Part One: The First Shah of Iran

Robert sits down with Dr. Kaveh Hoda to discuss the first Shah of Iran. (2 Part Series) See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  What's illegal, my US invasions of several countries, actually, that have been happening recently and also my entire life? 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 happen here. But, you know, that's not what we do over at Behind the Bastards. You know, we're not, we're not breaking news here. Our specialty is like pieces of shit.

• 0:50Robert Evans?

  And that makes us, I think, well suited to talk about why is stuff, why is the Western world's relationship with Iran what it is? Like, how did, 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 1700s and the 1800s and the period of like particularly what was called the Great Game, which is, you know, kind of this thing that happens at the height of British and Russian imperialism. And you have to talk about the Shah, the very first Shah of Iran, because it's the Shahs of Iran that lead us to the current regime in Iran

• 1:35Robert Evans?

  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, we're bringing on my buddy and doctor, Kavahoda, also a podcaster, much more impressive than doctor. I should have led with podcaster, Kavah. I'm sorry. Welcome to the show.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  And musician. Thank you so much.

• 1:56Robert Evans?

  And musician. Many things. You're a multi-talented, a polymath.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  The key is to be bad at all of them. That's the key to doing this right. If you want to do multiple things.

• 2:06Robert Evans?

  That's a poly craft, not a poly mess. But yeah.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  You want to know what you are good at, though?

• 2:12Speaker 02

  What, what am I good at?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Being my friend.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  It's my best job.

• 2:16Robert Evans?

  Also being a doctor and a podcaster.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're a great doctor and your podcast is awesome.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  I'm good at one of those three things.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm hoping it's doctor.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  That's the one. That's really sort of the one I'm good at. The rest is you're gonna find out, listener and viewer. Not as much, but you know, I'll give it my darndest.

• 2:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, well, I mean, this is obviously like what's going on right now. The United States is doing, I mean, 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 is the current Iranian regime the way it is? That all starts well before the US gets involved, right? 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 Shahs rule so badly that they inspire a revolution, which brings us the Ayatollahs. And all of

• 3:21Robert Evans?

  these are 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, we're, obviously, Iran had previous Shahs. But we're talking about, like, the dad of the guy who got exiled when the current government of Iran took over. And how much do you know about the first, about Reza Khan, like, the first of that line of Shahs?

• 3:47Speaker 02

  That's, so, first of all, the, thank you for having me back on, first of all. Second, I-

• 3:52Robert Evans?

  Oh, shit, I talked right over that, yeah.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I'm so happy. 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 1953, 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. And, you know, you could argue, did a lot of damage and destabilized the region. So, it, what bothers me the most is that it's a story that most people in the United States do not know. They don't know the real reason why people in Iran may have taken- And over that embassy back in seventy nine.

• 4:37Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  You don't really know some of the anger, the anti-American feeling that happened at that time.

• 4:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Because before that, there was great relations, you know, for a while between the the two countries.

• 4:47Robert Evans?

  So yeah.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  I I think it's a really important story. I do know more or less the the basics of it. I 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.

• 5:03Robert Evans?

  Seems like a bad idea.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  It seems like a terrible idea. I'm not into it, but there are these characters in there, which I'm sure we're going to talk about like Mosaddegh, who are really interesting people. And there is a story here that really explains a lot about what what's happening here. The the Reza Khan, his son Mohammed Reza Khan, and now his his son, who's now a player in what's happening currently in the news. Uh, Reza Paulavi.

• 5:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah, from what Maryland?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 5:32Robert Evans?

  Where he lives? Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  So that is, it is something I know a little bit about, but part, part of the thing is, 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, were politically active, but getting a lot of information from them was hard about what happened during the revolution, not just because everyone has only their side of it, but because Iranians get so upset about it. Just be like, that that bastard did this and that's that son of a bitch did this. And then you're like, um, you're losing the story here with this and you can't really get the story from your your family. So it is nice to to, I think we're going to go into more depth about what actually happened now.

• 6:15Robert Evans?

  And I 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

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:30Robert Evans?

  after a while.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:32Robert Evans?

  And this son of a bitch and this piece of shit.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  It's a, there's a lot of that. Yeah.

• 6:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like you have to really work to be, and I, and I want to clarify, we're not even getting past, we're only getting up to nineteen forty one in these episodes. I wanted to do both. shahs 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 and how the oil situation gets started that you have to really talk to. So we will come back and we will do the sequel to these episodes, which we'll talk more about Mosaddegh as well. We're going to talk about him some in these episodes. But he's like, becomes the prime minister, I think, at 51. 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

• 7:18Robert Evans?

  into motion that we're seeing unfortunately come to very like a very bloody head right now.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:27Speaker 03

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• 8:02Robert Evans?

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• 8:34Speaker 05

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• 9:08Robert Evans?

  So we're gonna start these episodes talking about a period of time, this is gonna be kind of over to the, to the US, this is like happening in like the Civil War Reconstruction era, right? And in Europe, that's also a time of great change and of war, right? You know, not only is industri- is Europe industrializing rapidly in the 1870s, the Germans beat France in 1870 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 in 1871 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

• 9:52Robert Evans?

  growing and major concerns in this period after 1870. One is that you've got this Kaiser, and he seems really interested in expanding Germany's military capacity, right? And, and the Brits are kind of fine with the fact that Germany's got the most powerful army in Europe, you're, you're like, you Prussians 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, no one else is allowed to have a navy. That's really the British Empire's primary, like, foreign policy during this period, vis-à-vis Europe, is like, other people want boats? Wait a second, like, hold the fuck up.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Can I, can I also make a quick note? I love the way, when you say "the Germans," I don't know if you even meant to do this, you slipped into "the Germans."

• 10:43Robert Evans?

  The Germans, yes.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  It's very good, it's very nice.

• 10:46Robert Evans?

  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, and like, for days made him ill. It was like, "New York City salsa verde?" I was just thinking, "Motherfucker, I canned some barbacoa 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 hayseed grifter from a small town, I, sorry, my German friends, I know you can handle spices.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  No, no, uh, listen, we had a whole series of commercials in the 80s, remember? Where they're like, "Made in New York City, New York City got a rope."

• 11:27Robert Evans?

  New York City salsa!

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like a whole thing.

• 11:30Robert Evans?

  Very offensive to me, yeah. Um, I don't think they should be allowed to have salsa.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:35Robert Evans?

  So, um, 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, we, 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 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 19th century, Imperial Russia starts expanding troublingly close to India, right? Like, they start, there's a couple of different fits and starts where the Russians will, you

• 12:20Robert Evans?

  know, expand their territory and they keep getting closer to, to the British Raj. I want to quote from the article, "A Very British Coup" in the World Policy Journal by Shereen Bricek, quote, "The British watched nervously as the distance between the Russian Empire and India, 2,000 miles at the beginning of the 19th century, shrank so much that by century's end, as the Russian Empire expanded eastward at the amazing average of 55 square miles per day, as little as 20 miles separated the two empires in Central Asia's premieres. Squeezed 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 is being played out a game for the domination of the world.'"

• 13:04Speaker 02

  We're real proud of being a pawn, real proud of that one.

• 13:07Robert Evans?

  Great. Thanks for calling us pieces on a chessboard.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Fantastic.

• 13:13Robert Evans?

  Um, Curzon 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 imperialist of imperialists in the British Empire's history.

• 13:28Robert Evans?

  And this is why, Kerzan's comment is why participants came to call this struggle in, in what's often referred to as like the, the Near East, right? Between Russia and Great Britain as the great game, right? 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, doesn't work well, right? But that's, that's part of why that happens, right? Is it's part of this stupid game they're playing with the Russians. And it's all in the name of keeping India safe, right? They don't want Russia to get Afghanistan, and they don't want Russia to get Persia.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Right. Perfect.

• 14:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah. The actual name, the great game, I think comes in 1840, is the invention of a British spy named Arthur Connolly. He was corresponding with a colleague in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and wrote, "You have 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 a game they thought that was by the end there.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  This is the thing. 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. And 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, like, how much fun it was to overthrow.

• 15:01Robert Evans?

  What a great game.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  This, it was a game, it's so much fun, and they were good at it, and we won. It's just, it drives me batty.

• 15:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And millions of people's lives. And I take some satisfaction that Connolly in 1840 writes his colleague, "You have a great game, a noble game before you." In 1842, like, the shattered remnants of the army that had marched in to the first Anglo, to Kabul during the first Anglo-Afghan war, like, flee, because, you know, they get massacred, like, very badly. So, at least a lot of times, these guys got shot, but not nearly often enough, Kava. That is going to be, not nearly often enough.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  It's a recurring theme.

• 15:39Robert Evans?

  A lot of people get shot in this story, but not the right ones, generally. Usually some teenagers who got drafted from farms.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  It's always the kids.

• 15:47Robert Evans?

  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's, that is a cooler name.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  That sounds like a fantasy novel that I would probably read.

• 16:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah. A Tournament of Shadows, right? It's a great name for like a prestige TV show.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:06Robert Evans?

  Um, that will really disappoint you in maybe like the seventh season.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Right, the end is gonna get weird.

• 16:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So, for, for the British, again, the whole goal of this stupid game is to protect their, their territory in India. And the whole name of the game for the Russians was for the czar, each subsequent czar, to prove himself a good ruler. And the main thing you had to do as czar 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 I and is. But through the 1800s, again, 55 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 the Russian Empire at its maximum extent, it's not that weird. So, the, the Brits have a hard line of how close they want anyone, any European power to get to the Raj. And

• 16:55Robert Evans?

  the Russians feel like we have to expand constantly. And ultimately, Persia winds up standing in between both empires. So, in Persia, in 1785, you're gonna, help me with the pronunciation here, I think it's the, the Quajar dynasty, or Qajar dynasty? Q A J A R?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  I think it's Qajar.

• 17:14Robert Evans?

  Qajar, yeah, okay.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  I think it's, I think it's a, an actual J. I'm gonna preface this by apologizing to how many of our actual Iranian listeners you have, that my Farsi is only nominally better than Robert's. I mean, it's, 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 Farsi.

• 17:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  So, um, just, so sorry.

• 17:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the Qajar dynasty took power 1785 and they are the descendants of Turkmen from Central Asia and aren't seen as authentically Persian by a lot of people, right? Like authentically, not seen as belonging in what's called Persia, right? Because there's a lot of different ethnic groups there. Now, because the first Qajar king doesn't have like a really solid hold on power, he decides he has to put on a show in order to convince everyone he belongs in the job, right? 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 Qajar king is Fat Ali Shah and he's known, his nickname is the

• 18:21Robert Evans?

  super procreant because he has a lot of kids.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  By the way, and just so it's, if it's not obvious, the word Shah translates to like emperor, ruler, king, etc. 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 it means, so just in case.

• 18:41Robert Evans?

  And it often, in these names, it will come as like a last name, but that is his title, right? It's Fat Ali Shah is Fat Ali is the Shah, right? Reza Khan will become Reza Shah, like when he becomes the Shah.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  And he gave the name Palavi, because it was like the, I think it was like the ancient written script, I think.

• 19:00Robert Evans?

  Words for Persian.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it was, yeah, something like that.

• 19:02Robert Evans?

  And we'll talk about that because that's important to this. There's a lot of ethnic groups in Persia at the time and he's only really, the Shah's 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 Qajar king is known as the super procreant because he's fucking constantly. And that's also why the throne of the Shahs of 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 Abbas Milani, the author of a book called The Shah. Here's how they describe it. That superb and barbarous divan of enamel and precious stones with its arabesque designs wrought of 26,000 gems brought back from India as spoils of war.

• 19:45Robert Evans?

  It uses 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 a thousand wives of, quote, diverse origin, had a favorite concubine. This concubine was named Tavu, 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 found in one book for why it's called the peacock throne.

• 20:30Robert Evans?

  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? Iran is called the peacock kingdom or Perage is called the peacock kingdom at around this time, too. This should be viewed as kind of a story that a lot of people told as to why the throne got its name as opposed to like the absolute reason.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 20:57Robert Evans?

  Pretty cool name for a throne, story for a throne's name, actually.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  That is pretty, that is real Game of Thrones-y. That is very Game of Thrones-y.

• 21:05Robert Evans?

  I like it better than the iron throne. It's a nicer story than a bunch of swords getting melted together and a fun night.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, the peacock throne sounds better. The, the reality of these thousand women actually being into this guy, pretty low.

• 21:19Robert Evans?

  Probably not great.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  So makes it a little bit less charming for me, but yeah, yeah, it's a great name.

• 21:23Robert Evans?

  When you think about, yeah, the relationship dynamics, it's less fun, but yeah, it's probably more comfortable than the iron throne.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Way better than the iron throne.

• 21:31Robert Evans?

  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 Westeros has vaccines for that.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  And it's really cold, I think, to be on your butt.

• 21:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  I think if you were naked on it, I think it'd be really cold. I mean, there are things to hold on to, um, which is nice.

• 21:48Robert Evans?

  There's a lot of, a lot of grips. That's a good side.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  There's a lot of grips.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Did either of you watch the, the A Night of the Seven Kingdoms Game of Thrones show?

• 21:56Speaker 02

  I did. It's my first time venturing back into the world of Westeros since the original series.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  I, do I need to watch it? What's the vibe?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  It's fun. It's good. I mean, it it's a much lighter. I think they kind of read the room and they're like,

• 22:10Robert Evans?

  That's good.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  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.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  I I I was trying to decide.

• 22:23Robert Evans?

  We could talk about this for hours.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  We could.

• 22:25Robert Evans?

  We're talking about the Peacock Throne right now, Sophie.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Sorry, sorry, sorry. Got distracted.

• 22:28Robert Evans?

  Which has a much sexier origin.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  My friends are here. We're gonna talk about Game of Thrones.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  I could totally do that for like an hour, conservatively speaking. I have a lot of thoughts about it, but.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:38Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah. Solidly an hour. Um, 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. Sorry, guys.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Solid downhill from there.

• 22:57Robert Evans?

  It's all downhill from the Peacock Throne getting named. One of Fatih Ali Shah's most consequential decisions was that he signs a treaty in 1828 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 rebelling against the Shah, but it can't defend the country from other countries, right? And a lot of critics complain that this 1828 treaty makes Persia a virtual satrap of of the czar, right? Basically, Persia is just like a satellite state of the Russian Empire now.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:36Robert Evans?

  And so subsequent rulers in the Shah's line would veer towards the British whenever they got worried that, like, the Russians are getting too much power, in 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'll 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, right?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:00Robert Evans?

  Really, what the Shah and their successor, they just are getting bribes from both these sides, right? And they're getting a shitload of bribes from the British, who are getting more and more power over the Persian court over the course of the 1800s, basically by being like, hey, those Russians, I don't think they're. They're gonna stop at the stuff they got in their treaty. But you know, we've got British guns and we've got, we can send some, some support over from the colonies. And you know, we can really keep an eye on your backs, fellow. We, you know, if you just give us this little, this little bit of, some mineral rights here and there. And let us build a factory here and then, you know, export these, these raw materials. You'll never regret your dealings with the British Empire. That's kind of what's going on over like the 70 year period.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  You like tea, we like tea. There's no harm that could come out of this relationship, ever.

• 24:47Robert Evans?

  Two groups of people who like tea could never harm one another.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Oh, I will say 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 just being a coffee country. I don't want to be a tea country.

• 25:14Robert Evans?

  You must return.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  God, it really bothers me.

• 25:16Robert Evans?

  I know, I know. No, because Syria, the Syrians are really like kicking y'all's asses in the coffee department right now.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Oh, no, we, we lost our coffee game a long time ago.

• 25:25Robert Evans?

  I know, I know.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  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. They have that, but I mean, we, we used, it used to be like our thing, one of our things.

• 25:36Robert Evans?

  Right, yeah. So the situation going on between these British agents and these Russian agents all competing with these various shows 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 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 Raj in 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 Bouchere.

• 26:17Robert Evans?

  And here's Shereen Bricek 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 Sir Percy Cox and Lieutenant Colonel A T Wilson, cultivated ties with nearby shaktams. Kurzon, an eventual viceroy of India, visiting in 1889, spotted the Union Jack fluttering from the summit of the residency flagstaff 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 at will, he may be entitled the uncrowned king of the Persian Gulf." So basically, Kurzon realized that like, because we've,

• 27:01Robert Evans?

  like, we're running the show by 1889 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.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you do that, you do 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, you can get that entitlement, like you.

• 27:29Robert Evans?

  I'm channeling my ancestors.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  You channel it. It's a brilliant.

• 27:34Robert Evans?

  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 Shah, 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 to defending that independence." Basically, if we make, 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.

• 28:15Robert Evans?

  Basically to be like, hey, these Brits are taking over your country, guys, and they're, they're heathens, you know? Like, aren't you, you should be angrier about this. Why is the Shah letting them get away with that, right? So the, 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 of similar to what Iran does in Iraq when the US invades with Shia clergy in like Baghdad.

• 28:53Robert Evans?

  Interestingly enough, where they're, 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.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, we learned how to play the great game. We learned, we learned.

• 29:10Robert Evans?

  They're 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 getting the Shah to cancel a number of projects, including a railway project that he'd taken on that was supported 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,

• 29:50Robert Evans?

  subsidized by the Tsarist state, where the Imperial Bank was 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 10 seconds. The Russians are not as good about running like a legitimate bank. And this, the Russian Bank of Persia, its primary purpose is to bribe the Shah's top officials. 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 Tsar 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.

• 30:32Robert Evans?

  And the Tsar is influencing shit within the country by using the bank that he's created to bribe government officials. So this is what we've got going on here.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  This is, this is like where the sort of Archie being courted by. Betty, I think, and Veronica, where there are

• 30:51Robert Evans?

  Right, that sounds correct.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  A few people fighting for Iran is like, nice. This is like, so far, 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.

• 31:02Robert Evans?

  It's gonna get worse than banks.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:05Robert Evans?

  It's gonna get a lot worse than banks.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:08Robert Evans?

  So Russia's fortunes in the area ebb and flow on a daily basis, and they depended largely on the attitude of the reigning Shah. For example, in 1879, Nasr al-Din, who's the Shah at the time, visited Tsar Alexander II in Russia. Alexander II, intent on staging a good show for his neighbor, ensured that the Shah 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're 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 fought the Tsars for a very, they'd been a rebellion not all that long ago, and they'd been converted over time into the Tsar's Red Right Hand.

• 31:51Robert Evans?

  And, we're gonna talk a little bit more about that, but first, my Red Right Hand, the sponsors of our podcast.

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• 33:33Robert Evans?

  And we're back.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Yay.

• 33:36Robert Evans?

  So I want to quote from an article in CNN World News about the evolution of the Cossacks within Russia. During the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, the Cossacks fought for the Russian crown in regional wars against the Russian people, garnering a reputation as the czar's henchmen. Acting on behalf of the Russian Empire, the Cossacks carried out pogroms, or massacres of the Jews in 19th century Russia. So the Cossacks go from these people who were these 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 on behalf of the Russian Empire in this period, right? Like, these pogroms are very ugly.

• 34:21Robert Evans?

  There's, there's one that killed something like a million people in the 1800s, like 700,000 or something like that. Pretty hideous stuff. Now, there had been a Cossack rebellion led by a dude named Pugachev in the late 18th century. And in general, any expert on Russian history would have told you that a powerful autonomous cadre 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.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it seems like a bad idea.

• 34:52Robert Evans?

  Right, and the Cossacks had always been a double edged sword even for the Tsars. But Nasser al-Din, 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 18, or yeah, the late 1800s. He founds the Persian Cossack Brigade. I had not known there were Persian Cossacks. I thought that was just like, because like, Cossacks are like, from like, Ukraine is where a lot of like, Cossacks originate from. So the fact that there's a Persian Cossack Brigade is kind of wild. Um, I had not known that.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  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, you'll see that.

• 35:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Um, but this Kajahar dynasty, what's interesting about it is I know very little about it, other than the, 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, procreating and spending, wasting money on things. And Nasser al-Din is like, the one name I recognize as like, the epitome of that. Like, this is the most wasteful, terrible dynasty that's saying something for all the other dynasties that have been around and went on.

• 36:09Robert Evans?

  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, 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 to make sure that guy never gets close to power in the first place, because they're orchestrating who was in power. And they're doing that based on their own interests, not what's good for Persia.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  And it happens time and time again. This is, this is the story. This is how it's laid out from time to time thereon.

• 36:46Robert Evans?

  Yep, and obviously like these individual shahs 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 a lot to do with it. So the Tsar, Alexander II, had had the Shah 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, I need someone to go in and massacre them."

• 37:28Robert Evans?

  That's why you have an elite group of horse guards, like the Cossacks. And so the Shah 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 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 Shah starts, adopts this idea, starts hiring Cossacks,

• 38:07Robert Evans?

  you've ensured the Shah's bodyguard unit, basically, is in control by your guys. That's a big win, if you're Russia in this period, right?

• 38:18Speaker 02

  No, I think this is, it's so interesting to learn about this. I'd heard about the Cossack Brigade and a little bit of the connection to the Palavi family.

• 38:27Robert Evans?

  It's a big connection, yes.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  But I still don't, I don't entirely understand, like, the concept. 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 like a... But it's a formal like, oh, what are the the bad guys in Dune? The the remember like the ones?

• 38:45Robert Evans?

  They're more like, kind of more Sardaukar in, 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 had like your settled civilizations? And then these groups of like nomads on horses who 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 use guys on horseback because horses are really good at breaking up mobs.

• 39:31Robert Evans?

  It's very scary to be charged by a bunch of guys with sabers on horseback.

• 39:37Robert Evans?

  And that's the, the Russian Cossacks, that's what they do. These are the guys you send in when these villages 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, 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 too. In 1896, Nasser is assassinated while at a shrine and his Cossack bodyguards fail to protect him. As a general rule, they're not great at that part of the job.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  We don't protect, we hurt. It's not our thing.

• 40:15Robert Evans?

  Oh, no. All I got taught was how to hit people.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  We're more of an offensive thing, less defense.

• 40:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah. 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 1900s start going, are in a chaotic place, to say the least. Shereen Brysak describes the country during this time as "a playground of Russian and British spies." Tehran is very much the way Berlin is going to be during the height of the Cold War, right? It's this city where, 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 own agents in

• 41:03Robert Evans?

  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 sapoys and Bengal Lancers from India to protect their guys. At the start of the 20th century, Russia and England had reached an accord, which Bricek writes was settled without informing, much less consulting, the leaders of Persia. 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. Their

• 41:48Robert Evans?

  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 1901, when this agreement gets kind of inked, neither power is 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 1892. 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, his findings

• 42:29Robert Evans?

  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 Wolfe, 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 Wolfe introduces the Persian Commissioner to a guy named William Knox Darcy. I assume he's an actual descendant of Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Much less lovable. Honestly, he probably is. Because William Knox Darcy is a millionaire who'd gotten rich speculating on gold in Australia. He sounds like that guy's kid or something.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Still blows my mind that Mr. Darcy is also Tom Lons' gams from Succession.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Blows my mind.

• 43:15Robert Evans?

  I don't know that show.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  I don't know that show.

• 43:17Robert Evans?

  But they're apparently doing a new Pride and Prejudice. And it looks like shit.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  I know, I know women love Mr. Darcy and I don't entirely understand why.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Love Mr. Darcy.

• 43:26Robert Evans?

  They love that scene where he like, she brushes his hand and he like, twitches like crazy.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Shake a little bit, yeah.

• 43:32Robert Evans?

  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 gonna branch out in oil speculation as well. In 1901, he offers the rulers of Iran 20,000 British pounds and 16% of annual profits gained from exploiting 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 1901. The number of people who have like, used gasoline for anything is very small. The vast majority, it's horses are walking for most people, right? And trains are a thing, obviously.

• 44:15Robert Evans?

  So, uh, yeah, you've got this guy, Darcy, uh, who gets involved and he, he basically bribes the rulers of Iran with 20,000 pounds and a chunk of annual profits to exploit as much oil as he can find there. And nobody cares because oil's not worth all that much yet. In fact, Darcy nearly bankrupts himself, paying for the deal and he, trying to build the infrastructure to start taking Persian oil to market because there's nothing there. Nobody's been digging or ex, 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, uh, which is, despite the name, based in Glasgow. And Burma Oil is, has the capital necessary to make Darcy's dreams a reality.

• 45:00Robert Evans?

  So Darcy's now in business with, with this Glasgow-based company and they're starting to build oil wells and whatnot and drill in Persia. And at the time, this is one of a bunch innumerable deals by which Persia's natural resources are being sold off for the benefit 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, is starting to become an increasingly significant thing in this period of time, and literacy is fairly high in the cities. Regular people are very aware that they're being robbed by both the British and the Russians,

• 45:43Robert Evans?

  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 Turkmen warriors who'd served as the bulk of the Safavid military. And the Qajar's had a Russian branch, which, again, because these are Turkmen people, this is all very complicated ethnic stuff, but the, the ruling dynasty in Persia at the time are Turkmen, which means they have Russian cousins who are nobility in the Russian empire, which means the shahs of Persia are related to the czar, which endears them to the czar, right? They're not directly related to the czar, but they're directly related to other royals

• 46:27Robert Evans?

  within the czar'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, or 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 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 the, this dynasty is seen. As Sharir Kia wrote in an article for the National Council of Resistance on Iran, or N.C.R.I., quote, "The Qajar crisis influenced by Russia and Britain had led Iran to financial ruin and a political crisis.

• 47:10Robert Evans?

  They were weak against foreign influence and oppressive of citizens." So by 1905, people are, are, are sick. They are fed up with this shitty-ass dynasty. And the king is, because, you know, Nasser had gotten assassinated, and his successor by this point is aging and ill. And there's enough unrest with elites in the capital that they form a parliament, right? There's this, like, national- Assembly formed in Persia called the Majlis as the result of a lot of work by a lot of different activists within the country, a lot of different, like, 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 taken advantage of as hideously

• 47:54Robert Evans?

  as the Shah's regime had. And the Majlis draft a constitution, which was approved regretfully by the Shah right before he died. And the Shah is kind of in this position of like, if I don't approve this, it's allow this bit of democracy or have a rebellion, right? That's the dire situation he 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 interest, 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 in functional self-governance. Historian Ru Hola Ramazani writes that they, quote, "destroyed the foundations of this new government twice

• 48:39Robert Evans?

  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 within Persian society keep sabotaging these efforts because they don't want this to happen.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  And this is the same thing, this is the same thing that happens with the National Front later.

• 49:00Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  The same sort of dynamics they use to play against the more secular elements, the religious elements, they use them the same exact manner. God, just in such an easy playbook.

• 49:10Robert Evans?

  It's always, it's so, it's really frustrating when you lay it all out like this. So, in 1908, Russian interests install a new Shah on the throne, Mohammed Ali Shah. And he celebrates his newfound power by imprisoning his own prime minister, who had been semi-democratically elected by the Majlis, per Shereen Brysak's article. "With a loan underwritten by the Russian bank and with his own crown jewels as security, the Shah hired rioters to storm the Majlis. 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 its records

• 49:52Robert Evans?

  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 RT. It's fucking nuts.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  That's insane.

• 50:08Robert Evans?

  And obviously very sad. Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  And the Majlis, 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.

• 50:23Robert Evans?

  It's partly like, I don't think any of these are like quite perfect term. It's like a national assembly type deal, right? Like it's a semi democratic body, basically.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Okay. But it doesn't translate perfectly to senators and senate and that sort of thing.

• 50:40Robert Evans?

  Not really. 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, it's a, it's a type of parliament, basically. That'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 a Russian military commander as governor of Tehran. And this is not popular. In fact, it inspires a mass uprising. And this is one of these beautiful moments where Pete, 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 op, normally opposed political groups unite together in resistance

• 51:25Robert Evans?

  of 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 shahs in history. He, he, he is, 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 12 years old. 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 Curzon.

• 52:07Robert Evans?

  Um, so we have gone from haha, the Russians took over. And basically this mass movement forces them out of power and forces the Shah 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?

• 52:26Speaker 02

  And in the movie, the regent is played by Ben Kingsley. That's exactly who plays that, that character. He's half Indian, uh, half white to my understanding, and he has played an Iranian in like four movies. And, uh, and it's, and they're never good, they're never good characters, never.

• 52:46Robert Evans?

  No. 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 in 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 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, how did you win? What the fuck? Like, that's, that's, that's, that's the way the British play stuff in this period of time.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Great reference.

• 53:25Robert Evans?

  Now, one reason why you had this popular uprising against the Russians and why like the Majlis 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 shockingly free press during this whole period of time from like the, about this point in the story forward up until we get the, the last dynasty of shahs. There's like a really vibrant media ecosystem, particularly in Tehran. Uh, the, the first Majlis had put an end to the stifling control the aristocracy had exerted on media. And so even when the Persian people lacked the power to stop Great Britain or Russia from doing something,

• 54:10Robert Evans?

  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 Shah's court. Public opinion of 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 a still other foreign country's economic system are like, we need someone reliable, trustworthy, and unbiased to fix this economy. Let's find an American.

• 54:55Robert Evans?

  The fact that that's the way things worked back then is crazy.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  It is wild, but I will say, you know, until the whole 1953 coup, like, 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 of contempt 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. McCluskey, I forget his name, but like, there's a

• 55:35Robert Evans?

  There's a few, yeah.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there was a real, like, you know, warmth.

• 55:40Robert Evans?

  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. Schuster is the first American that I'm aware of who has a significant political impact in the Persian government, and his experience couldn't have been more different from the Americans who would follow. For one thing, Schuster 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

• 56:25Robert Evans?

  going to cut into their graft. Because Schuster 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, you're 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 1911, Schuster, who's now the Treasury Secretary, sparks outrage with the Russians when he confiscates the home of the former Shah's brother, who was a Russian citizen. Schuster was in the right by any rational observation. The exiled Shah's brother had not been paying taxes for years, but the British and the Russians filed formal complaints against this guy with the Majlis,

• 57:08Robert Evans?

  who ignore the complaint to their peril. The Tsar sends his army in and he shells Tehran, killing many pro-independence liberals and clergy members. They shell this, the capital and kill a bunch of people because this guy Schuster takes one dude's house for not paying taxes. The Russian army also shells Shia holy sites as the British look on, but avoid direct intervention themselves. On Christmas Day, 1911, Schuster is forced to leave Persia. 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.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  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. And they were, I mean, early.

• 58:02Robert Evans?

  Nice guys.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, there was a couple.

• 58:04Robert Evans?

  Tried. Yeah.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, right. They, they, 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, that did try to do the right thing.

• 58:14Robert Evans?

  They tried to do the right thing like the Spike Lee movie. And you know what else is like a Spike Lee movie?

• 58:20Speaker 02

  It's the, it's, it's probably, and, 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.

• 58:35Robert Evans?

  Bingo bango.

• 58:38Speaker 04

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• 1:00:12Robert Evans?

  And we're back. 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 15, 1878, in a town called Alashht in the province of Mazandaran. His father, Abbas Ali, 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 Caucasus region.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:53Robert Evans?

  We don't know exactly where she's from because paperwork isn't anybody's 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. Reza'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. When she remarries in 1879, Reza's 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? Yup.

• 1:01:36Robert Evans?

  And she's basically like, "I gotta try with a new family, kid. Sorry, here's an uncle, you know? Hopefully he'll take care of you."

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Explains a lot.

• 1:01:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Oh my goodness.

• 1:01:46Robert Evans?

  Not great. Now, from what little detail we get about his early life, we can conclude that Reza's family saw him as an opportunity to increase their fortunes and little else. In 1882, 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 exactly how old Reza is when he joins the military. I've heard both 14 and 16 and either is really plausible. You can get a hint of why by looking at this 1909 photo of a unit from the Brigade and look at the differing ages of those soldiers. Cause one of those, there's like a bunch of-

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  They're really small.

• 1:02:29Robert Evans?

  That's a child. There's some guys clearly in like their 50s and there's like a nine-year-old. And there's a few people who look like they're kids. That's a child. That's an actual child. That's a straight-up boy, yeah?

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  That nine-year-old though seems to have medals, which is pretty cool. There's a story there I'd like to hear.

• 1:02:44Robert Evans?

  That nine-year-old kills, has killed a lot of men.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  Right. He's seen some things.

• 1:02:49Robert Evans?

  He's a hard nine.

• 1:02:52Robert Evans?

  So Reza 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 the Dutch consul general. He does fight in a couple wars. He's a good soldier. He's particularly good with a 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.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Got Wu-Tang Clan sort of vibe to it. So yeah.

• 1:03:28Robert Evans?

  Right, right.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  That works.

• 1:03:29Robert Evans?

  He rose rapidly through the ranks and by the 19 teens, he's one of the highest ranking officers in the Cossack Brigade. Shariar Kia 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, Shereen Brisek adds, "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 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

• 1:04:12Robert Evans?

  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, he'll kick their asses. Like, that's, that's who this guy is. And that's the reputation. He's the heavy. Right. He's the tough that you send in.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:04:31Robert Evans?

  So basically, he was cooked up in a lab to become a Western-backed dictator, right? All that was needed was the proper impetus. And this brings us back to William Darcy and the question of Iran's vast oil reserves. Anglo Persian Oil, the company Darcy eventually establishes, enjoyed a monopoly on Persian crude oil for years. But it's not until 1914 that the world gets a good eye look at just how big a deal this is going to be. Because in the lead-up to World War I, Great Britain is hungry for- Or any advantage they can get over the rising power of Imperial Germany. I talked about that at the start of the episode, right? Germany's building a fleet that can that can compete with the British Royal Navy. And so Great Britain needs an advantage.

• 1:05:15Robert Evans?

  This enters into the picture Admiral Sir John Fisher. He was described into 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 be like, we should switch to oil from coal. Right? That's a good idea to 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 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 a ton of oil to exploit.

• 1:05:59Robert Evans?

  Darcy seeks out and befriends the Admiral in 1903 at a Bohemian spa where Fisher engaged his in his main pleasure outside of being an oil maniac, which was dancing. So Darcy basically.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Is that code for something or is it legitimately dancing?

• 1:06:13Robert Evans?

  I think he's just a dancer and I think Darcy befriends him dancing at this spa. And they become buddies.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Robert Evans?

  Straight buddies, I'm sure.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  I've been to a lot of spas, don't remember anything about dancing, just saying.

• 1:06:25Robert Evans?

  Lot of dancing at spas. They were different back then, so.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Let's let's be real. That sounds pretty fun, like a spa where you just like relax in a hot tub and then dance, a dance spa.

• 1:06:35Robert Evans?

  I think that's what Dirty Dancing is pretty much about.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Kind of, honestly.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're totally right. It's a dance spa.

• 1:06:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's a dance spa. So there's a Dirty Dancing scenario, right? That's very integral to this story.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  And he had and and he had the time of his life.

• 1:06:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he had the time of his life.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  Darcy's, this is Darcy and I'm sorry, who is the person again that he is courting here?

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  Admiral Fisher.

• 1:06:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Admiral Fisher.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  Admiral Fisher, the the oil maniac.

• 1:07:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And in 1904, after he and Darcy become friends, Fisher becomes the first Sea Lord, which is a real job in the British military hierarchy.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Oil maniac to Sea Lord, that's not bad.

• 1:07:12Robert Evans?

  That's right. He's the first Sea Lord.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 1:07:15Robert Evans?

  Thought was a job for Aquaman, but okay.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  I was thinking L. Ron Hubbard.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  Sea Commander.

• 1:07:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So Fisher keeps on talking up this idea. And by 1911 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 1911 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 1914, the House of 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 I broke out, Persia remained neutral but supplied oil to Britain. In fact, Persian oil arguably led to Allied victory.

• 1:08:05Robert Evans?

  The conversion of the British fleet to oil gave them advantages over the German fleet, powered by a coal greater range and speed and greater refueling. In keeping with their imperial tradition, Britain paid a pittance to Persia for oil."

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  That's fucked.

• 1:08:18Robert Evans?

  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 fact that they've switched her over to oil. And again, Great Britain is fucking Persia. They're bribing the Shah, but the Persian people are getting very little for their resources.

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  Again, something, a pattern that, that will play out for a long time.

• 1:08:43Robert Evans?

  This is fucked up, but the real fuckery is still to come. During the war, World War I, 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 because farmers are constantly having dudes fight over their fields and shell them so they can't grow as much food. And also, you have 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,

• 1:09:26Robert Evans?

  as Zara Adalati and Majid Imani write in an article for Third World Quarterly. Ein Ol Sultana, a well-known Iranian chronicler, wrote in a newspaper entry of 19th April 1917 that famine and hunger prevail in all parts of Iran. Muslims and people of all faiths are dying, and Qum in the center of Iran currently, 50 die each day, and Hamadon, 30,000 have registered as destitute. In this heartrending description, he further stated that people in Tehran were taking sheep's blood from the slaughterhouse to feed themselves and their children. In fact, several Iranian newspaper reports in 1917 to 1919 highlighted the occupying forces' attempts to seize food and grains and block people's access to food.

• 1:10:07Robert Evans?

  So, no one really debates that what happens next is a human-engineered, or 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 1943, a lot of people understandably blame the British. From that same paper, quote, "Highlighting the role of the occupying powers in the Great Persian Famine, some scholars have pointed to the issue of oil capitalism during the 20th century. The financial policies adopted by Britain, for instance, their refusal to pay oil revenues to Iran in the middle of

• 1:10:49Robert Evans?

  the Great Persian Famine, indicates their lack of concern for Iran's starving people. 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 Amartesian called entitlement failure. Thus, besides natural factors, pandemics, socio-historical context, and the incapability of the central government, the Great Persian Famine was also caused by the occupying forces that pursued 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 emphasize that the Russians are also hugely involved here, too. At the early stages of the Russian Civil

• 1:11:33Robert Evans?

  War, once that kicks off, 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 100,000 Persians are made effectively homeless just by this. 10,000 villages are abandoned largely because Russian forces are seizing everything that makes them habitable. 10,000 villages abandoned.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  I'm just, I've never heard, I'm sure there's a listener right now, some auntie who's gonna be yelling at me right now because I didn't know this, but I never, I never knew about this.

• 1:12:10Robert Evans?

  Oh, wait till you hear the scale of this disaster. So, British diplomat Harold Nicholson wrote, quote, "Persia had been exposed to violations and suffering not endured by any other neutral country in World War I." And it's hard to argue with that point. Eight to 10 million people, roughly half the pre-war population of Persia perish in the Great Persian Famine.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:12:34Robert Evans?

  Like about 40% of the pre-war population die over the course of like World War I up to like 1919. Wow. As a result of all this. Hey guys, I just wanted 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 it more like eight to 10 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, I don't feel comfortable saying like one is definitely

• 1:13:17Robert Evans?

  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 the scale of this. We don't talk about this.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Robert Evans?

  Because it's a very complicated famine. It's not as simple as just Russia or Great Britain starved Iran. There were a lot of factors.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:37Robert Evans?

  Including some environmental ones and aspects of local government, but like Russia and Great Britain and the Ottomans play a huge role in why eight to 10 million, half of fucking Persia nearly starves to death.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:49Robert Evans?

  And nobody talks about it anymore.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  That's nuts. That's insane.

• 1:13:53Robert Evans?

  It's nuts. Yeah.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  Wow. I have to say, I really appreciate, sorry, 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. There's so many different factors. It's a lot of stuff, a lot of different parts.

• 1:14:12Robert Evans?

  I know I've left stuff out, and obviously, like, we're only going up to, like, 1941. But like, this is, like, when we're, and 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, horrific human consequences to imperialist fucking around in that part of the world. It's all bad stuff. So, it is not until 1921 that Britain and Russia fully withdraw their forces from Persia. Given that the Tsarist, or largely, given that the Tsarist government had collapsed by this point, leading to civil war in Russia, throughout most of the worst of the famine, educated

• 1:14:55Robert Evans?

  Persians blamed the British for it, because they saw the British as being the controlling power in their lives. And there's an element, a degree, a sizable 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 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 communist, too. And that is gonna tee up part two. Kaba, how you feeling?

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  I can't wait. I want to hear it now.

• 1:15:30Robert Evans?

  Oh, oh, well, you'll hear it in a second. You'll hear it in just a minute, Kaba. But first, let's hear your pluggables.

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  Uh, 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. We've tried to make things as fun and as less scary, if that's a word that I can use and 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 look at all kinds of different medical malarkey that's out there, try and present you the science in a way that is...

• 1:16:19Speaker 02

  I think honest and nuanced and clear. So I think you will enjoy it. You should listen to it and you you will hear some episodes with both of these lovely people on that podcast, The House of Pod. You can find it anywhere you find podcasts.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Hooray.

• 1:16:33Robert Evans?

  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. We're all, do any of us, are we all just flotsam floating through cosmic debris? Yes. Goodbye.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Maybe, but I but I'm definitely in control here. Bye.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/behindthebastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

• 1:17:33Speaker 06

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• 1:18:04Speaker 05

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• 1:19:04Speaker 03

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