Thomas Small You've seen Dune, haven't you, Aimen?
Aimen Dean Loved it so much.
Thomas Small You know what? As I've been preparing for this episode, I've been listening to the Dune soundtrack on repeat. Just constantly. You know, that amazing, weird soundtrack. Do – do you think that makes sense? I mean, it has a kind of – a kind of Islamic style, a kind of Middle Eastern-style soundscape. And the whole story is pretty – pretty Muslim, isn't it?
Aimen Dean Well, yeah. I mean, talking about the Mahdi and Lisan al-Gaib and, you know, Muad'Dib and all of that. But the secret to a good adaptation, just do not cram the whole damn novel into just one movie. Just split them.
Thomas Small I was thinking that Dune is basically projecting thousands of years into the future into this kind of Islamic universe, this sort of Islamic galactic empire or something. And, of course, in Conflicted …
[THEME IN]
… we're trying to, like, go back thousands of years to explain the present. It's like a little—. It like looking in the mirror. With Dune, it's the opposite of what we're doing.
[THEME OUT]
In episode three, we showed how America's first foothold in the Middle East was in Saudi Arabia, with its largest oil reserves in the world managed by an American company, Aramco. And last time, we explained how geostrategic realities have informed Russian geopolitics for centuries.
In this episode, we shift our focus to your favourite country, Aimen: Iran.
Aimen Dean Oh, it is my favourite.
Thomas Small Nobody could have known this at the time. But with hindsight, we can see that, at the beginning of the Cold War, Iran had somehow become a whirlpool, swirling with all of the twentieth century's clashing ideological and political forces. All the players are there—an autocratic monarch in the old style; a newly formed communist party conspiring revolution; aristocratic liberals demanding economic and constitutional reform; Islamist terrorists; big oil; a declining European empire; the Soviet Union reviving Czarist geopolitics; and, of course, America, the new superpower. It's a big episode. We've got a lot to cover.
But I keep meaning to ask you, Aimen. It's been two years since the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the – the head of the Quds Force. And we did a bonus episode on – on his assassination at the time. Two years later, what's your estimation of the impact that his assassination has had on – on the region?
Aimen Dean Well, of course, it's very clear that, since he's assassination and removal from the picture, the fortunes of the groups that Qasem Soleimani used to be the godfather of—.
Thomas Small Groups like Hezbollah and, you know, even the Houthis.
Aimen Dean If you see that the Houthis are now having trouble maintaining their grip on power in the territories where they control and they failed in their offensive to take the historic city of Marib, you know, where the oil fields are located and the hydro – hydroelectric dam is located. On top of this, it seems that there—. You know, well, Qasem Soleimani's favourites group in Iraq, the [unintelligible 0:03:20], lost a considerable amount of power in the last elections. They went down from forty-eight MPs in the parliament to only seventeen. They lost thirty-one MPs. It shows his absence really, you know, present itself very clearly in the politics of the group – countries where Qasem Soleimani was active in.
Thomas Small Amazing how the Americans, by taking just one man off of the field, could have affected such a big change.
Aimen Dean If you remember, we described Qasem Soleimani as the hard disc that contains the secrets, you know, of Iran's external strategic operations in the region. Take him out, and he is offline completely. That hard disc is completely offline. And it is very visible how his absence has created this gap that cannot be filled by anyone else in the Iranian regime circles.
Thomas Small Iran. Aimen, you know, I studied Arabic and Islamic studies, which is why I know a thing or two about that wacky religion of yours. And I—.
Aimen Dean More than one and two.
Thomas Small And I – I – I could never say I regret studying Arabic, because Arabic has opened up tremendous cultural and historical and, indeed, theological vistas to me. That said, if I do have a regret, it's that I didn't study the language that has been described as the language of poetry, par excellence. And, of course, I'm talking about Persian or Farsi.
Someone once wrote, "What Persian poetry expressed was not an enigma to be solved, but an enigma that was unsolvable." And at the risk of sounding like an unreconstructed Orientalist, this really resonates with me as a kind of Westerner. Because for us, in the West, Persia has always been, like, the great enemy, the essential other. It's always been there, but we – we struggled to imagine it. It's like a mirage.
The ancient Persians are almost the mirror image of the ancient Greeks. You know, they're both Indo-European peoples, originally from the Eurasian steps. They were both newcomers to an already very old Bronze Age civilisation in Mesopotamia and the Levant. They were both destined in ways to inherit that older civilisation. Persia first, then Greece, when Alexander the great sacked the monumental Persian capital of Persepolis and set up court in Babylon, not as a Greek emperor, really, but as the last Persian emperor.
And the Persians had a tremendous impact on the Bible. The three magi, the three Kings from the orient who visited Jesus and gave him gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I mean, they were Persians. They were Zoroastrians.
Ideas like creation in six days or at least six categories, ideas like paradise, which is just the Persian word for "a walled garden." The—. The—. A strict distinction between good and evil. Characters or realities like angels. The fact that moral behaviour is the criterion for some kind of post-mortem blessedness or punishment. All of these things actually were in Zoroastrianism and were carried out into the worlds that they conquered by the Persians.
So, I want to ask you. I mean, that's my perspective as a Christian thinking about Persia, as a Westerner thinking about Persia. But you, Aimen, as a Sunni, and given everything you've said about the Iranian regime on Conflicted, I mean, I imagine you basically hate Iran. Isn't that right?
Aimen Dean No. I don't hate Iran as a whole. I love the people. I love the culture. I love the music. I love the food. You know, there is so much to love and so much to admire about Iran and about the Persian people.
And remember that, you know, even though I have, you know, no qualms whatsoever with my fellow Muslim – Muslims who, you know, follow the Shia faith, the reality is that, you know, we cannot even associate Shia faith with the Persians, because their conversion to Shia Islam happened only four hundred and fifty-five hundred years ago. That's it. And that doesn't even make them less Muslims.
The reality is, for me—and I always say this to all my friends from Iran and of Persian descent—I say, I tell them two things. First, I dislike the regime. But everything else, you know, I adore and admire. That's the first thing. The second thing is that DNA doesn't lie. I am thirty-three percent Persian and I'm very proud of it.
Thomas Small Now, is – is this from your Dirani heritage? Because, you know, greater Persia and all the Persian peoples of – of Central Asia, they're all sort of basically the same stock, aren't they?
Aimen Dean Exactly. So, I have, you know, no qualm. I have—. I have—. I have—. You know, I can almost say I am half-Persian and half – half-Arab, you know, with some, you know, Turkic blood mixed in here and there. And, for me, you know, to hate Iran or to hate the Persian race or culture or traditions is to hate half of me.
Thomas Small Well, especially as a Muslim, you know, you – you – you – you were right to raise the – the topic of – of the way in which Islam developed in – in Iran. Because, in fact, you know, the Iranian influence over Islam in general has been immense. It's been said that the conquered conquered their conquerors so much that the Persians end up having an impact on Islam.
Aimen Dean Tremendously. In fact, the Abbasids, they were able to topple the Umayyad dynasty, thanks to the support of the Persian armies. It was then the Persianisation of the government, of the systems, of the departments of governance. The divans, as we used to call them. And the golden age of Islam started when the Persians, led by the Abbasids, were able to merge and incorporate what the Umayyads built in terms of civilisation and in terms of foundation of the state, and merged with it the science and technology and learning that the Persians brought with them. And then, the age of discovery and the age of translation started. And the contribution of Persian scholars to this is immense and cannot be eclipsed at all
Thomas Small That period of history is known as the Iranian Intermezzo or the Persian Renaissance. It began in the sort of the early ninth century and it continued until the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in the early eleventh. We discussed the Seljuks in episode two, because the Azeris consider themselves to be descendants of those Turkic conquerors.
It was during the Iranian Intermezzo that Iranian poetry really came into its own. You have Rudaki, Ferdowsi, whose epic poem, the shahnameh or The Book of Kings, recounting the Persian past, perhaps more than anything, revived an Iranian national conscious.
Aimen Dean Indeed. Not to mention that, ironically, the Arabic language were preserved and codified, I would say, you know, thanks to the efforts of Persian linguistic scholars, such as Sibawayh.
Thomas Small I suppose if you – if you're converted to Islam, the – the religion of Arabic, you have to know Arabic in order to worship. So, the Persians were very invested in getting to know Arabic very well.
Aimen Dean Indeed. Sibawayh wrote the most comprehensive dictionary in Arabic.
Thomas Small Once Islam had sort of grabbed the heart of Iran, there was a sudden explosion of mysticism and visionary theology for Muslim Iran. Al-Hallaj, Suhrawardi, Rumi, Hathas, Omar Khayyam, Jami, Mulla Sadra. These names are immense in the history of Islam. Iranians contributed so much to the development of that religion.
Aimen Dean Talking about Rumi, he is my favourite. Really my favourite Islamic philosopher and poet. However, one of the funny memes that I've seen online, I see his picture and he is saying, "My poetry is not about your ex-boyfriend." So, I thought it was so funny.
Thomas Small For the listeners who don't understand that meme, Rumi is famous for his extremely romantic, love-infused mystical poetry. Of course, it's all sort of about the love of God. But I think a lot of people today, especially in the West, think that it's – it's sort of like Valentine's Day card stuff.
Anyway, I could wax lyrical about what the idea of Persia means to me and all that stuff forever. But I think we need to get back on track. You know, the last—. In the last episode, we talked about Russia and Russian geopolitics. Well, Russia and Persia have a very long relationship.
As a result of wars between Russia and what was then officially called the Sublime State of Iran in the early nineteenth century, Azerbaijan was divided in two. We mentioned this in episode two. The northern part was occupied by Russia and the southern part remained part of Iran, which is the reason why there are millions of Azerbaijanis in Iran today. Now, after capitulating to Russia, the shah and the ruling dynasty then were the Qajars, who were, in fact, Azeri Turk in origin. The Qajar shah turned eastward. He focused on retaking territories in present day Afghanistan, which he'd lost to local rivals—i.e., your ancestors, Aimen, the Diranis. This pissed off the British, who were firmly in control of India and needed to protect their north-western frontier, prompting the Anglo-Persian War of 1856. Eventually, the British compelled, the Qajar shah to agree to a number of demands, including never to invade Afghanistan again and then, later, to two notorious economic concessions, as they are called, the Reuter concession, in 1872, and the D'Arcy Concession, in 1901, giving foreigners near total control over the Iranian macroeconomy.
Now, because it found itself stuck between two imperial rivals (Britain and Russia) Iran, particularly struggled to withstand the onslaught of modernity, more so even than their Ottoman rivals to the west. This resulted in an almost cartoonish smack in the face when, in 1907, the British and the Russian signed the Anglo-Russian Convention, unilaterally decreeing Northern Iran part of Russia's sphere of influence and Southern Iran part of Britain's. They hadn't even bothered to inform the shah about this.
Aimen Dean Typical.
Thomas Small Two years later, in 1909, oil was discovered in Iran. But because of the D'Arcy Concession, this fell into British hands by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. As you can imagine, this foreign interference was deeply resented by the religious clerics for obvious reasons (Westernisation, secularisation, evil heathens coming to conquer us), but also by those known as bazaaris, the merchant middle-class who watched as profits, usually reserved for themselves, flowed to outsiders instead. In a remarkable precursor to the Iranian revolution of 1979, in 1906, an alliance of clerics and bazaaris, supported by the British as it happens, resulted in what's called the constitutional revolution. The Qajar shah was forced to agree to the formation of a national parliament called the Majles, which then drew up a constitution modelled, strangely enough, on the Belgian constitution. Voting took place, and representatives from around the country were elected, including one Mohammad Mosaddegh, about whom we've got more to say later.
The constitutional revolution wasn't a great success. The clerics quickly began to fear the liberals who aimed at the secularisation of society. So, they threw their support back towards the shah, who was supported by the Russians, who shelled the Majles in 1908.
The next decade was politically chaotic. The central state lost control of its provinces. The local economy continued to crater, not least because trade with Russia had been undermined by the catastrophic Bolshevik Revolution there, but also because famine broke out during the First World War, which shredded what remained of Iranian sovereignty as Britain basically took full control. It was not good.
Now, given this history, Aimen, putting yourself in Iran's shoes, it's not hard to see why you Iran's attitude towards Western powers is so mistrustful.
Aimen Dean In fact, I see a lot of similarities between the Iranians and the Chinese here. I mean, basically, the resentment after the Opium Wars between, you know, China and the Western powers and the imposition of trade, sanctions, and unfavourable trading terms on the Chinese by the Western powers, it's almost mirrored exactly. That is in Eastern Asia. Now, in Western Asia, you see that exactly being imposed in the Iranians.
Thomas Small Yes. And like Iran, China is also a great, an ancient civilisation who felt totally offended by being treated like that. You know, they thought, "Well, we deserve better. We are a great people."
Aimen Dean Absolutely. I – I – I think it is the unfortunate position that Iran found itself in, especially after the First World War. It was never a participative power in the First World War. But, nonetheless, they lost between twelve to fifteen percent of the entire population, thanks to famine, drought, as well as the Spanish influenza. So, the economy was in tatters. And at the same time, the oil wealth, which became so immensely important to the rest of the world, and especially when it comes to military, you know, strategy. And yet they can't benefit from it because the terms of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was so unfair that they were receiving nothing but peanuts. Peanuts.
Thomas Small Definitely, Aimen. Iranian oil would prove a curse as much as a blessing.
Jumping forward a bit to the Second World War. In 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest military operation in history, a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. Now, this is interesting. This relates to what we talked about in the last episode about Russian geography and its geopolitics. A major prong of the Nazi advance was toward the Volgograd Gap in the Caucasus—i.e., in the direction of Iran. To protect its oil interests there and to maintain a line of supply to its ally, Stalin, Britain occupied Iran. To protect its oil interests there and to maintain a line of supply to its ally, Stalin, Britain occupied Iran, landing troops in the south who marched northward while Russian troops invaded from the north and marched southward. The two sides met in Tehran. Thirty thousand troops would arrive later after America joined the war. It was particularly humiliating for Iran. The shah at the time was not a Qajar, but rather the man who had, with Britain's help, overthrown the Qajar dynasty in 1925, Reza Shah Palavi. Dun dun dun.
I mean, Aimen, it's so funny. When I – when I say the name, I just get this sort of, you know, shock of fear through me. He was such a – a powerful personality, known as the Iron shah.
Aimen Dean However, he was still a failure,
Thomas Small Oh, poor man. But, Aimen, he was powerful. You see pictures of him. And his eyes, his eyes, they're sort of hypnotic. They'll—. You look at – you look at them and you'll do whatever he says. Reza Shah, a commoner, a mere soldier, and yet immensely formidable. He founded the Pahlavi dynasty. Now, this is the dynasty that would itself be overthrown in 1979.
He had done much to limit British control and get back Iranian sovereignty. He – he was a moderniser like his hero, Ataturk in Turkey, and he was a Persian nationalist, something new in Iranian history, which had always been a traditional, multicultural, imperial state. He pursued a policy of Persianisation and helped to deeply integrate the idea of Persian nationhood in the people of Iran.
That – that sense of Iranian ethnonationalism, it – it really remains to this day. Wouldn't—? Would you say that, Aimen?
Aimen Dean Yeah. I mean, it gives them a sense of imperial nationalism to an extent. I mean, because they are always looking back at the history and the extent of the Persian empire. I mean, sometime, I see RIGC-linked accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms, you know, putting what is the ideal map of Iran today. And, you know, to my surprise, I see the map encompassing parts of Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, Azerbaijan, parts of Turkey. But then, I see all of Iraq, all of the eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Bahrain and Qatar, and, you know, the entire Gulf, you know, Coast on that side, which is oil rich, funny enough, Syria and Lebanon. And to my horror, I see the Israel-Palestine plains or extending all the way to Egypt. And then, I see out of nowhere, Yemen being part of that, you know, map.
Thomas Small Yemen?
Aimen Dean Yes. Yemen. Because—. And not many Middle East listeners will know this, but, actually, Yemen, for a brief time, maybe seven, eight decades, you know, between the late five hundreds and mid-six hundreds, were, in fact, a – a Persian province.
Thomas Small This is during the Sasanian Empire, the Sasanian period of Persian history.
Aimen Dean Indeed. When the Prophet Mohammed sent his messages to the Kings of the earth at the time in order to accept Islam, one of the messages went to the Sasanian Persian governor of Yemen. By then, Yemen was already a Persian province for roughly seventy years. Yet even though it was only seventy years over the past two and a half thousand years of the long life of the Persian Empire or the Persian people, yet they still believe or, at least, like, the RICG-linked people, still believe in this ethnonationalistic, imperial fantasy of incorporating Yemen into it and incorporating all of these lines I described.
Thomas Small That's fascinating. It really shows how – how ancient history is still informing the present, for sure. Now back to Reza Shah, one thing that I found interesting about Reza Shah is his modernisation programme involved him doing something very similar to what King Abdulaziz was doing in Saudi Arabia at the time. And this is forcibly settling the nomads.
We talked about this in the last episode. Iran, like Saudi Arabia, like all of the Middle East in the early twentieth century, still had a very stark distinction between the urban-settled and the agricultural peoples and nomads, who lived a nomadic life. And Reza Shah put an end to it just like King Abdulaziz was doing across the gulf.
Aimen Dean Oh, yes. Because, at the end of the day, these nomads are a source of instability. They could be the fifth column that could be hired by any invading power, whether the Soviets or the British or any other invading power.
Thomas Small Yes. And if you're – if you're involved in the – in the process of updating your state to modern norms, you know, where borders are fixed and the state rules absolutely within those borders, nomads don't fit in very well, because they don't really believe in borders.
Aimen Dean Or settlement or laws or regulations or anything. And, of course, you know, if they remain nomads, they will not be paying taxation.
Thomas Small As we said, Reza Shah was a moderniser and he had focused especially on modernising and strengthening the Iranian army. This is why the Anglo-Soviet invasion of 1941 was so humiliating. His army had folded very quickly. And Reza himself was sent into exile. His son, aged only twenty-two, was installed as shah by the allies, though he was not really allowed to rule and remain confined to the palace for the duration of the war. This young man, Mohammad Reza Shah, would, in time, become an iconic figure. He is the shah whom the Ayatollah Khomeini would overthrow thirty-year years later.
Mohammad Reza Shah, he truly was iconic, wasn't he, Aimen?
Aimen Dean He was iconic, yes, but for all the wrong reasons, you know. Extremely extravagant in a nation that was generally languishing in poverty. He was extremely pro-Western in a society that was still plagued by religious dogma. And he was cruel in his application of the state security force in order to crack down on opposition using the infamous SAVAK, trained by, you know, none other than the Israelis, in order to crush dissent in his domain.
And yet he was a weak-willed individual. Nonetheless, his extravagance drove everyone to the edge of despair in Iran, which led, of course, later to his eventual demise.
Thomas Small It's really hard to see in the image of that iconic shah from the 1970s that twenty-two-year-old who ascended the Peacock Throne in 1941, installed by the allies. He—. He's so young. He's so – he's so nervous and gentle. And his experience of the war could not have been easy.
While Iran was occupied by the allied powers, a historic meeting took place in Tehran between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. This was the first time that all three had been around the same table. It was during this meeting that Operation Overlord was agreed. That's the 1944 invasion of Normandy, including the D-Day landings. But, more importantly, for our purposes, the allies signed a treaty, agreeing that they would all withdraw their troops from Iran within six months of the end of the war.
Well, we all know how that terrible war ended, with two nuclear bombs ushering in a new Nuclear Age. Everyone has heard of the Manhattan Project, the American programme to develop the bomb during the Second World War, and we all know what the consequences that had, not least on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Aimen, give us an overview of how the Nuclear Age has impacted geopolitics in the Middle East? Which countries now in the Middle East have the bomb?
Aimen Dean Well, at the moment, there is only one country that is known to possess the bomb, at least as an open secret, which is the state of Israel.
Thomas Small What about Pakistan?
Aimen Dean Can we include Pakistan in the Middle East?
Thomas Small This is a vexed question. I couldn't—. I – I think for the purposes of this podcast, we include Pakistan in the Middle East.
Aimen Dean If we include Pakistan in the Middle East, and the fact that Pakistan is a staunch ally of Saudi Arabia, militarily speaking, then, yes, we can say that Saudi Arabia is, in theory, covered by the Pakistani nuclear defence umbrella.
Thomas Small So, Israel has the bomb, Pakistan has the bomb, and – and, through Pakistan, Saudi has the bomb. In fact, I've read that Saudi has a couple of warheads in Pakistan, really, with its name written on them. It's – it's theirs.
Aimen Dean Just a couple. Actually, it's twelve. Twelve nuclear warheads that the Saudis have access to. And, at any given moment, if Iran tests a workable nuclear device and it become a solid member of the nuclear club, then Saudi Arabia, the next day, will have a twelve nuclear bombs ready at its disposal, should anything, you know, well happen like this, so.
Thomas Small We did a whole bonus episode on Iran's nuclear ambitions when we discussed another assassination, this time by the Israelis, of the Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Go back to your listener and give that episode a relisten for a refresher course.
In that episode, we discussed the Iranian nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which President Trump withdrew from in – in 2018. Now, Aimen, President Trump's gone, Biden's in, and his administration is now trying to get America back on board the deal. How is that going? How are those negotiations going in your view?
Aimen Dean The reality is that the Iranians, you know, stretched as much as possible the length of talks between them and the Biden administration almost to thirteen months now, and the reason is because they wanted to buy as much time as possible in order to enrich as much weapon-grade uranium as possible in order to blackmail the West and the rest of the world, into believing that they are about to produce a workable nuclear device.
Thomas Small As a way of getting better terms.
Aimen Dean Yes. The whole idea is to get as better terms as possible. But also, at the same time, the fact that once you reach that critical mass, that critical threshold, I would say, you know, you have come so close that, at some point in the future, if you want to restart, then, instead of waiting four years, you only have few months and you will achieve your goal.
So, in reality, the Iranians were achieving two aims here. One, they are in a position to blackmail the world powers into saying, "Look, we are only weeks away or a few months away from having enough weapon-grade fuel to build nuclear devices." So, the West start to panic and agree to some of their outrageous demands. And on top of that, the ability in the future that even if they sign it right now and stop all the enrichment, that, in the future, once they resume enrichment, they will be much closer to achieving their goal, because they will be starting from a more advanced position than they did in 2018, when President Trump withdrew from the, you know, the nuclear deal.
Thomas Small Given the negotiations that are ongoing, it was surprising that, a few weeks ago, to – to read that America had – had actually lifted all of the sanctions on Iran related to non-military nuclear usage, their non-military nuclear programme. Why would they have done that? I mean, that seems to be a very dangerous thing to do right in the middle of these negotiations.
Aimen Dean They had nothing to do with the negotiations. I have it on good authority. And, you know, I always have access to good authority anyway, so.
Thomas Small That's why I'm talking to you, Aimen.
Aimen Dean I have it on good authority that, actually, it's nothing to do whatsoever with the current negotiations that are taking place in Vienna. The reality is that the Iranian nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which is just on the Gulf waters and surrounded by the Zagros Mountains—.
Thomas Small This nuclear reactor built by the shah with German and French help. Is that—? That's right?
Aimen Dean Yes. But they were never finished. And so, in the mid-nineties, the Russians came and they finished it. So, we have a somewhat bastardised nuclear reactor there with German and French parts, with a reactor made in Russia on top of them.
Thomas Small Oh, my goodness. That does not sound very stable.
Aimen Dean Forget stability, man. Like, you know, forget the technical and the engineering stability. We're talking about the fact that the reactor is sitting on a seismically-active fault line, you know, with frequent earthquakes reaching sometime the, you know, levels of six and seven degrees on the Richter scale. Now—.
Thomas Small Why the hell was a nuclear reactor built there in the first place?
Aimen Dean Because the shah looked at the map and he thought, "Okay. This is the most remote area away from the Persian-Iranian settlements and cities, surrounded by mountains. If there is a nuclear fallout, then the mountains and the prevailing wind direction, you know, will make sure that it's the Arabs, you know, across the Gulf."
Thomas Small Goodness.
Aimen Dean "The Kuwaitis, the Saudis, the Bahrainis, the Emiratis, the Qataris. They are the ones who are going to be screwed up." I mean, so, you know, so charming. Very charming of the shah.
Thomas Small So, what does this nuclear reactor have to do with the recent lifting of sanctions on non-military nuclear usage in Iran?
Aimen Dean Because that nuclear reactor, as I said to you, sits on a seismically-active fault line, lots of earthquakes between now and then, it needs repairs and it needs spare parts. And there are some—. Let's say, you know, I—. You know, no pun intended. But there are some intelligence leaks about some radioactive leaks, you know, from that reactor in recent weeks, which suggest that there is the need for repairs, urgent need for repairs and spare parts to come from certain European countries. So, the need for a waiver to these sanctions was necessary. Otherwise, we could have a Chernobyl on the Gulf.
And that could spill disaster for the Gulf states. Why? Because Kuwait as well as the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia as well as Bahrain, Qatar, and, to a greater extent, also the UAE rely on desalinated water, water produced from, you know—. Well, you know, they – they suck the, you know, water from the sea. They remove the salt. It become a drinking water for the people who live in the desert, where there are no lakes or rivers, or even, you know, significant amount of rainy days. So, if the waters of the Gulf are to be contaminated with radioactive materials from that nuclear reactor on the Iranian side, say goodbye to the fisheries there. You can't eat, you know, the famous Gulf Hamour fish or the shrimp there, unless if you want to become Aquaman, a radioactive Aquaman. And the reality also is that you can't desalinate the water, because the water, while you can remove the salt from it, you can't remove, you know, radioactivity from it, I mean. So, yeah. It's a disaster waiting to happen.
Thomas Small All this talk about radiation, nuclear reactors melting down, nuclear bombs being developed, it really does put us right back into the beginning of the Cold War. And let's – let's go back to our story of the Middle East and the Cold War. America dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as we said. Stalin was already actually developing a bomb of his own, which is a fascinating spy story in its own, right? Because infiltrators within the Manhattan Project had been passing secret info to the Soviets. The first successful Soviet bomb test was carried out in 1949. And from that point on, the nuclear arms race began.
However, for those four years in between the atomic attacks on Japan and Stalin's first bomb, America's monopoly on nuclear weapons gave it tremendous leverage at the outset of the Cold War. And this was first demonstrated in Iran. As I said, the allies, who were then occupying Iran, had signed a treaty, agreeing that they would all withdraw their troops within six months of the end of the war—i.e., the 3rd of March 1946. In January of '46, the US and Britain followed through. But it soon became clear that the Soviets weren't going anywhere. Thus, began the Cold War. It began in Iran, specifically in Iranian Azerbaijan.
Really, Aimen, all roads seem to lead to Azerbaijan this season. Why is that?
Aimen Dean Well, because of all the complexities. You know, it has all the ingredients. It has an ethnic minority. It has, you know, an active communist, subversive, you know, elements and separatists. It has oil. And it's sitting on a crossroad between civilisations. The Persians, the Turks, the Russians, the Arabs, the English, the Americans. Yes.
Goodness. I mean, what more do you want?
Thomas Small So, let me try to sort of set the scene. We're in – we're in Iran 1946. The first player here that we want to talk about is the Tudeh Party. So, the Tudeh Party is the communist party of Iran. It was founded in 1941. It had offices all around the country, but it was most strongly represented in Iranian Azerbaijan.
Let's call it south Azerbaijan from now on. It's clearer that way. So, south Azerbaijan's capital of Tabriz is an absolute icon of Islamic splendour and power and Persianate culture. Tabriz had featured heavily in the Persian-Russian wars that we discussed before. And, thus, the province, as a whole, had fallen within Russia's sphere of influence in Iran. And so, it was, let's say, the most modernised part of Iran.
Anyway, the Soviets took advantage of the Tudeh Party's organisation in south Azerbaijan to encourage two secessionist movements there, one Kurdish and the other Azeri. In addition to communist partisans, local Azeris and Kurds were angry at the Persianification policy, which the exiled Reza Shah had imposed on them. So, these two secessionist movements resulted in the foundation, with Soviet help, of the Republic of Mahabad, a Kurdish Republic, and the Azerbaijan People's Government. Now, the Republic of Mahabad was defended by none other than the Peshmerga, those valiant Marxist Kurdish warriors who, to this day, are defending Kurdistan from ISIS, from Turkey, from all of the players in the region. It's still there today.
Aimen Dean Well, you know, it just shows you basically, not only is a small world, but a small history also. Like, you know, I mean, the – the Peshmerga, which means, you know, "the men of death" or devout people who are willing to die, you know, for their cause, yes, their roots are Marxist. And that remains so for a very long time. And I think, because of the fact that they were always opposing, at one time or another, you know, either a pro-Western nation or a pro-Western power like Iran or a pro-Western power like Turkey, because, you know, Turkey was a NATO member and the shah was always perceived as a pro-Western. And, therefore, their adoption of Marxism was, you know, inevitable at some point.
To this day, they are still loyal to some extent, to some extent, at least, to their, you know, Marxist, you know, communist roots.
Thomas Small Well, because the northern half of greater Azerbaijan was already Soviet and was comparatively richer and more developed than the southern half, it's no surprise that communist ideas were circulating in the south.
As far as Stalin himself, ideological motives played a role. But I'm afraid it was also, and mainly, about oil. He had been seeking a concession to Iranian oil in the north of Iran. And the UK and the U S were actively seeking to prevent this.
The situation was very tense. So, the United Nations Security Council met. Interestingly, the United Nations Security Council's first resolution was to set up the security council and its second resolution, passed only a week later, was to demand that the Soviet Union withdraw from Iran.
So, it really is part of the history books here. The Security Council's first move was to demand the Soviets to withdraw from Iran. And because, at that time, America had the bomb and had a monopoly of nuclear force, the Soviets were compelled to do so. And they – they did so in May.
Aimen Dean Yeah. But it wasn't just pure muscle by the Americans. Also, they were trading with Stalin. "Okay. Get out of Iran. And, in return, we will reduce the amount of military aid we give to the Chinese nationalists who are fighting your allies." You know, Mao and his forces.
Thomas Small It's amazing, you know. It just – it just goes to show that in the Cold War, no event happens in a vacuum. Something in Iran is actually linked …
Aimen Dean No.
Thomas Small … to something that's in China, that's something in Moscow, that's something in God knows where. The Cold—. In the Cold War, everything is connected.
So, that's the Tudeh Party and the Azerbaijan crisis of 1946.
As the forties unfolded in Iran, other players, you know, arose onto the scene, one of whom, very interestingly, is a group called Fada'iyan-e Islam. This group, which actually still exists in Iran, is a precursor to the sort of Islamic terrorist movements that we know today. They were nationalists. So, they weren't a globalist Islamic movement, but they were nationalists. And they assassinated several Iranian politicians in the late forties and the early fifties. And though the shah would blame it on communists, in 1949, Fada'iyan-e Islam actually tried to assassinate him.
So, Aimen, this raises the question: What has Iran's impact been on the development of Islamic radicalism in general? I'm thinking in particular of the name Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, a nineteenth century political thinker, who has been called the Father of Islamic Modernism. He advocated pan-Islamic unity against Western domination. And, in fact, in 1869, one of his followers assassinated a Qajar shah.
Aimen Dean Indeed. He is one of the most influential figures who, of course, resided in Egypt at some point and taught at Al-Azhar University. And there, he taught the principles of pan-Islamism to oppose what he see, the British-French colonial domination of the Muslim world. All the way from the British Raj and its influence in Afghanistan and Persia, all the way to Iraq and Egypt, and the French involvement in north Africa. He was seeking to build that pan-Islamism. And he saw, in Cairo, an important centre for this, because it sits right in the middle, between the influence of the British and the French in the colonial era.
Among his students was Muhammad Rasheed Rida, who had a great influence on Hassan al-Banna, who would later establish the Muslim Brotherhood movement [unintelligible 0:41:56.8] in Egypt in 1928.
And the funny thing is that, the ironic, is that the Fada'iyan-e Islam would have, as one of its members, a man called Navvab Safavi. Navvab Safavi went to Egypt and was actually trained by the Muslim Brotherhood there and brought with him a group of the Fada'iyan-e Islam. Some – some of them were trained in Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood and then went back to Iran to carry out their assassinations and acts of sabotage.
What is more interesting about Navvab Safavi is that his nephew is none other than Musa al-Sadr, the founder of the Amal Movement in Lebanon in the 1970s, which would later then give birth to the infamous Hezbollah in Lebanon.
And also one of the greatest influences on Navvab Safavi is the fact that he met Sayyid Qutb in the early fifties in Egypt and was influenced by him.
Of course, later, Navvab Safavi would be executed by the shah in 1955. But twenty-four years later, Iman Khomeini would describe Navvab Safavi as the first martyr of the Islamic revolution in Iran.
Thomas Small It's a reminder of how the phenomenon of Islamist terrorism, of Islamist globalist jihadism, is much older than we think. Much older than 9/11, much older than the Iranian revolution. I mean, a hundred years before Khomeini, you have characters like al-Afghani already fomenting similar ideas that would ultimately, as we, you know, as we learnt, you know, result in the world that we have today.
So, that's—. So, we have the Tudeh Party. We Communist Party of Iran. We have Fada'iyan-e Islam, an Islamist party of – of terrorists, of assassins in Iran. And, of course, we also have the shah himself. There's a lot we could say about him. We've already talked about how iconic he would become. At this point in history, though, he was basically a refined young man. He wasn't yet the aloof autocratic target of Khomeini's invective.
When he came to power in 1941, he agreed to rule in accordance with the constitution from 1906 that his father had largely ignored. He reopened the Iranian Parliament, the Majles, on genuinely representative lines. And in the 1940s, for the first time, Iran experienced a genuinely pluralistic democracy, with different parties pursuing different ideologies and all vying equally for power.
The shah would end up favouring American power over the Soviets, for sure. In fact, he was genuinely spooked by Stalin, convinced that he had designs on Iran. The events of 1946 did not convince him otherwise. This is why he blamed the communists when he was almost assassinated. And he banned the communist Tudeh Party, which then went underground.
It's all very Cold War, isn't it, Aimen? I mean, what must spy craft have been like in Iran at the time? And we were talking the CIA was there. MI6 must have been there. The KGB, or the MVB as it then was.
Aimen Dean Yeah. And the KVND. And, you know—. So, there were so many different intelligence agencies and spies operating there. And behind them, you have the machinations and the intrigue of the oil industry.
Thomas Small Absolutely. Before too long, all of these players would be implicated in a Cold War event so notorious that it's still informs Iranian attitudes to – to Western powers. I'm referring, of course, to the infamous coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.
Aimen, what resonance does the name Mohammed Mosaddegh have in the Middle East today?
Aimen Dean For Iranians, he – and – and the other people in the Middle East, he represent, you know, the symbol of defiance against greedy, you know, Western power seeking to rob a nation of its natural resources and the profits of that national resources. He wanted to negotiate a fair settlement. And the powers that be—I'm talking about the British here—you know, rebuffed him. So, for many Iranians, he is a symbol of defiance. He is also the ultimate symbol of grievance against the West and against the Americans and the British for what happened next.
Thomas Small Mohammad Mosaddegh was born in 1882. I mean, can you imagine that, when he came to power in 1951, he was almost seventy years old? And he had lived through all of the history that we've been talking about. The Russian, British, Soviet, and now American interference in the country. He was related to the Qajars. And, in fact, he married the granddaughter of the Qajar Shah, who had been assassinated by the follower of al-Afghani. It's really—. Everyone's connected. He was indeed well connected. He was educated in Switzerland and had always opposed Reza Shah, because the shah ignored the constitution. At heart, Mohammad Mosaddegh was a nationalist.
Now, in 1949, after the failed assassination attempt against the shah, the shah began a move toward greater authoritarianism. He managed to push through reforms to the constitution, diluting the power of parliament and increasing his own power, followed by new elections that summer, which were compromised by claims of fraud and corruption. Newsflash: All of the elections that take place over the course of this story are compromised by fraud and corruption. It was endemic.
But here's something really interesting. Mosaddegh responded to that rigged election in the summer of 1949 by organising a mass protest movement. In a sign of the revolution, really, later in the seventies, students were mobilised and a sit-in was organised. The whole panoply of modern peaceful mass protest. The shah capitulated. He promised fair elections in the future. And the protest movement coalesced into a new coalition of political parties called the National Front with Mosaddegh as its leader. They sought liberal reforms. And at the top of their policy platform was a demand that would cause a political earthquake, really globally. And that was oil nationalisation.
Aimen, paint a picture of how the oil concession in Iran was being managed at that time and why that would have made Mosaddegh and the nationalists so angry.
Aimen Dean As you mentioned, Thomas, before the D'Arcy agreement, the treaties that were signed regarding the concessions of trade and national resources meant that the vast – the vast majority of the profits, you know, would go to the company that is actually doing the excavation, the extraction, and the transportation.
So, you know, in modern – in modern times, you know, a company like Shell or BP or any other company or ExxonMobil would come to a country, would sign the deal in which there will say, "Okay. We, you know, we explore the oil. We dig up the oil. We refine it. We, you know—. And we split the profits, you know, thirty-three/sixty-seven, thirty-five/sixty-five, forty/sixty. But the majority, you know, goes to the country, you know, where the resources, you know, are located."
However, in the Iranian question, you know, something like more than ninety percent of the profits—in fact, more than that—were going to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
Thomas Small And fifty-one percent of that company was owned by the British state. So, really, the profits were going to the British government and not to the Iranian government,
Aimen Dean Not at all. Whatever that was going to the Iranian government were just mere basic royalties. I mean, we're not talking about five or six percent, you know. And which was absolute peanuts. Minimal.
Thomas Small Especially when Mohammed Mosaddegh would have looked around and seen the – the other sorts of deals that oil companies had struck with other governments. Venezuela, first, successfully negotiated a fifty-fifty deal. And then, in 1950, your friend King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia managed to negotiate the same deal with Aramco, a fifty-fifty split. Mosaddegh was actually seeking precisely that. And yet the British said no.
Aimen Dean Yes. This is one of the darkest, darkest episodes of the history of the British empire, you know, post-World War II, in which they squandered, you know, an opportunity and caused a massive rift that – and a grievance that's lasting all the way until now. If they accepted, just accepted, just like Americans in Saudi Arabia accepted, that we split the oil profits fifty-fifty, you know, the question is that Mosaddegh would have succeeded, that the cause of the communists and the religious fanatics would have been contained, and a more modern, democratic, pluralistic Iran would have persisted.
But guess what? As usual, we are now living the consequences of the mistakes of the past.
Thomas Small That's true. I think we – we owe it to the British to put ourselves in their shoes for a second. And after the Second World War, the British state was effectively bankrupt, haemorrhaging money. They really, really relied on the monies from selling Iranian oil to keep their own country going. And this doesn't defend their decision, but it – it explains why they were so unwilling to grant a fifty-fifty deal to the Iranians.
Mosaddegh's chief policy was the nationalisation of Iran's oil. And this presented him with a political problem, which, in fact, you know, Aimen, to be honest, has been presenting me with the political problem—i.e., wrapping my mind around Iranian politics in the early 1950s. The—. All of the events—the political events, the elections, the backstabbing, the coalitions, the fallings out—all of these things that happened during the rise and fall of Mohammed Mosaddegh, they really are a brain buster. I swear to God.
Aimen Dean Absolutely. That's why the, you know, the – the ruling class in Iran right now, the Mullahs, they have turbans wrapped up around their heads in order to wrap the Iranian politics around their heads.
Thomas Small Right. So, Mosaddegh is leading this new party, the National Front. But it has nothing like a majority in parliament. And so, only has minority influence. Nonetheless, Mosaddegh is a capable political operator, a good manipulator of the modern media, and becomes the chair of the parliamentary committee overseeing the oil question. His emphasis on nationalism and oil nationalisation resonated with the masses, and his personal popularity was growing.
However, he had a problem. Mosaddegh was a liberal, but the vast majority of Iranians were conservatives. I mean, they generally favoured nationalism. They wanted Iranian sovereignty to be secured, but they were conservative. They were generally loyal to the monarchy and they were certainly religious.
There was a man in parliament, Abol-Ghasem Kashani, who sort of represented the religious interests of the country. He was, in fact, allied to Fada'iyan-e Islam. Mosaddegh hoped he could manipulate Kashani into getting his oil nationalisation policy passed. So, Kashani was a nationalist, right?
Mosaddegh said, "Okay. I'm going to appeal to his nationalism to get my oil nationalisation bill passed."
Kashani was an Islamist and he wanted Sharia law to be the law of the land. So, he hoped he could manipulate Mosaddegh into imposing Sharia law.
Then, in March 1951, a Fada'iyan-e Islam fanatic assassinated Prime Minister Ali Razmara, angered by Roz Mara's pro-British stance. One week later, with Kashani's help, Mosaddegh was able to get a bill passed, nationalising the oil industry. And then, a month after that, parliament told the shah that Mosaddegh was their nominee for prime minister. To his credit, the shah agreed and even signed the nationalisation bill. He supported nationalisation now, mainly because he hoped it would increase his popularity with the people. He was afraid he was losing popularity as Mosaddegh gained popularity.
As we said, Mosaddegh was seeking a fifty-fifty deal. Well, Britain went nuts. They withdrew their personnel from the oil fields of Iran, which meant that oil production stopped. They imposed sanctions on the country, preventing imports of staples like sugar. Iran didn't have a tanker fleet of its own. So, without British help, they couldn't produce or even export oil. It was a total shitshow. Negotiations with the British were going badly. The economy was in a freefall. There was political violence on the street as nationalists clashed with communists clashed with religious enthusiasts. It was chaos.
Conservatives began to waiver in their support for Mosaddegh and nationalisation, especially after Mosaddegh, in a series of brilliant tactical moves, was granted emergency powers by parliament, effectively side-lining the shah. Mosaddegh was making his liberal anti-monarchical position play. The shah began to turn against him as did Kashani, who realised that Mosaddegh was a secularist with no intention of imposing Sharia law.
This, Aimen, is where your friends, the spies, come in. As soon as the oil nationalisation bill had passed, Britain had been doing what it could to remove Mosaddegh from power. MI6 were bribing parliamentarians, religious clerics, and other conservative groups. Mosaddegh had hoped the US might support him, but Cold War politics got in the way, especially after President Eisenhower came to power. The Soviet Union's reach had recently expanded in Central Europe, China, and Korea. And because the Tudeh Party had supported Mosaddegh, Eisenhower feared losing Iran to the Soviets, too. So, the CIA began working with MI6 to undermine Mosaddegh's grip on the government.
So, in the midst of all this, Mosaddegh felt that the only way he could get his political programme through was if he basically could rule by executive fiat. So, he called a referendum to dissolve parliament and give himself dictatorial powers. This referendum resulted in a ninety-nine percent yes vote. Now, we all know what a ninety-nine percent yes vote means: fraud. Mosaddegh had rigged it, for sure. It wasn't a secret ballot. It was definitely transparent. I mean, you know, you had to vote in the open, and there were thugs standing next to you to make sure you voted the right way. So, it wasn't a fair referendum at all, but it gave Mosaddegh the result he was looking for: permission as he saw it to rule as a dictator.
This was bound to freak his opponents out. The conservatives, top generals in the army, MI6 and the CIA, and the shah, none of them could accept Mosaddegh as a dictator. So, they pressed go on a plan that they had been cooking up for a while, a plan known as Operation Ajax. The plan was quite simple. The shah was going to use his powers to dismiss Mosaddegh unilaterally, without there being elections, and replace him with a man of their choosing, a general called Zahedi. This was the plan.
On the 15th of August 1953, they pressed go. The shah signs the firman, dismissing Mosaddegh and installing General Zahedi as prime minister, knowing that the CIA had given him assurance that the Americans would support this move. But the Tudeh Party—the communist party of Iran, which had been made illegal, which had gone underground, and which had been an on-again, off-again ally of Mosaddegh and the National Front, and, over the last few years, had infiltrated the Iranian army—the Tudeh Party found out about the plot in advance and warned Mosaddegh about it. So, as the shah's men were going to Mosaddegh's palace with the firman dismissing him, suddenly, Mosaddegh's supporters burst into the streets, and there was a sort of riot preventing this from happening. This freaked out the shah even more. Spooked, he fled the country.
I mean, it's actually quite a remarkable and cowardly thing. He just up and fled the country. Some coup. He flees the country and ends up in Rome. The CIA meet him there. Probably—. I don't know. They gave him a hug. What do – what do you do when the strongman you thought you were going to support to take power just runs to Rome?
So, Mohammad Mosaddegh thinks, "I've survived. The coup has failed." So, he sends the supporters back home.
However, the generals, the clerics, the conservative forces inside Iran that had conspired against him with the CIA, they were not. They paid a mob to dress up like Tudeh Party members, come out into the streets, and declare a communist revolution. This attracted actual Tudeh Party members to join them. A riot broke out along with street violence, all of this giving the conservative generals the excuse they had engineered to remove Mosaddegh from power, which they did on the 19th of August. They arrested him and, in his place installed, General Zahedi as prime minister.
The shah flies back, with the CIA director in tow, determined to rule in a much more authoritarian way. He's had enough with pluralism. He's had enough with party politics. As far as he's concerned, it resulted in economic collapse, chaos, geopolitical turmoil, the offending of important allies. Et cetera, et cetera. This is where the shah becomes the strongman that we know, the iconic shah that Khomeini overthrew in 1979.
So, Aimen, after listening to me narrate Operation Ajax and everything else that happened during that pivotal point in Iran's history, what do you think? Was it as people usually think? Certainly, Iranians think this. Were MI6 and the CIA the puppet masters, secretly controlling everything from behind the scenes?
Aimen Dean Look, Thomas. I think I want the listener to indulge me a little bit here. When I say that all this talk about the CIA organising military coups here and there, whether it is in Iran, in the Congo, in Latin America, wherever it is, the reality is that, you know, MI6 and the CIA and the French intelligence or any other powerful agency, they cannot do any of this without a fertile ground already being present in the country they want to interfere in. In other word, that the circumstances in the country were ready for a coup. It's just a question of having the direction.
So, in essence, nothing happens in a vacuum. Now, you know, the CIA does not take a one stable country, completely happy with itself, and then turn it upside down. No. There are always other set of factors, which would contribute to the greater powers of the world at the time, you know, which includes, you know, not just only the British, the French, and the Americans, but also the Soviets when they want – when they want to do something, you know, in their interest. They would basically come and say, "Okay. This country, I can change. I can exact change, because the change – there is a fertile ground for change."
Thomas Small In Iran, at that time, there were too many forces at play. Too many interests, too many political parties constantly changing sides, too many class-based issues. It was too complicated. And, you know, ultimately, Mohammed Mosaddegh, for all of his genius as a politician, he kind of dug his own grave.
Aimen Dean Yeah. He alienated so many of his traditional allies, including shah himself. He could have gained these powers if he just went to the shah and said, you know, "Your majesty, I need to enact these policies. Please. Could you help me?"
I mean, you know, he could have, you know, heads behind the shop, behind the legitimacy of the shah, and the two could have worked things out together. But guess what? When you are trying to give the appearance of, well, being a backstabber, well, guess what? People with stab you in the front.
Thomas Small Well, there you go. That's our best attempts to explain the chequered political history of Iran in the early part of the twentieth century and at the very beginning of the Cold War.
Mohammad Mosaddegh, as we said, his memory resounds until the present. Iranians, to this day, convinced that their one chance for a proper liberal democracy was thwarted by the CIA, still invoke Mosaddegh when they shake their fists at America and at the West. Reasonably to some extent, but I do think that it's a little bit overegged. I think that there—. Well, as I say, it was much more complicated than that.
Nonetheless, as we'll see in the next episode, very soon after Mohammad Mosaddegh's downfall in Iran, an Arab leader of immense historical importance, learning from Iran's failed experiment of oil nationalisation and negotiations with the west, would create an even greater geopolitical earthquake. I mean, of course, the president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Aimen Dean Very ominous.
Thomas Small On the next episode, we'll tell you all about Gamal Abdel Nasser and his impact on the Middle East.
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Rowan Bishop. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.
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