortable. I love it.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
I love a pretty baller cossack cat.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Those like shackos or whatever don't normally look that cozy
like his looks like it's knitted together at a wool.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
He's got this like sneer sort of thing down. Pretty
good like smirk.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yes, pretty good sneer of cold command. That Ramsey's look. Yeah, Yeah,
he's got it knocked down.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
I love that so stunning.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Yeah, my people's eyebrow game has been strong forever.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah, those those brows power acts fact, so all Resa
needs to do now at this point is in the
war with the Soviets and defeat his numerous local rivals,
most of whom are major tribal leaders who had gotten
These are the guys that the oil company APOC is
paying right like those local leaders are his now his
main rivals for power as well as like the Soviets.

(29:54):
So great Britain sends him a friend right around this
time to help him out, you know, now that he's
newly the Minister of War and this into a British diplomat,
so Percy Lorraine. Now, Persia is not seen as a
great place to be a British diplomat at this point
in time. It's kind of like a career death sentence
because things have not gone great for a couple generations
of British diplomats here. It's been messy for them. Percy's

(30:16):
not the Empire's best. He is smart, but he's also awkward,
and he's bad at being social or at editing his
own dispatches down into something people would want to read.
His coworkers nickname him ponderous Percy, which is a huge,
huge burn to British people. So basically the names these
names are and tiny Ironside.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
Get more British as the story goes along.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Right, So this shy book whem dude is supposed to
be like the liaison to Reza, and he immediately falls
for this handsome and heroic seeming fucking machine gunner who's
just made himself the Shah and all but name right,
just like Ironside, Rezza sums this guy up and charms
him immediately and writes back to his boss curs On.

(31:02):
He gets straight to what he has to say and
does not waste time in exchanging the delicately phrased but
perfectly feudal compliments, So dear to the Persian heart and
ignorant and un educated man. Nevertheless, he betrays no awkwardness
of manner nor self consciousness. He has considerable natural dignity,
and neither his speech nor his features reveal any absence
of self control. So that's how he's described by Lorrain.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
I have to say, he is in some ways so
atypical for a Persian man, from like not wanting to
show his kid's love to like not using flowery poetry,
like especially this age, every and like every older Persian
man fancies himself a poet, like the the language itself
is so flowery, like you say, like instead of saying

(31:48):
I miss you, you say my heart tightens for you.
Instead of saying like, uh, you know, we wish you
were here, it's we kept the space for you. It's empty,
you know, we have all these like flowery little bits
of landue. This guy is so like the opposite of that.
That's what's so interesting about him. He's so a typically Persian.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
And it's it's both because I mean, partly he's he's
only half Persian, right like his mom is Caucasian, probably
arm but he's he's probably he's not raised the way
like I mean, he's certainly not raised in a traditional
Persian family at all. He's almost basically an orphan, right
like he's he's so he doesn't have and I think

(32:28):
part one of the things that results in is that,
unlike a lot of other people who have stuff like
art to learn and culture and family that matter to them,
all he thinks about is power. It's the only concern
in his mind. His entire life is gaining and taking power, right,
And guys like that tend to be the ones who
gain and take power in situations like this because it's

(32:49):
all they think about. Yeah, cool, good stuff.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Just like podcasting in medical step.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Just like podcasting. Yeah. So Lorraine uses what influence he
has to convince his superiors to advance Reza enough money
to fund an army of eighteen thousand men. He also
argues that Reza should be the one that the British
back over several local shakes and cons who'd previously worked
with Anglo Persian oil. General Ironside also helped his friend
machine Gun Resa, filing a report with the British War

(33:18):
Office that promised Resa would quote solve many difficulties and
enable us to depart in peace and honor. Basically, if
we let this guy be in charge, he'll build an
army that works and we won't have to We can
leave and we won't have to be ashamed. We won't
like leave like we did Afghanistan. Just like getting beat
out right, and we can keep getting our oil right.
That's the argument Ironside's making. So it takes about two

(33:40):
years of fighting in the heartland of Persia for Reza
to take a hold of this chaotk situation, to beat
back his rivals and to restore a form of order
or take i should say power right over the rest
of the country outside of the capitol. Now the pretense
of a constitutional regime still exists. But Resu's prime minister

(34:01):
is like, well, now that you're the commander in chief,
that's a civilian job. You have to retire from your
military job and leading the Cossack brigade, right, and res
is like, no, I'm going to keep my private army. Obviously,
you never give up your private army. You never give
up your uniform if you want to be dictator. Right,
that's a bad idea, right there.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
Yeah, that's right, keeping that sucker on more medals on it,
more and more medals. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
And once this happens, basically everyone in the government realizes like, well,
this guy's the Shaw in all but name, you know.
So after he returns in like nineteen twenty three to
the Capitol at the head of an army that had
at least been semi victorious, Cohn was appointed prime minister himself.
Now he's still bound by a pinky swear not to
overthrow Ahmed Shah. But somehow Ahmed got the idea that

(34:45):
life in Persia might not be safe for him with
the Reza in charge for looming monster machine gun lover. Yes, right, yes,
So he flees to Europe, where he spends the remainder
of his life In next right now, Resa has at
this point they've basically made a kind of peace. You
know that things have been settled enough with the Soviets

(35:07):
that they're not worried about that taking about like communists
taking over the rest of Persia. And Resa sits down
with the Parliament and says basically, hey, have you guys
noticed I have all the guns? And Parliament says you
sure do, Resa, how do you like to be dictator
for life? And he says that sounds dope and an.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Ontobi of id.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
I'm smoothing some things over. But in October of nineteen
twenty three, he was appointed His Serene Highness and King
of Kings, although again he's not the Shah yet. In fact,
Resid debates briefly after this point what kind of government
should he impose upon his newly won land. Per the
World Policy Journal, Resa Khan had toyed with proclaiming a republic,
following the example of Kamal At a Turk, the Turkish

(35:47):
soldier reformer. He sought to emulate the King of kings,
claim to be a reluctant monarch, only agreeing to ascend
the throne at the urging of the Ulima or Mullas,
who thought that conservative Persia would fare better with a
shah than with a democracy. At the time, royal titles
were very much in the desert air, hence King Faisal
of Iraq. So he chose the peacock throne, right, So

(36:08):
he picks being a king as opposed to being like
a president, who would have been the same as a shaw.
He would have actually given up power. But he decides, well,
I'll just make myself basically king, right, So he's yeah, it.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Is interesting that he he goes and he tries to
connect with the Turkish leader and is seeing what's happening
in Turkey at this time because.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
He loves at a Turk.

Speaker 3 (36:30):
Yeah, I'm sure he sees like a strong guy who's
maybe modernizing Turkey at that point to do that, but
it seems like, and you'll know better than me, but
I feel like he's not the politician to do that,
he's not the leader to do it. The same with
the same sort of clarity that the Turkish at a
Turk would do.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Yeah, no, and he's not nearly as as bright at
a Turk was interested in actually building a functional state, right,
the Shaw is primarily interested in getting as much out
of Iran of like he wants to rob it blind, right, Like,
that's why he's in the He wants to be the Shah.
And it takes him bout a year of badgering Parliament,
but he succeeds in convincing them to formally depose the

(37:11):
old Shah and make him the new Shaw. And almost
as soon as as that becomes his job and we'll
talk about the actual process of crowning him, Reza Khan
changes his name to Resa Shah Pelavi. Now this is
inauspicious change. During the ancients, as you know, during the
Sassanid Empire, which dominated a lot of the Middle East

(37:33):
and North Africa except for the bulk of the land
mass of the Arabian Peninsula that it's like a lot
of the coast. The language by most that most Persians
spoke they was called Pallavi, right like, that was the
term for it. And Reza changed his name like he
does this, Like the reason he does this is what
Mehdi a Lavi and Attoul Sing, writing for The Fair Observer,

(37:54):
call a very clever public relations stunt. He's basically making
a nationalist pitch to like Persians saying like hey, or
I mean specifically to like Iranian Persians, saying like I
am going to be your leader and this is going
to be your country as opposed to these other groups
of people who currently live here, right, Like, that's the

(38:14):
pitch that he's made.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Was great branding, This whole thing was great brand Yeah,
changing the name and then he goes on to i mean,
his son actually goes on change the name of the
Anglo Iranian or Anglo Persian oil company to Anglo.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Yeah, well we'll talk about that.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yes, good brand they're good at branding, especially the father.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
There's solid branding. Yeah, it's yeah, it's lasted to this
day some of the branding they did, and there's there's
a lot of this stuff. So in their book, The
shah A bos Malani writes that prior to obtaining total power,
Reza began playing at piety in front or really we
talked about this a bit. He'd always kind of been
like the enforcer, like religiously that had been he'd gained

(38:54):
a religious like a reputation for that. He likes being
in good with the Chiaid clergy, and he really ups
that during the years when he's like, you know, in
charge but not yet the Shaw quote, he participated in
religious mourning processions and like the most pious of the mourners,
he beat his chest and brust his forehead in the
top of his head with ashes of sorrow and grief.
Not long after he was crowned, Resashaw would change course

(39:17):
and begin a carefully planned policy of limiting the power
and role of the clergy in Iran. So he's this
is going to be a pattern for him. The people
that he needs to get to power he's going to
fuck over fairly quickly, and that does include the clergy,
and there will be Titanic. You can tie the fact
that the clergy are in charge in Iran today to
his decision to fuck the clergy and some of the

(39:39):
things he does as a result of that. Right, we're
going to talk about all of this. There's really long
reaching consequences to this, but nobody calls his bullshit at
the time. Right, everyone's fooled by well not everyone's fooled
by resist charm actually Alavian Singh note in their piece
for The Fair Observer. Not everyone bought into Resashaw's sham
for courageous legislation supposed the new Shaw. One of them

(40:02):
was Mohammed Mosada, who would go on to become Prime
Minister years later. The British managed Resisha's coronation using the
coronation of King George the Fifth is their guide. So
you do have people who oppose him, including Masada, who
will talk. I mean we Margaret should talk about an
episode on her show.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
Actually, yeah, exactly. Most. So it's pronounced most. I'll give
you the most two versions of it, the easy one
and by the way, again, apologies because my Farsi is garbage.
Mozed deck is probably the easiest way to with more
of a Q sound, but I think it's pronounced more
mozed derr. It's one of these sounds that's hard for Americans.
Hey g h at the end, Yeah, that's that would

(40:41):
be a perfect, perfect person. I mean, he had some flaws,
I mean, but he was like he is one of
these heroes that's held up in secular Iran.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
I heard his name for the first time mispronounced in
songs that were angry about the CIA over throwing it,
about our government's rolling it's over throw.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Right, Oh, I love it.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
But yeah, we're not going to talk about him much
more in this episode. But I didn't want to note that, like,
not everyone is fine with what res is doing. There
is resistance. There's very brave resistance. So when he is coronated,
as I noted here, the British used bit like that
quote said the British, I'm going to go into a
little more detail about what that actually means when it

(41:23):
says the British used Resishaw's coronation, like use the coronation
of King Churse the fifth as their guide. I want
to talk about like what that means. So one of
the British people who's in Tehran at the time is
a writer named Vita Sackville West. She is a prominent
author and she's a good friend of Virginia Wolf, and
she happens to be in to Ron for the coronation

(41:44):
because her husband is a British diplomat and she kind
of inveigls her way into helping to plan the coronation,
which resisies is both a way to show his continuity
with Persia's grand past and to celebrate the coming new
modern regime. Now, Sackville West is not a fan of Tehran, which,
after a decade of nearly a decade of warren starvation,
isn't in great shape, right. She calls the city squalid

(42:07):
with quote few pretentious buildings and mean houses on the
verge of collapse and little else, which is not nice
given that, like your government really helped with the family
that Gill like half the people who lived in the country, Like, yeah,
he contributed to that London wouldn't look nice if forty
percent of British people died in a fam I'll bet
that much, right, Yeah, yeah, Well, I can.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Take a lot of criticisms, but like when they come
from the peerless.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Force, it's not a fair one.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
That's just not a fair one.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Nope, So Vida and the wife of the head of
the British legation literally sit down with books about the
coronation of King George the Fifth because res is like
ress people I should say, are like, we got to
figure out how to coronate this guy because this is
kind of a new thing, because he's not being like
the rest of the Shaws. How should it look and
they leave it to the British people, because well, you

(42:55):
know how kings and queens are supposed to take the throne, right,
you figure it out. And so these two women sit
down with these books about the coronation of King George
the Fifth, and they make notes about, oh, there's all
these symbols of power that they handed, and there's all
these swords and scepters and crowns and precious stones that
mean all these things and have these fancy names that
are part of this whole process, and they kind of
make their own version of it. For the coronation of

(43:18):
the Shah. I want to read you a quote about
this whole process of planning the coronation from a very
British coup by Scharen Brysac. But as I read all this,
I need you to remember that again, seven years earlier,
about half the country dyed of famine. When we're talking
about how obscene the display of wealth that this represents
really is. As Vita Sackville West recalled, the linen bags

(43:40):
vomited emeralds and pearls, The green bays vanished, the table
became a sea of precious stones. The leather cases opened,
displaying jeweled scimitars, daggers mounted with rubies, buckles carved from
a single emerald, ropes of enormous pearls. Then from the
inner room came the file of servants, again carrying uniforms
sown with diamonds, with a tall aggrete secured by a

(44:02):
diamond larger than the mountain of light. Two crowns, like
great heretic tiaras, barbaric diatems, compose a pearl of the
finest orient. We plunged our hands up to the wrist
and the heaps of uncut emeralds, and let the pearls
run through our fingers. We forgot the persia of today.
We were swept back to Akbar and the spoils of India.
Soon orders went out to shops throughout Europe. But after

(44:24):
the intercession of Lady Lorraine, Vita was given authority to
order china, glass, cutlery and stationary from London's royal purveyors.
She commissioned red liveries for the palace, modeled on those
worn by the British legations servants apropos of the coronation.
Vita Sackville West writes to her friend Gertrude Bell she
and Luis Lorraine have been very busy painting the throne

(44:44):
room pink.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
I'm I'm envisioning the scene from the cartoon movie Aladdin
where he comes in as Prince Ali Abavois, and I
wish we could talk about that movie for a long
time time. I got thoughts, I got thoughts. Yeah, boy,
it's so opulent.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yes yeah, yes, And this this this all this wealth
that like could have been used during the famine years
to maybe help with the famine, wasn't used for that.
And also there's an opportunity here in this capital that's
been devastated of like, well, we need a shitload of
cutlery and stationary in China and glass. You could have
a lot of that made by people in Tehran, by

(45:26):
people in the Greater Persian area. No, we're sending off
to London. You're sending money out of this starving country
to bring in stuff from London. It's just better, you know.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Be a job creator, right if nothing else.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, so this pisses some people off too, Really, I
want to yeah, I want to talk about how the
Shaw gets coronated. And here's how the biography of the
Shah describes them. Reza stepped into the hall where he
would be coronated. He's arrived. He's known as a very
punctual man. In fact, he's accused often angrily, of bringing
like the concept of puncture ruality to Persia that like

(46:02):
Iranians didn't give a shit what time it was before
ress like he is building a people's say.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
I'm calling you out la. So I'm calling you out
La Persians.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Sorry, So it's noteworthy he shows up late as like
a power move because he can right quote. At last,
there was a stir, The doors were opened and the
six year old Mohammed Reser that's his son, appeared in
the hall. Behind him walked the procession of the twenty
two political dignitaries, led by the Prime Minister. They were
carrying the many royal accouterment necessary for the coronation, three

(46:32):
different crowns, a scepter, three swords belonging to past kings,
and even a diamond studded royal bow and arrow. One
of the swords belonged to Nadir Shah, a powerful king.
He united Iran and was reported to have been planning
limits on the powers of the clergy. Nadir Shaw was
also alleged to have attempted a reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis,
and he was Resashaw's great hero. So he's kind of

(46:53):
signaling some of what he's going to be trying to do,
right by what stuff they pick for this. So the
Shaw's son after he's crowned, Mohammed Resapelavi was pronounced crown
Prints initially. Now that res is this Shaw. He promises
a reign free of religious influence or internal strife, and
he promises quote European style educational institutions, westernized women active

(47:16):
outside the home, and modern economic structures with state factories,
communication networks, investment banks, and department stores. In the words
of historian Aravond Abrahemian, right, he's saying, we're going to
be a modern country like all those European countries. Right,
and you know, there's a lot of good stuff that
sounds like those in those promises. You know, cut the

(47:37):
power of these religious tyrants, let women do more stuff,
sounds great, roads sounds good. A lot of that stuff
will in fact happen. Now, first off, it's always debatable
how much of this is actually how much of the
good stuff that happens has anything to do with the
Shaw or is it just stuff he takes credit for.
But the other thing that's important to know is that
like what he does, he does by instituting the most

(48:00):
direct one man rule possible. And this means cracking down
on and in many cases eliminating all of the local leaders,
the tribal leaders who had previously been friends to his
British patrons, and in it doing so in a very
brutal way. Ending internal strife means ending any fiction that
Persia is a nation of many peoples, and so it
was Resashah who officially changed the name of his country

(48:22):
from Persia to Iran. Per the Fair Observer, Resishaw's detribalization
and Persianization led to ethnic cleansing and genocide. William Douglass,
a noted American judge, had the following to note about
one community that fell fall of Resishaw, Lure after Lure.
That's the group of people, that's the ethnic group, like
the tribe that he's going after. Lure after Lure was

(48:43):
beheaded again and again. The plate was heated red hot
and slapped on the stump of a neck. The colonel
started betting on how far these headless men could run.
Every man, woman, and child had been killed. Not a
living soul was left. Wow, this is the kind of
shit his soldiers are doing to wipe out any other
groups that might be a threat to his power.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Like they're beheading people and cauterizing the bodies and then
like seeing how far their headless corpses will sprint. Fucking like.
This is a brutal, dehumanizing crackdown on everyone else. That's
a big part of what the Sha does. Oh my god,
have we had two ad breaks? Sophie? No, Okay, great,
this is a good time for one. So it isn't.

(49:23):
But let's do it. Anyways, we're back. So the new
Sha also put a violent in to what had at
that point been some eighty years of increasing press freedom.
Over the course of his reign, he grows increasingly obsessed
with the way Mustapha Kamal is doing things over in Turkey,

(49:46):
aping him res a band's traditional clothing. It was now
illegal for Iranians to wear anything but Western dress. Now,
this is something that gets missed a lot when you
see conservatives or other people post pictures of Iranian women
in headscarfs next to old photos The second shot in
this line of like women during the reign of that
Shaw in Tehran dressed like westerners, right, looking like women

(50:06):
in Western cities, right. And it's always framed as like
and it is fucked up that people don't have like
freedom to choose what they wear on their head. But
what is not talked about is how those pictures came
to be. And so I want to read you a
quote from a lobby and Singh's article about why you
have those pictures of women without head scarves in Tehran.
If they did not do so give up their traditional dress,

(50:29):
they were beaten and even taken into custody. This policy
caused a massive rupture with tradition. In small towns and villages,
people ignored the Shaw's edict and cities people suffered, especially
the women. Many women stopped going to public places to
avoid harassment and became involuntary prisoners within their own homes.
This is not a nice process. He's not freeing people.

(50:49):
So he's saying you'll be beaten if you do this
thing that you've been doing your whole life.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
Still, this is the point where I have to say
two things. There's two things I have to mention. One
and this is for all all the Aunties out there
who might be listening or hear this episode. Please no
angry emails. We can accept two truths are happening or
have happened, which is one the Shaw The Shaws were

(51:15):
repressive and fascist, and also the Moulaws are repressive and fascist.
And I would argue their worse, and I would say
most Iranians would say it's worse. But it doesn't mean
that what they were doing was good. This is not
the last time and it was not a nice time.
And also it probably led long term to some of

(51:35):
the conflicts that we had down the road with the
Moulaws and those that fascist Islamo fascist regime. Another thing
I will have you note when this meme was popularized,
where it's like they show, like the picture of the
women that this was Iran in the seventies and now
look their animals sort of always has a weird vibe
to it. I posted one of my more popular tweets

(51:56):
when I was on x or Twitter was a picture
of John Chaval in Saturday Night Fever, and it was
him dancing with the full on dance thing. You can
imagine where he's like on the dance. Folet's all lit up,
and I said, this is an actual picture of my
father in pre revolutionary Iran dancing, And to be fair,
it does kind of look like my dad, and it

(52:16):
does look like the kind of dancing he would do.
It looks extraordinarily persian. In fact, there's never been a
more Persian coded picture than John Travolta dancing in that
and it was very popular and up to everyone who
thought that was real, I apologize, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Yeah, it's just it's important to know that. Like again,
there are much better ways to Yeah, it's bad to
tell people they have to or can't wear a certain thing.
You can do that without saying it's now illegal to
wear what you were wearing before, and you'll get beaten
in the street if you do it. The shot could
have just said you don't have to dress like the
clerics want you to anymore, do whatever, and doing that

(52:53):
also probably would have caused a lot less of the
kind of resentment that builds up in the right right right.
It's just he's a dick about everything. He's a huge asshole.
That's Resus Shah basically. So Ron does modernize a lot
during Res's time, and power, and early in his reign
there are other people who are doing hard work and
good work. We're like competent political figures and allies who

(53:17):
is able to entrust to execute and create policy right,
and this is part of why there's a lot of
development in the country. Each of these men, though, grows
too powerful and popular for Res's liking. He is not
a guy who is good at trusting. The Encyclopedia of
the World of his Lam notes they were gradually eliminated
from the political arena, and most of them were murdered
humiliatingly at his behest. So not a great dude to work.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
God, I don't like that sentence. Murdered humiliatingly.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
No, that is no very that sounds bleak. Yeah, horrible. Oh,
I mean he likes cauterizing stuff. So we know that
there's some fucked up shit going on here. By nineteen
thirty one or so, the Shah is about as close
to a total desk but as one could be. But
his cruel he was to his own people. He was
deeply aware of how fragile his hold on power remained.

(54:04):
He had seen in action how little effort it took
the British to help him onto his throne over the years,
though he had also grown increasingly paranoid about their plots.
At the same time, he was terrified of the USSR.
And he actually gives the Soviet Union a big chunk
of what's today Turkmenistan in nineteen thirty three to try
and buy them off and keep them happy. And he

(54:24):
does the same to British oil interests. He gives them,
like concedes, a bunch of Iranian soil. He does this
a few times to and I think he does this
to Turkey as well. He gives away a sizable chunk
of his country in order to preserve his reign and
try to make friends with these foreign powers that he's
hoping will help keep him on his throne. And this
obviously pisses people off. He's literally giving away the country.

(54:48):
Public authorities in the media were ordered to describe the
Shaw as a reformer who had modernized the country. He
was given credit for reforms instituted by other past leaders
like Amre Kabir, while his secret police punished any one
who spoke out about the darker side of the regime.
Per Serene brysik Resa, Shaw's whim was absolute. His memory extraordinary,
his thirst to avenge proverbial his skin gossamer. No elective

(55:11):
constitutional system was allowed to grow roots under the Pelavis,
another break from Atta Turk's example to the untraveled Shaw,
the concept of a free press was unfathomable. When Resa
discovered that Iranians were still using postage stamps bearing the
portrait of the deposed Ahmed Shah, he sent his troops
to seize the entire supply. For some weeks, Iran remained stampless,
and since the newly minted ones with Reza's portrait were

(55:33):
slow and arriving from Holland, the old stamps had to
be retrieved and circulated. I'll bite with the exiled Shaw's
effigy blacked out.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
That's a bit. Somebody had to go through each one
of those stamps and just gride it out.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Yeah, like you just had a temper tantor He's like,
oh the stamps, confiscate them all and they're like, well,
no one can use the mail. Hey, hey, hey, boss,
that kind of a problem here. He's like, you got sharpies,
don't you.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
Well, yeah, and I'll have you note. This is where
this is the corner of the show in which I
talk about Persian contributions to the world, the postal system,
you like the postal service. Persians came up with that,
you like that love something that's that's our thing, one
of our things, and he fucked it up, fucked it up.
It's our thing, man, and you fucked it up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Yeah, it's been your thing. It's been your thing for
a while. Yeah. So when the Great Depression hits, oil
revenues from Great Britain dry up sharply. Again, the British
are nominally supposed to pay quite a bit to Iran
for the oil that they take out, but like during
World War One, they stop paying because they're like why
would we pay? Times are hard and during Great Depression

(56:44):
oil revenue is also dry up sharply. They're finding ways
to fuck with them. They're still selling oil. They are
often lying to the government because again APOC has never
cared about the government in Tehran, so they're often they're like,
the government Iran doesn't ually know what the British Navy's
paying for oil, right, Like that's all kept in a

(57:05):
black box from them. This piss is off the Shaw.
There's years of ongoing arguments with the Shaw and renegotiations
of that contract with Darcy, where the Shaws like, you're
fucking us because and they are. The Shaw is not wrong,
he's being fucked here. So it is still APOC, the
Anglo Persian Oil Company at the time, though it will

(57:25):
eventually be renamed, as you noted, the Anglo Iranian Oil
Company or AIOC. And just in case you're all curious,
it's renamed one more time and it still exists today, COVID.
Do you know what APOC slash AOK is today?

Speaker 3 (57:39):
Famously known for taking care of the environment, They are
now known as BP Wonderful Company, British Petroleum.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
British Petroleum. That's right, baby, that's these motherfuckers.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
They were from the beginning. It's so funny. Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
They were always evil, always evil as fuck.

Speaker 3 (57:56):
Even when they weren't killing like ducks and stuff.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
No, no, there's never been a leader of that company
who didn't deserve to be flung into the sun.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
Absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
The fact that Great Britain's fucking him and that the
old company's fucking him really wears on Reza and resentment
over this builds at the same time as an awful
lot so in the twenties up to the thirties, he's
getting increasingly angry at Great Britain and increasingly paranoid at
at at Great Britain. And at the same time, a
lot of Germans start coming to Iran and like a

(58:27):
lot of if a lot of tourists come and a
lot of like vacation German.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Investors look in this business.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Yeah, no to not very German regime. It's very nice.
Then you know, a guy gets elected in nineteen you know,
in the thirties who's not as nice, but but who
Resa Shaw finds himself actually in agreement with a lot
that guy his name is Adolf Hitler and is like
this Hitler guy. He's saying a lot I agree with

(59:01):
about how the British are evil and untrusted worthy. He's
saying a lot of other things that res agrees with too,
stuff on genocide that Resa might not be against. And
Germany this is actually one of the most successful. Like
German it's a mix of like a spying and like
an economic influence effort that, like the Nazi regime like

(59:21):
carries out over this period of time, which is that
by nineteen forty nearly half of all Iranian imports come
from the German Reich, and forty two percent of all
Iranian exports are entering Germany. So by the time World
War two starts, Germany is kind of more important for
the Iranian economy in a lot of ways than Great
Britain is. And Rezushah has come to believe that, like, well,

(59:46):
I've got these Germans who were good allies, right, Like
these these guys will be good friends to me, and
he starts he hates Britain and Russia both pretty much
the same at this point in time, and he kind
of at the start of World War Two he makes
a bet that, like, I bet Hitler's gonna win. I
bet this, I bet things are going to keep going
well for Adolf Hitler. This goes wrong for him almost immediately.

(01:00:07):
For first off, he shocked at the Molotov Ribbon trop
Pact in nineteen thirty nine that like, the Soviet Union
and the Nazis have a detent and invade Poland together,
because he's like, wait, but I don't like Russia. I
thought that we were on the same page about that Germany, right,
And when World War two starts, he's like, Iran's neutral,
trust me neutral, We want not. We're not siding with

(01:00:29):
the Germans here, but when the Germans invade the USSR,
that makes Russia and Great Britain allies, and they're the
British are increasingly unhappy with this guy who seemed very
sympathetic to Hitler being on the throne. And to make
a long story short, the Shaw is forced to abdicate.

(01:00:50):
He tells his son, I cannot be and this is
because like Russia and Britain, like primarily Britain, like sins
soldiers into Persia, right, they basically take the country because
they need the oil for the war that they're fighting
with the Third Reich, and they don't want this guy
who's untrustworthy to be able to cut off the Royal
Navy's fuel supply.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
It's part of why there's a conference in Tehran during
World War two, the Tehran Conference. It's a big deal.
And the Shah, Yeah, Reza is not a fan of
any of this. He abdicates, telling his son, I cannot
be the nominal head of an occupied land to be
dictated to by a minor English or Russian officer. His son,
who's twenty one years old at this time, Mohammed Reza

(01:01:31):
Palavi is immediately proclaimed Shah by the Mazles right after this,
and yeah, that's more or less the end of this
guy's story. Reza, the former Shah, gets put onto a
British boat. He goes to Mauritius first in the Indian Ocean,
but he doesn't like the climate and he eventually is
taken to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he stays under house arrest,

(01:01:54):
dying from a heart attack in nineteen forty four. And
that's the end of his life.

Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
That that's fascinating. First of all, when I heard that
we were doing the show, I had the wrong show
in mind. So this is fascinating because this is the
Shaw I know the least about. So that's really interesting
to get all this background.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
I thought this was all going to be the first
like two pages of a script. On the other shot,
I was like, this is just the context we need,
and I just found it so interesting and worth telling,
and I like, especially once I hit the fucking Great
Persian fam and I was like, well shit, this like
I need to refocus these episodes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
No, absolutely, And I do think it's so important because
it lays out the groundwork for what happens next, Yeah,
really importantly, and it makes it so much easier to
understand what happens next. I was under the impression that
he had flirted with the Nazis just because he hated
the British so much, but I didn't. I didn't realize
he was quite so sympathetic. It sounds like the Allies

(01:02:51):
had their their fears, which may or may not have
been grounded, but yeah, makes sense as to why they
went in and deposed him. It's always weird to me
that dynamic, like I because like, what does that mean?
As the sun? How do you stay behind? And that's
just so weird. I guess you have to. You feel
like it's your duty. In the best case scenario, you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Get to be the king. Your dad's never been that great,
you're twenty one, probably always figured you could do a
better job.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
I mean, I'm curious because at this time, I think
the twenty one year old Mohammed Resishaw the Sun was
just out there in like Europe, hanging out like with
like B grade celebrities and actresses and partying hard. So
I didn't I'm curious to know where he was at
in the stage in his life. But we'll have to
get to it as some other point three more episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Please, yeah, don't worry. We will, friends, we will, but
we're not going to do that today. Today we're going
to do something else. We're going to end the episode
with you plugging your pluggables.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Wow, beautiful, you're very good at this. Uh So, if
you like this show, I think there's a very good
chance you're going to like my podcast, The How of Pod.
It is a humor adjacent medical podcast. I have on
a rotating crew of co hosts and I try to
mix up medical expertise and people who are just fun

(01:04:13):
and I like to be around, like Robert and Sophie,
for example, And we'll talk about important metical topics, we'll
talk about medical grifters, and you know, I guarantee you
it's more fun than sounds. So check out the House
of Pod anywhere you get your podcasts. Our most recent
episodes include Influence Versus Evidence, which is a lot of
what we talked about earlier today. It's a lot of

(01:04:34):
looking at how we decide what happens in our healthcare
now and how we're drifting away from evidence. So anyways,
you'll like it, I promise.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Well, everybody that's been Behind the Bastards for this week.
Check back next week we will talk about someone else
who's sucked, you know, someone different.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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(01:05:16):
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