Dan Snow's History Hit - Origins of Modern Iran

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

As protests continued across Iran, a number of Iranian-made kamikaze drones were fired by Russian forces at targets thousands of miles away in Kyiv, Ukraine.It marks the first time that these Iranian weapons have been used against a European capital, as well as a new low for relations between Iran and the West - which were already under strain.So how did we get here? In this episode of Warfare, James Rogers is joined by Professor Ali Ansari of St Andrews University in Scotland to learn the historical context of modern Iran - from the Iranian Revolution to the nuclear deal torn up by former US President Donald Trump in 2018.This episode was first broadcast on 24th October 2022.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I've got an episode of Warfare for you today. It's our special military history podcast, go and subscribe wherever you get your pods, presented by Dr James Rogers. It covers, well, warfare from the early modern period, but particularly First and Second World War. So recently we've been doing a lot on Ukraine as well. It's fascinating stuff, it gets great guests. Enjoy this episode, it's an eye-opener. off. He gets great guests. Enjoy this episode. It's an eye-opener. On Monday, October 17th, just last week, Iranian-made kamikaze drones were fired by Russia at the civilian centres of Kiev in Ukraine. Let that sink in for a moment. This was the first time that these Iranian weapons had been used against a European capital city,

and it marks a new low for Iranian relations with the West. And it's not like relations were going well anyway. From the collapse of the Iran nuclear deal and the firing of missiles against US bases, through to the vicious crackdown on young Iranian protesters all around the country, it's safe to say that the hardline Iranian regime is not exactly painting itself in a good light. But how did we get here to this new low point in history? Well, I'm your host, James Rogers, and here on the Warfare Podcast, we often take the latest cutting-edge issues in international security and war, and we provide the context that we all need, that historical context, to understand what's going on and why. To help us understand Iran,

I've invited Professor Ali Ansari onto the podcast. Now, Ali is Professor in Modern History at St. Andrews in Scotland, and he is the world-leading expert on the making of modern Iran, from the Iran-Iraq War to the Iranian Revolution and beyond. So here is Ali Ansari on the making of modern Iran. Enjoy. Hi, Ali. Welcome to the Warfare podcast. How are you doing today? I'm very well, thank you, and thank you for having me on. Not a problem at all. It's a good time, I guess, to have you on the podcast. I say good time with a slightly sarcastic twinge because Iran is most certainly not in its most stable

condition, and in terms of its relationship with the West, it is perhaps at a generational low. But the trouble is, is that I've long been fascinated by the long history of Iran as a country with a rich culture of art, literature, poetry, music, food, architecture. And, you know, the ancient Iranian thinkers who wrote influential texts on philosophy and medicine. And I think it was Iranian mathematicians who invented algebra. It's a country that I really would love to visit, Ali. But, you know, sadly, it seems like this isn't going to happen in the foreseeable future. So I guess with all of this in mind, where should we start if we want to understand how modern Iran, a very different beast from ancient Iran, came

into being as this more oppressive regime that's now imprisoning its youth, suppressing women's rights, and supporting terrorist groups and hostile great powers like Russia around the world? Well, one place to start, obviously, is with the revolution of 1979, which really cast Iran on a different path in terms of its political development and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. And that's really when Iran becomes an anti-Western power. I mean, ostensibly, it had its revolution to be neither East nor West, as it said for itself, but it's really had a turn East and pitted itself against the West. But I think in some ways, a better way to start is actually to look at the longer context, which is really going back probably to the 19th century, when you see

Iran confronting the West or being confronted by the West, and the challenges that that posed to Iran, which had always seen itself as a great power, and certainly the regional power, but found itself then in the 19th century caught between the British and India and Russia and the North. So these two, basically, there were three empires effectively competing for influence, regional influence and power in the area, the Russians, the Persians and the British. And of course, Iran came off much the worse for wear from that encounter. And that's helped shape really its outlook ever since. I mean, successive regimes, whether monarchical or Islamic Republic, have tended to have at the heart of their, I suppose, identity crisis, I mean, successive regimes, whether monarchical or Islamic Republic, have tended to

have at the heart of their, I suppose, identity crisis, their strategies, whatever, is this aspiration to restore Iran to a sort of what they consider it to be, you know, consider it its rightful place in the community of nations. And by rightful place, basically, it means, you know, is one of the great powers. So in some ways, it has a lot in common with countries like China, Russia, to some extent, India, a civilizational power that's been hard done by through its encounter with Europe and Western Europe in particular, and is really trying to sort of claw back a certain status it feels it deserves. So what's the cultural touchstone for that period of greatness. When Iranian scholars or politicians talk about returning Iran to its great times, is this kind of, you know, periods of the Persian Empire? Do

we go back to Cyrus the Great? I mean, I live in Denmark, as many of our listeners know, and, you know, if the Danes talk about their greatness, it's the Vikings. If the British talk about it, it's the Second World War. What is it for Iran? Well, I think in the West, we often misconstrue this to mean a sort of a return to the ancient Persian Cyrus and so is it for Iran? Well, I think in the West, we often misconstrue this to mean a sort of a return to the ancient Persian Cyrus and so on and so forth. Now, the figure of Cyrus the Great is an enormously popular figure in modern Iran for various reasons, for obvious reasons, actually, in many ways. But in terms of Iran's greatness, it doesn't need to go back that far in the Iranian consciousness. We're really talking about its position as a sort of a great

power in the 16th and 17th centuries, even as an imperial power through the 18th century. So in many ways, of course, in Iranian sort of the way they imagine themselves, they will look back to a pre-Islamic era, but not and essentially covered in territorial terms, a larger territory than Iran occupies now, but certainly not as large as the empire of Cyrus or Darius or Xerxes. So we're really looking at in terms of their aspirational status. And you see that even today, to be honest, a sort of a greater Iran that is bounded in a sense by what we call the sort of four great, well, I wouldn't say four great rivers, but three sort of the Indus, the Euphrates, the Oxus, and then obviously up in the Caucasus. So three great rivers, if you will, in the Caucasus. Those are the areas where Iran considers to be as sort of as near abroad. It's historical patrimony, if you'll put it that way.

And one of the interesting things about recent history is that the US-led global war on terror after 9-11, in basically fracturing Afghanistan and Iraq, allowed Iranians to sort of imagine their past or realize their past in a way that hitherto they were unable to do. So prior to this, it was all really a bit of a literary sort of imagination. But after 2001, certainly after 2003, you find the Iranians are basically exploiting the openings afforded to them by the removal of Saddam Hussein and the weaknesses of the Taliban, certainly at that time. Well, give us a bit more detail about that. How was Iran able to capitalise on that moment of the war on terror? Are we trying to say that there were power voids in the region that Iran was able to fill with both kind of

legitimate political means, but also deeply clandestine means. We know for a fact that one of Iran's modus operandi of projecting its power across the region is through incredibly influential regional proxies, non-state actors, terrorist groups that Iran funds and pays to kind of do its bidding for it. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean, basically, there was a vacuum, a political vacuum created, in which the Iranians basically filled. I mean, so the Americans and the coalition of the willing, you know, the British and the others weren't really, you know, having broken Iraq up, weren't really able to put it back together again in a coherent whole, or certainly not

effectively enough. And the Iranians were able to sort of exploit that. And they did so really by influencing and infiltrating proxies, having a better knowledge of the area than certainly the Americans seem to have. I mean, it was very striking in Iraq that there were strong religious links, obviously, between the Shia clergy in Iraq and Iran. The Iranians were able to cope with Arabic much better than the Americans were, largely through that religious angle. But also in social and cultural

terms, there was a stronger affinity and they were able to negotiate and navigate that political landscape far better than the coalition of the willing were. Of course, in Afghanistan, it was easier in many ways, because the language is the same, effectively. I mean, Dari is basically a version of Persian. So the Iranians were able certainly to make much more headway there. Certainly in western parts of Afghanistan, you have to remember that Herat, those western areas of Afghanistan, used to be part of the Iranian patrimony until the mid-19th century. So there are areas here where the Iranians have a long-standing cultural affinity, shall we say, political and cultural affinity, which they were able to exploit and then obviously translate into political and then

military power through, as you say, the use of proxies. Now, obviously, they'll dispute the term terrorists or others, they will use the term militias, you know, Shia militias, but certainly proxies. I mean, by and large, what they're doing is they are expanding their networks, paying local Iraqi Shia militias to do their bidding. And has it been a success? Well, many Iraqis would dispute it. I mean, the Iranians have basically argued that they have to have a degree of influence there as a consequence of the Iran-Iraq war. They don't want to see a threat emerging from Iraq again. But have they made Iraq a better place? Questionable. And I guess the pinnacle, the moment at which all of that came together,

was when General Soleimani was in Baghdad, in Iraq, liaising with some of those groups that they were supplying some high-tech military technologies to. Absolutely. And you see, Soleimani was an Arabist by sort of. And this was the thing about his assassination in 2020, of course, is it knocked out for the Iranians their key link with most of these Shia militias. His successor is not an Arabist. His successor, Ghani, is a Persianist through and through and really has developed his experience in Afghanistan. So he's much more effective on the eastern border. But it's very difficult for the Iranians to rebuild and replicate the networks that Qasem Soleimani built, which was

built essentially on his ability to both communicate effectively, but also by reputation. He built up quite a substantial reputation with the Shia. And it's just a reputation, I have to say, that was somewhat enhanced by the Americans themselves and other people in the West who constantly idolized Soleimani in some ways. He made him out, I think, to be far more effective than he was. But nonetheless, it was a sort of an image that worked very much in Iran's favor. And it was certainly a moment during the Trump administration when Soleimani was killed, assassinated by that US drone strike, that you really started to see that the Iran nuclear deal and just in general relations between Iran and the West started to reach that generational low that I mentioned previously. Well, I mean, I think the assassination of Soleimani was more a symptom rather than the cause of that, to be honest. I mean, I think things have been... So essentially,

you know, the idea that the nuclear agreement was, you know, obviously a possibility of a new opening and that possibility was always there. I had always been somewhat more sceptical about the opportunity for the nuclear agreement to deliver what some people in the West thought it would. Certainly, even before Trump came into office in the election at the end of 2016, beginning of 2017, there were already problems with the way the nuclear agreement was being actioned. But certainly Trump's sort of unilateral withdrawal completely threw everything up in the air. It created huge rifts within the Western alliance itself, to be honest, between Europe and America. And obviously, it turned things on its head with Iran and made Iran, it was an open goal really for the Iranians, what Trump did. But I think

in terms of the relationship between Iran and the West, I think things have been bad for many, many years, actually. And in some ways, the agreement that was reached in 2015 marked a very small window of opportunity for making that better. Had the Iranians been more willing to seize that opportunity, I think a number of different things could have happened, but they had to move quite quickly before that window shut. And since that moment in 2020, for our listeners as broader context, you know, there were revenge attacks by Iran on US bases, the launch of precision missiles to attack, I think it was Ain al-Assad. Yeah, there was a base. Yeah, I can't remember actually which one it was. But there was a base, a US base, which, of course, at the time, the Americans said had very little impact at all. But then subsequently, it admitted that quite a number of their servicemen suffered from a degree of PTSD or certainly some sort of damage, and it had a greater effect. I mean, the interesting thing is, is whether the Iranian strike, you know, they say how accurate was it and had the Iranians deliberately in, missed, you know, certainly to send a

warning? As far as I'm aware, that's an open question at the moment, whether they were lucky not to have killed Americans rather than just provided injuries. The Iranians sort of said it was a warning, but it's not at all clear that the missiles they sent in were quite so accurate that they were able to sort of provide a shock but not kill anyone. It seems more likely that it was quite lucky that nobody was killed. And so, I mean mean it's that sort of luck that gives you chills it does yeah because it could change things quite dramatically couldn't it exactly and we know now that although iran and russia deny this that iran is supplying weapons to russia which in turn are being used and at time of recording it was actually just yesterday ali Ali, that Iranian drones were used to

target civilian targets in Kiev and rain down terror on the population there. So we're at this point here where things aren't going well between Iran and the West. And what I wanted to do with this episode was to try and take us back to provide that bit of context. So take us back to that moment that the Iranian revolution starts. What is it that causes the revolution? What ignites that tinderbox? Well, it's a variety of things. I mean, like all revolutionary movements, it's almost a conjunction of interests, a coincidence of interests, if you will. But I mean, obviously, a large part of it is the fact that the Shah himself had become increasingly despotic in his rule, in his political rule. I think he'd achieved

quite a bit on an economic basis. I think he'd achieved quite a bit on an economic basis. I think it'd been quite progressive on a number of different levels. But politically, he was extremely restrictive. He'd become even more and more hubristic as he went on. And I think this created that reaction against him from a variety of different sources, from the left, from the secular nationalists, from the religious right. And these came together basically in a sort of movement to overthrow the Shah by the end of 1978. But a big factor in the overthrow of the Shah, of course, was his own inability to cope with the challenge that was facing him. I mean, I think he himself could not believe that his people were undyingly grateful for everything he'd done for them.

So in a sense, the Islamic revolution as it became to be known, although people at the time didn't define it as an Islamic revolution, of course, succeeded in part because the state itself had crumbled. The Shah had made himself the apogee, the lynchpin of the system. And then given that his inaction basically ensured that, you know, the system didn't work, basically, the system didn't respond. So as a consequence of that, basically, it unraveled alarmingly quickly in the final months of 1978, so that by January 1979, the Shah had gone into exile. He was unwilling at the end of the day to do what Assad had done in Syria, effectively, which was to stand and fight at the cost of the destruction of his

country, basically. So in some ways, you know, one might say much to the credit of the Shah, actually, that he decided, you know, quite early on that the game was up and the time was to go. But in so doing, he effectively powers transferred to the revolutionaries. And then the revolutionaries themselves, of course, got involved in an internecine, a sort of civil war of their own, like all revolutions do in a way, between the left and the right. But basically the secular nationalists, the liberals in the middle were squeezed out. They were finished. They weren't never great in number. It became a major, major confrontation between the religious conservatives, the traditionalists in that sense, and the radical left. I'm simplifying, obviously, here, but basically those two wings clashed. And at the end of the day, it was the religious

conservatives, the religious right, who won in that struggle. Assisted in some ways, of course, by the start of the Iran-Iraq war, that ensured that people's attentions were elsewhere. And so that political fight was effectively subsumed under a sort of a national emergency for eight years, and then re-emerged again after the end of the Iran-Iraq war, where these two different wings of the Islamic revolution or the revolution in Iran in 1979 re-emerged to basically contest what the revolution meant. You know, was it about a republic or was it about the establishment of an Islamic state? And ultimately, of course, that Islamic state has won out over the republic. That's really interesting. I want to come back to the Iran-Iraq war in a minute,

because I don't think it's discussed enough when we're trying to understand the creation of modern Iran and more of that martial militaristic state. You know, that's something that is forged in the crucible of war and an incredibly brutal war that because it didn't involve Western powers directly, we kind of gloss over. So we'll come to that in a second. But why was there such a disliking of the Shah? When I read the history, the kind of common tale I'm told is that the Shah is a British, American, even kind of Russian puppet that's put in place. He's doing the bidding of these great powers. And it was only a matter of time before he was overthrown.

And this was accelerated by the White Revolution that the Shah puts in place, which is this aggressive period of Western modernization that kind of suppresses a lot of the landowners and clerics and everything else. And this is what causes them to rise up. To what extent have I just completely butchered that history? Or is there some truth to it? No, I mean, there is some truth to it. But of course, it is a caricature in a sense. And it's obviously something that the revolutionaries might sort of put out. So I mean, basically, modern Iran is really the creation of two key developments in that sense. One is a sort of a constitutional revolution that occurs at the beginning of the 20th century, which establishes the political parameters of the new

state, you know, establishes this idea of constitutionalism. It's much better in theory than in practice, it doesn't really work, because what you're trying to do is to create a state from scratch, a modern state from scratch. And the creation of that modern state is really the product of the two Pahlavi monarchs that come after that, from 1925 to 1979, Reza Shah, the father, Muhammad Reza Shah, the son. Then between that, you get this period during the Second World War of the Allied occupation, Anglo-Soviet occupation, with the Americans that come in afterwards, which sort of frees up some of the political landscape of the country. The Reza Shah, the old king, is presented exiled. A new king comes in, very young, very naive. There's a whole crisis over oil nationalization, of course,

the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian oil company, and then the Anglo-American coup, orchestrated coup, certainly, that results in the overthrow of Mossad Der, this nationalist prime minister, often said in more, shall we say, loose readings, democratically elected. He wasn't per se democratically elected. It's a parliamentary system. He was appointed by the Shah, but clearly was a popular figure. He'd sort of like whipped up nationalist sentiment, went out against the Anglo-Ridon oil company, put Britain in her place, so on and so forth, in part with a little bit of, I mean, the Americans played a slightly more double-sided role in that. Then, of course, the Shah comes in and people then say,

ah, he's a Western puppet. And to some extent, of course, there's an element of truth in that, in the sense that he owed his throne as he admitted himself to this coup that sort of basically brought him back and established him as a much more definitive, I wouldn't want to say autocratic figure to begin with, because, of course, the Anglo-American intention was not that he would go around becoming autocratic or despotic at the end. But partly as a means of the economic success that he had built in the country, the ratcheting up of, you know, the white revolution itself was in many ways an enormously successful economic program for the development of the country. What he didn't do in the white revolution was match the economic success with political reforms. This was his big mistake. He basically educated his public

and then told them to bog off essentially. So you have this mass education program, building up a huge cohort of educated youngsters and then tell them that they can't get involved in politics. You know, it's a sort of self-defeating. If you're going to educate your public, you have to give them a sort of avenue in which to exercise their thoughts and he didn't do that instead he grew increasingly hubristic and on the back of what he perceived to be the economic success he developed and he always used to say that democracy only works when people are so well you know when everyone has a phd was the rumor you know and it has people said you know when the hell is that going to happen it's not true anyway i think we can safely say i mean it was sort of like a bizarrely different you know he said we're not

going to democracy might work it might well you know, he said, well, democracy might work. It might work. You know, he was very sceptical about it. So basically what happens is, is that the idea that he's a Western stooge, I think, is very, very simplistic in the sense that actually by the 1970s, there's enough evidence to suggest really that the tail starts to wag the dog. You know, the Shah after the phenomen phenomenal oil price shock of 1973-74 after Yom Kippur, but the Shah has a major role in the ratcheting up of the oil price. I mean, most of us forget, we always see this as an Arab oil boycott. Actually, it was the Iranians who really pushed it at the end of the day. And he multiplied the level of income Iran could have.

And of course, this put the Iranian economy into a sort of a burnt out, it's not the right term, but I mean, it was so overheated that effectively inflation, corruption, so on and so forth rose. And because of the lack of political reform, you see, of course, because of the lack of a sort of a legal framework for all this stuff, you know, this economic growth just became chaotic. And this really, at the end of the day, is why the revolution sort of builds up against him. He was able effectively to alienate everyone, including those who should have been really his staunch supporters. And of course, he was, at the end of the day, a pro-Western ruler. He certainly saw a lot in the United States, less so in Britain, but there was a relatively close relationship with Britain.

But I think it would be wrong to put him down as a puppet. He most certainly was not a puppet by the end of the 70s. He was increasingly confident in his own abilities, and that was really, in some ways, his own undoing. And then it's also a key consideration about his personal health, because I believe that he has quite late-stage cancer at this point, and puts up this show that him and the family are going on holiday. But that's the last you see of the Shah, and then he's dead within 12 months is that right? Yeah so he was diagnosed with cancer in the early 70s which he kept extremely secret. Now interestingly had there not been the stresses shocks and strains of the revolution I suspect his cancer would have

been managed through the 80s. He himself interestingly in a private discussion with believe it or not Tony Benn who goes to see him in 1977 to discuss nuclear cooperation, of all things, with Iran. He reveals in a discussion with Tony Benn that he plans to abdicate in around 1985, 86. And he said, then I will mentor my son through, and he sort of has this idea. So he has this vision of him going on. And my sense is that the cancer was probably manageable. And it was really the stress of the revolution that killed him. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research

from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. From this point onwards,

things start to get worse for many people in Iran. Like you say, this is an incredibly well-educated population who have enjoyed certain freedoms that we have in the West, and these start to get oppressed very quickly. You have the implementation of Islamic laws that women have to cover up, laws around education. There are mass protests. There are people put into prisons, you can't publish certain

materials. There are many, many of Iran's youth who are simply murdered. And it's at this moment that you start to see the shaping, the making of the Iran that we see and know today. Yes. I mean, I think what I've always said to people, I say that the Islamic revolution and republic doesn't have any of the virtues of the Shah, but has multiplied the vices, if I can put it that way. I mean, it's, you know, I think there are various trajectories the Islamic revolution could have gone in the Islamic republic. I think there was an opportunity really, in at the end of the 1990s, for it to take a much more republican moderate route. It decided not to for various reasons. And this tension, I mean, the best way to look at the

Islamic Republic is to really see it as a sort of a hybrid, an unhappy, almost call it an unholy alliance or an unholy marriage between Islam and republicanism. They tried to marry these things together. And for many years, they tried to argue that actually, it worked, you know, that they had produced something new, that the Islamic Revolution had produced a new type of political system. In the event, actually, this marriage proved very unsuccessful. And the reason being, really, that the Republican elements that we would find familiar, I mean, basically, the Republican side of the Constitution in Iran is largely lifted from the French Fifth Republic. I mean, it's very familiar. But what they did is they sort of like loaded on top of this, this whole sort of panoply of Islamic revolutionary government, which basically gives absolute power.

And I mean, absolute power to this supreme leader, the supreme jurist, this guardianship of the jurist. And it means really that at the end of the day, all the things that we would find familiar. So if you were a young person in Iran, and you'd say, ah, the constitution guarantees my right to freedom of speech, and, you know, the right to gather, the right to join a trade union, and all this sort of thing. But then what the Islamic element of the constitution says is that you have the right to do all these things, it says, unless it contravenes Islamic law. And who has the right to define what is Islamic law? Ah, it's this supreme leader who basically has the right to define what is Islamic law? Ah, it's this Supreme Leader who basically has the final say in all this. So basically, all these, quote, rights that are sort of enshrined in the constitution under that sort of republican

element, they're not inalienable in any sense. They're basically at the prerogative of the Supreme Leader. So the whole thing is a bit of a mishmash. So you have all of these rights in the world unless the Ayatollah says no. Exactly. Now we're going to go into some more detail about the really quite harrowing accounts of what happened during the Iranian revolution in our episode next Monday, which is with Nazrin Parvaz, who was sentenced to death just after the Iranian revolution for her work on human rights. And she was sadly terribly tortured during that period, but survived to tell her story. And so if you don't mind, Ali, I'd be really interested to go back to that topic of the Iran-Iraq war, because this is parallel

to this moment of suppression in Iran. And it must have had quite a substantial domestic impact. Could you say that because of the threat of Saddam's invasion and his forces trying to kind of overthrow Iran, that they saw it as justifiable to suppress their public? Yes, I think that's absolutely right. I think and also the public became more tolerant of this. I mean, when you're facing a national emergency and a war, and remember the Iran-Iraq war is the first modern war fought by Iran, by which I mean it's the first war that basically involves civilians. You know, it was the war of the cities, the bombing, the missile strikes on various cities. It's as close to a total war that the Iranians have known. So it is

a matter of national emergency. And when you're trying to impose a much more restrictive or sphere political and economic life, you can justify it, and people will put up with it. So in the sense, the imposition of mandatory hijabs avail, which, you know, many women opposed. I mean, there were huge protests right at the beginning of the revolution against this, saying this is not why we've had a revolution. Of course, the minute the war starts, these sort of protests become unpatriotic. So it was easier for them to impose various things. Now, the interesting thing is the longer the war went on, of course, the more the government

had to relax some of these things. Because the more war fatigue settles in, you've got to keep your population on side. And therefore, some of these restrictions, some of these sort of impositions begin to be relaxed a bit. But after the war is over, then you then say, oh, all these people have died, all these martyrs died for what? They died so we could have a better Muslim country, or whatever, as they sort of argue. That's a matter of debate, but that's the way they put it. And of course, again, that's used as a way to emotionally blackmail the population, effectively. You're offending the blood of the martyrs by not wearing your veil properly. That is fascinating. The things that a state can do in times of supreme emergency.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So those who did try and rebel against these new Islamic laws and regimes, were they branded as spies or agents of the West or agents of Saddam that are trying to bring down the country? I mean, they didn't really have to go. I mean, those who are politically active, yes, those are obliged. But those, for instance, who are breaking social infringements, say, for instance, the Vele, it's not so much that they're seen as agents of the West, not in a deliberate sense, but they're seen as corrupted and we have to sort them out. So it's different. It's slightly different. But if you're politically active and are seeking a

change, then yes, you know, you're immediately a fifth column, you're an agent of Western imperialism, so on and so forth. So it all depends on your ambitions. And take us into the details of the war itself, because many people might not know that this isn't a short war. This goes on for eight long, hard years. And there's some that claim that at least one million lives are lost. This is a war between 1980 and 1988 that we've largely glossed over, in which a million lives are lost, Ali. Yeah, so let me correct you on that from the start. So the million lives lost is something that comes in, and as all military historians, you know, would sort of say the minute you get into figures of a million, you ought to start sort of being a little bit more skeptical

that of what the iranian regime is because that's what they use and you see this a lot in fact i'll do a male culper for you now first edition of one of my books actually has this figure in it i sort of say a million casualties i'm a little bit more aware i don't say deaths i don't say casualties but still subsequently my research revealed that i was looking at people that the iranian government did their own research on the level of casualties and deaths and whatever and it turns out that the total number of fatalities fatalities we're talking about here from the war is around 220 000 so i mean obviously there's a lot more injuries okay you can add that wounded and people you know with gas and damaged lungs and so on so forth the fatality is basically

taken from the official statistics. And we can assume some of it's an underestimate, but certainly from the official statistics of those who were claiming. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

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By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Payments as a result of their martyred families so the payments that were going out the total is i mean the figures are somewhere between 188 000 and 220 000 i would go for the 220 000 because i think over the years obviously people die of their injuries and so on and so forth but we have to put that in comparison it was a very bloody, a very violent war in terms of its frontline battles, you know, the very first world war and it's out looking,

it says trench warfare. But at the same time, the level of casualties is a fraction of what the British suffered in the first world war, which was a shorter war. So I think sometimes there's a mythology about the war

that's been built up, partly to justify political processes. So when we go back to our idea about you're shaming the blood of the martyrs, obviously, if you say a million people died for this that's a big thing you know if you say well you know 220 000 people died for it it's slightly less you know it's it's still pretty bad to be honest but you know people can then start to say well hang on a minute it's not quite compatible to the second world war is it or it's not i mean but the million creates a

much more emotive sort of sense, and it allows political actions to be taken in the name of those martyrs. So I would never want to diminish, obviously, the suffering that was ago. But I think it's important that we correct the record in terms of the casualties, because people, you know, the commentary is normally half a million Iraqis, a million Iranians. And, you know, if you take a one and a half million deaths, it just puts it in quite a different category of conflict if I can put it that way you see that is so important to clarify I'm glad I made the mistake although I feel like I've been no no it's very common I mean it's very I mean I hear it all the time to be honest and I constantly have to say to

people don't I mean I even hear Iranians say because I mean I was listening to a colleague of mine who said you know so many people died and then they have these inflated figures about number of young people died or teenagers now they were and the point is is obviously you and i discussing this nobody wants to underestimate obviously or diminish the level of case just it's still a terrible figure 220 000 but it is you know interesting for me it's a subtlety about how what political use you make of the more inflated figures you see that's the point that i'm saying is that my kind of unintentional regurgitation of Iranian propaganda shows how, number one, how successful it has been in kind of being a pervasive figure

that's pushed through into the common literature. And number two, it shows how important it is to the understanding of the modern Iranian state. This is a nation shaped by war. And if we think about it, you know, 1988 isn't that long ago, or at least I'd like to think it's not that long ago. And so if you think about the political leaders who are in charge in Iran now, they cut their teeth during that war. Their entire political and military sense of the world is built around that conflict.

That's right. That's right. And there's a whole mythology. I mean, I wrote a piece recently on the whole mythology of the war. And of course, the real beneficiaries of the mythology of the war are the Revolutionary Guards. The Revolutionary Guards have built themselves up as the sort of the leaders, the chief defenders of the state, those who can't... Actually, if you look seriously at the Iraq War, the units that bore the brunt of the fighting actually were, or certainly the organizational and strategic side was the army. It was a regular army. It wasn't the Revolutionary Guard. And many of the most serious casualties were taken by the Islamic militia known as the Basij at the time. They were the ones that were going over minefields. Now, the Revolutionary Guard got better as it went on, but it certainly was not there

in the front leading the way. I mean, basically, it was part of a collective effort between the army, the Revolutionary Guard, the Basij militia and others. But in the aftermath of the war, the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard, had basically taken all the spoils. As far as they're concerned, they were at the front. And recently, even in the last two years, when i was looking at it a number of military naval military others but the regular armed forces have complained that their own role in the war in the defense of the motherland has been somewhat

whitewashed out of the narrative that's what we needed to know and thank you so much for bringing us that history to the podcast would you say is that combination between the Iran-Iraq war and the Iranian revolution that when we do analyse them together and see how they interplay with each other, that really do help us understand why Iran is the way it is today? Do you think they're the most important legacies that help us see how this regime has been able to survive up to now? I think if you're looking at the leadership and the political establishment, yes. I mean, they, you know, for them, the Islamic revolution is, you know, D-Day. It's basically the foundation midst of the state rule there. And then add to that the Iran-Iraq war, this tremendous sacrifice, it creates also that sense of a country under siege. It sort of feels it was basically,

it's essentially a sort of revisiting of the blitz mentality in that sense. So the Iranians had this notion it was us alone against the world. You know, a lot of this is embellished in order to give legitimacy to the establishment. Now, interestingly enough, for many younger generations, of course, this is all dim and distant history. They're not particularly interested in it. If you look at the current demonstrations in Iran, they're not remotely interested in, you know, what the revolution or the war was about. It's ancient history for them. So it hasn't had the same effect. But the revolutionary leadership has maximized, in a sense, the bloodshed, the sacrifices shed. Another figure that people don't really realize is until the Shah left in January 1979, the total number of fatalities in the lead up to the Shah leaving the country is about 2,750.

I mean, that's nothing, actually, when you think about it in the great revolutions of the world. The vast majority of casualties occur afterwards in the civil war that takes place between the left and the right. But if you listen to people, particularly the political leadership, they'll say, you know, 50,000 people died to overthrow the shah nothing close to that figure nothing close to that figure and their own figures show that so you know when they're serious about it when you look at scholarly articles in iran they'll acknowledge actually that the level of casualties to the overthrow of the shah were relatively slight for a revolutionary upheaval of the nature that you had but it's certainly something that's embedded within the psychology if you want to understand the way in which the Iranian leadership look at the world,

it's forged in that revolutionary and war generation. And the legacy of that for them is enormously important. But the question for us as historians is to what extent has this been embellished really for political purposes? And to what extent is it true? To be honest, that's an ongoing debate because we don't have actually as much information as we would like. And for reasons that you've highlighted yourself, of course, the West has been curiously uninterested, actually, in the Iraq War, you know, because we're not sort of like competence or involved in it. But actually, you know, when you talk to people who are like us, a bit more interested in military history, you know, everyone sort of says that, you know, rather than start everything with the Gulf War in 91, or in the second Gulf War of two,

you know, we should really be looking at the Iran-Iraq war as the context for that. It's a much more significant experience. Exactly, because Saddam is then bankrupt from the Iran-Iraq war. And so he invades Kuwait to get money. Yeah. I mean, he raids the big event, basically. I mean, and it was very obvious. I mean, you know, you could see what was going on because he was bankrupt. He'd indebted himself to the west effectively the iranians on the other hand interestingly enough

because they were sanctioned actually came out of the war almost with a balance of payments sort of like i mean it was okay i mean it was sort of steady they weren't in huge deficit because they hadn't been able to buy into it so you know what they did buy was from sort of north korea whatever so it wasn't a good cost on a huge amount of money so they had no reason to you know for them they actually came out of the war as much as they it shattered the economic you know let's not have any you know underestimation of what it did to the Iranian economy and politics going forward I think it it shattered it in many ways still they probably came out better than the Iraqis did wow well Ali thank you so much for debunking so many myths about this history,

for telling us just so much of the important points of that recent history that help us to understand the modern security, international security, and environment of war that we're seeing today. I think it's kind of the classic case, as I heard you speaking, I was thinking of the words of Charles Tilly, who said, war makes the state and the state makes war. It's war. Yeah. Ali, can you tell us where we can read more of your work? Where can we read more about this history? I suppose there are three books. And the book on the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic

is actually the first book I wrote, which is called Iran, Islam and Democracy. But that's quite a large tome. And it charts really the history of the Islamic Republic from revolution through to the end of the reform movement and a bit of Ahmadinejad. Actually, no, it goes up right up to the JCPOA as well. Then for those who wish a little bit more historical background, I've got a book on modern Iran from 1797, I have to say, James. So a bit earlier than we would be, but it creates a good context of where we're going. I have to say, James, so a bit earlier than we would be, but it creates a good context of where we're going. And then a third one, which looks very particularly at nationalism in modern Iran, called, as you might suspect, the politics of nationalism in modern Iran. So, you know, take your pick. And there are a few other shorter pieces, but I'm very happy for people to go and

pick one of those, or even two, if they'd like. Or even three. Or even three. We will put a link to your books in our show notes. Ali, thank you so much for your time. And if I can urge our listeners next Monday to tune in to Nazrin Parvaz to hear about the details of surviving the Iranian revolution, which will really dovetail what we've been talking about today perfectly. Ali, thank you so much for your time.

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