Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 23- Iran-Iraq War Part 1: Revolution!

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

Sources for all related episodes: Karsh, Efraim (2002). The Iran–Iraq War: 1980–1988 https://www.iranchamber.com/history/iran_iraq_war/iran_iraq_war1.php Farrokh, Kaveh (2011). Iran at War: 1500–1988. https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/media/csis/pubs/9005lessonsiraniraqii-chap05.pdf https://nuke.fas.org/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.html https://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/basij-resistance-force https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2011/09/09/the-pasdaran-inside-irans-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps/ Timmerman, Kenneth R. (1991). The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq

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As soon as major hostilities broke out between the two oil producers, Iraq and Iran, we came here to Baghdad to watch OPEC at war, to look in particular at a regime seeking supremacy in the Gulf, and at its remarkable president, Saddam Hussein, one of the least known but most effective rulers in the Gulf, and at its remarkable president, Saddam Hussein, one of the least known but most effective rulers in the Middle East. As the conflict between his country and Iran got underway earlier this year, it was Saddam Hussein who declared, whoever climbs over our fence, we shall climb over his roof.

Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast. We're on air! Yeah, I'm Joe, that's Nick. Yes. And so before we get into today's first of many episodes, probably at least three or four. Yeah, I want to get a red light outside that door. So people know we're recording.

Don't worry, the dogs will combine and start dry heaving just enough for the mics to pick it up. Or my roommate. Yeah. So how has your weekend been? My weekend? Yeah. It's actually been pretty good. Haven't had to do anything.

Just messed with my truck. That's about it. Yeah. that drank beer i have been drinking since 10 a.m this morning and it's now about nine and you're still drinking i'm still drinking i was at i was in portland all weekend and uh watching the san antonio spurs losing basketball and uh my dogs decided to take that opportunity to shit all over my house, which is nice. Yeah. Nick was nice enough to clean up for me. It's fucking terrible.

So thank you, Nick, for cleaning up canine diarrhea. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. And the other great segue into the Iran-Iraq war is canine diarrhea. Everybody voted or the Patreon supporters voted on... Was it Patreon or was it just a Twitter vote?

I think it was. Twitter vote. Oh, no. I don't remember. Either one. Anyway, everybody voted on this being our next deep dive conflict, like multi-parter after the War of 1812. So that's why we're covering it. But there's another reason why we're covering it.

There's another reason why I even made that an option. It's a war of a lot of different firsts. It's a weird intersection of uh cold war proxy conflicts uh 20th century evolution of warfare it also had the very first helicopter dog fights which we'll totally get into later cherry popping um it had the first two nations uh shooting each other ballistic missiles um had human wave attacks i'm like shit you'd see out of the western front of world war one, all neatly wrapped up in theocratic revolutionary fervor. It's,

it's an interesting part of history that everybody doesn't talk about because like the, this war, and we're not going to talk about the Gulf war or, or the second Gulf war, at least anytime soon. But this war directly led to those. So it's kind of dumb that people ignore it.

Yeah. I'm really going into this blind so you're not alone um i think most people only know of this conflict from maybe the helicopter dog fights which weren't dog fights again we'll talk about that later um they know about the gassing which led to the l and fall campaign which we'll talk about later when you talk about helicopter dog fights i think either top gun not quite because that'd be fucking sweet well um they're they're made to sound way cooler than they actually were but i think we'll cover that part too sweet um so in this part one um i kind of have to we have to cover the iranian revolution um to really understand what was

happening in iran at the time um because without the disabling effects of the revolution, there never would have been a war. Now, the Iranian revolution is like a Western boogeyman to this day because it's the Iranian-Mislamic revolution. And there's a lot of good reasons for that. Admittedly, there's a lot of good reasons why it is considered a pretty serious event in Western history. it is considered a pretty serious event in Western history.

But you kind of need to understand why it was important to the region. The US and Britain especially thought this was a big deal for economic reasons. And the region thought of this as a destabilizing force. Think back to the French Revolution, why the revolutionary France ended up fighting literally all of its neighbors. They were going to, they're, everybody's afraid they're going to export this revolution to their house. Okay.

So who are we backing in this? That changes rapidly. And that's something we'll have to cover in depth later. But at the time, so before we get there, I kind of have to explain in depth later um but at the time um so before we get that kind of have to explain yes i understand that the iranian revolution deserves significantly more than one episode uh this is something that covered decades and we're going to give it the yada yada yada version kind of like we did world war one uh because otherwise this thing would be like 10 episodes

long just to get to the war that everybody voted under here so i'll do my best uh to explain this in the most like explain like i'm five version which is what i think we're good at nice yeah um so uh to really understand the revolution you have to go back to 1953 uh in iran you see iran was being led by a prime minister a guy guy named Mohammad Mosaddegh. He was voted in per popular vote and he was a bit of a leftist populist. He was kind of a thorn in the west side and the reason why, so Mosaddegh

wrote in on a wave of popularity in the polls. One of the reasons he was so popular is he wanted to nationalize Iran's vast oil wealth to alleviate the crushing poverty that affected everyday Iranians. Because, well, the Shah, which is the

king of Iran, and if you ever think you think a lot of yourself, Shah actually means king of kings in Persian. So yeah, that guy thought a lot of himself. But he was rich as shit. Like if you look up pictures of the Shah, and we'll post pictures of the shah his throne is gold he's wearing like the the normal dictator type uniform just covered in metals that he never got yeah that he never got big dick energy small dick energy

covering up with a giant dildo on top kind of because like the shah is very weak at this point um he's king as much as uh the queen of england is queen at this point. He's king as much as the queen of England is queen at this point. He wanted people to think he was powerful, but the prime minister really held all the power. And that is going to become an incident we'll talk about a little bit. So you're asking, how did Iran have so much oil, but be so poor?

And that's good old fashioned colonial exploitation, of course. So Iran was never officially a protectorate or a colony of anybody, but they fell into the United Kingdom's vast sphere of influence and into Exploitation, of course. So Iran was never officially a protectorate or a colony of anybody, but they fell into the United Kingdom's vast sphere of influence and into something I'll call, I guess, soft colonialism. Instead of doing what they normally did back then and just steamrolling natives, putting in a puppet, and literally controlling the nation, they didn't.

They decided to instead do it while wearing business suits um back in 1933 the brits knew iran had vast amounts of oil uh laying underneath the soil but they also knew the country was even poorer then and cannot exploit those resources for themselves because they had no infrastructure they had no drilling infrastructure no kind of you know petroleum engineers nothing right uh so they cozied up to them with the thing of saying, he'd give the Shah enough they can't refuse. They would supply all of the technology expertise and the original costs to create a vast oil drilling empire

within the country. They would split the profits between them and the Iranians. And eventually through this process, the Iranians would learn the trade. They'd become engineers. They would get stronger, smarter, more wealthy through the things that this partnership would bring sounds like a sweet deal yeah and if you know the british you know that's not how this worked they had their fingers crossed behind the back of course yeah um so they kind of had this idea that this oil would bring

them into a golden age the shah readily agreed and thus was born the Iranian Anglo oil company. Anybody who's been paying attention to history knows exactly how this worked out. The British hardly split any profits to the Iranians and only gave them about 15% of the money. They also retroactively build them for all the construction costs. So, and the only jobs Iranians would get is as unskilled

labor in the factories. They wouldn't learn how to be engineers at all. And those laborers would be forced to work in slave-like conditions. Oh, steel sucks. Yeah. To make matters worse, the Brits gave the money to the Shah, not Iran. And the Shah, being such

a small dude, lined his own pockets. The company also became something of like a modern east india training company where um instead of just keeping themselves in the side of business they then started pulling the strings of the iranian state functions um by the time mosadak got elected the oil if the oil company didn't like you, you got fired. And if the oil company did like you, you get a job in government. Which is actually something that's happening now in, I believe, Nigeria. The Nigerian Delta Dutch Shell owns the government. Really?

Yeah, to the extent that when the wiki leaks published all those cables i think it was like four years ago um that oil executives from uh from the dutch shell company were actually talking directly to the president and telling him what to do what the fuck so this isn't something that's ended it just moved around a bit um so most of deck's nationalization of that company uh changed all that in 1951. His plan was to use all this newfound money that they're going to get, because remember, they're only getting 15%, to begin planning massive sweeping reforms that would bring Iran more in line,

honestly, with Western Europe. They didn't even have things like unemployment compensation or sick benefits. He was going to use that oil wealth to fund all that. There's also something kind of that was taking place in the oil fields where it was kind of like serfdom. You'd be forced to work for people. Almost slavery, but you were like, yeah, we're totally paying you, bro, but also you can't quit.

He was going to end that too. Remind you, this is 1950, not 1850. So this is all, Iran's pretty backward at the time. And Mossadegh was going to use the oil to fix that. The Brits did not take that well though. I would imagine so. They don't take much well.

No. How much is this 15% that they're getting? What is that? Peanuts. Peanuts? It's a couple hundred million out of billions oh yeah some lint in the pocket yeah it in comparison to the amount of money that the the brits themselves were taking because i mean even though the anglo oil company uh anglo

iranian oil company was technically a private venture much like the east india company that i compared them to they were also kind of a government functionary. So Britain was making a ton of money. Yeah. Um, they decided if they couldn't have Iranian oil, nobody could. And they announced what effectively became a blockade.

Burn it all. Yeah. They, they told all oil tankers that, uh, that would go into the area not to take the oil. Um, because quote receipts from the Iranian government would not be accepted in the world market. Why,

why, how could they do this? Well, the Brit said it's our oil and they stole it. Meaning Iran might be the only country on earth that is accused of stealing its own natural resources. What the, yeah,

this effectively completely shut down the Iranian oil industry. Without that promised oil revenue their new reforms can be rolled out uh the british hope this would uh cause mosaddegh to back down or the people to rise up against him effectively doing like a soft regime change okay um neither of those things happened um instead the iranian people rallied around their new prime minister seeing what was happening on face value this would become a trend that the that the Iraqis didn't see coming either. More on that in a little bit. But anyway, Namostek is kind of lionized as a

hero in modern days to the anti-imperialist leftists in modern times. He was actually talked about in a Flobots song. Oh, really? What song? Ah, fuck. I think it's same thing I think it's called., I think it's called.

Same thing. Yeah. Wow. And I could see how, at face value, he can seem as an anti-imperialist here. He told the British to fuck off, and he nationalized his country's resources ostensibly to help his country's poor. We don't know if he actually intended to because he never got that far. Right.

But what he did next kind of makes him a bastard. He used backroom deals and made all sorts of government allies and new alliances he allied with the islamic scholars party and the tudah party the tudahs are uh damning communist party uh who actually attempted to assassinate the shah whose name is reza pavali about four years before so yeah um spicy and instead of um making a government that worked like democratically, he actually, his whole point was to centralize power on himself. So he kind of tried to create this populist dictatorship separate from the

Iranian monarchy and the Iranian democratic institutions. Right. So he was kind of a bastard. So the British were not happy about this um so they looked towards their friends over in the u.s how to fix this problem if you've listened to this podcast enough times you know who's coming next the cia why did the cia get involved you're asking well they threw around words like nationalization and communism, and boom, the CIA shows up. The CIA

shows up saying somebody's name three times in a bathroom mirror. In March 1953, Secretary John Foster Dulles ordered the CIA, which was headed by his younger brother Alan Dulles, since the US apparently regime changes a family business,

to come up with a plan to get rid of the prime minister. That name might sound familiar to you and to longtime listeners. Alan Dulles is the same guy who killed the Congolese prime minister in our Jadoville episode. Sweet. I'm glad we're going back to the African thing. At this point, the CIA is kind of like a fourth host. So it's like me

you rich from time to time and then the cia sweet uh so uh the shah once again made plans to reject them um so like uh the doluses kind of figured the shah calling himself king and he did want to play political games he he was more political when Mosaddegh was in office than not. And so Dolos is like, well, fuck, he wants to be in charge. We'll tell him we're going to get rid of the prime minister. So they told him, we're going to get rid of this guy. And he's like, no, no, no, we can't get rid of him. The people will lose their shit.

And they're like, no, no, you don't understand. We're going to do this whether you're on board or not. And so with that in mind, he's like, fuck it. I guess I'm with you guys. He wasn't getting much of a choice. So when the Shah decided to join the... Is this all still in the 50s? Yes.

Holy fuck. This is the footprint to the revolution. So when the Shah changed sides, said, yeah, I'll help you. He, um, fucked off to Rome during the whole ordeal in case it went sideways. Yeah. He also signed two decrees, one firing Moser and the other one promoting general Fazla Zahidi, a guy handpicked by the CIA to be prime minister. The reason why he picked the general, of course, was to have the military help him in the coup.

The CIA is so trash at doing their draft picks. Oh they lose fantasy drafts ten times out of ten uh so once the military joined in everything went to hell mosad was arrested and uh after surrendering to general zahidi uh he was taken into custody but also it should be pointed out that general zahidi's whole headquarters this whole thing was a bar in the middle of the city because a heedy sounds like a drink in a bar yeah so uh well done sir i like this um so when mosigde was arrested shah returned from rome and took power uh now here's where the thing flips before the prime minister is in charge with him being with the shah being a figurehead right now the shah is in charge and the prime minister is there to sign shit um so he's the commander. Yeah, he's now really king. Yeah, okay.

So, I mean, the coup centered around giving all the power to the Shah, mostly because the CIA knew the Shah was really easy to control. I figure they just wave money in his face. That's effectively what they did. Money and weapons. Because you have to realize that where Iran is situated in the world, the Middle East and Africa were pretty heavily leaning towards the USSR at the time.

Um, because us, uh, USSR is dip, uh, diplomacy was give everybody weapons as long as they give a wink and a nudge to communism. So Iran is like kind of,

um, a speed bump, uh, to stand against them. Also NATO likes oil. Um, so unsurprisingly, the new government quickly agreed to lopsided oil deals with the Britain and U.S.,

and in turn, the U.S. would heavily fund the Shah's government. During this time, the Tudor Party, remember the communists, was outlawed, and anybody who spoke against the Shah would end up in jail, or worse, a visit from the brutal SAVAK secret police. The SAVAK was actually a brainchild of the United States army Colonel who was working for the CIA at the time. Um,

his main goal was to create something of bizarro world version of the KGB, uh, at an all knowing, all seeing terrifying group of spies who pretty much only existed to root out communists. So they're like the opposite of KGB. And then they're going around fucking up people who just talk shit on, uh,

yes. Okay. Exactly. Like the KGB, which then they're going around fucking up people who just talk shit on... Yes. Okay. Exactly like the KGB, which was, you know, rooted out, was supposed to root out enemies of the state, would also root out anybody who didn't like the shot. Yeah, just talk shit. They did this by kidnapping, torturing, and murdering anybody they kind of thought even looked like a communist.

One of the Savak's first American trainers was a major General Herbert Schwarzkopf. Does that name sound familiar? It really does. Yeah. He was Stormy Norman's dad. Holy fuck.

Savak's official founder, an Iranian guy named Tamir Bakadir, would actually end up being assassinated by his own agents a couple years later. This is all in the 50s still. Yeah. The Iranian government is kind of like that picture of the snake eating its own tail. And it just fucks itself up as it goes on. Using his small army of around 6,000 agents and a massive US-funded army, the Shah locked down his rule through violence, terror, and censorship of almost everything he didn't like. And it also turned out, all that censorship aside, he sucked at ruling.

I'd imagine. He appointed one of his best friends, a Swiss guy named Ernest Peron, as his close advisor. Despite the fact Peron never actually graduated high school and was not good at anything, he was a poet. He's your boy. You gotta help your boy out. He wasn't really good at anything. The British ambassador to Iran said Peron was, quote, a court jester who only had his job because he could make the Shah laugh. Yes. Yes.

Just to underline how much of a piece of shit he was. That's fucking awesome. The Shah's own wife said Peron was, quote, a fucking piece of shit. What'd he do? He was just. I'm the funny guy. Peron was an interesting character. He was openly homosexual in the 50s in Iran.

And I know this is pre-revolutionary Iran, mind you, so they're not hanging people for being gay. But still, it's the 1950s. Being gay isn't accepted anywhere. The Shah himself said he hated him for being gay, but still kept him around. He must have been really fucking funny. The Shah's dad, since they were friends from school uh the shah's dad knew about prone

because they hung out all the time and his dad um the shah's dad uh banished him from his house and said he could only be allowed back in if he worked on the garden so he's a weird guy i think the dad probably caught peron and shah it's possible uh though i mean the shah was pretty open about hating gays though i mean but i think he's also kind of trying to hide something it wouldn't be the first time um and also he was so bad that the british spy handler from mi6 uh called him quote a terrible man it's like the CIA calling someone a bad person. Like, man, I must really be a piece of shit. A terrible man. Yeah.

That's it? I mean, that's, it's British. I mean, it's kind of like they understate everything. It's like, you know, something blew up. It was a bad day. If you need another example of exactly how bad the shot was at running his country, look no further than when in 1959 a British company won a contract

with the Iranian government, and then it was suddenly cancelled and given to Simons, a different company instead. An investigation by the British embassy soon uncovered the reason why. The Shah wanted to fuck the wife of the Simons agent for Iran, and the Simons agent consented. So he changed the contract

so he could fuck his wife. He, uh, he is literally a cuck. I, I don't have anything for that. No, he,

he ruled. I did. He, he, that's weird. Powered his nation's economy via his dick. Um, that's like some Roman emperor shit.

But, uh, so it wasn't until the 60s that the shah started seriously piss off the devoted muslim population of iran even though he was mostly secular he kind of left it alone yeah um that was until he instituted the white revolution which allowed women the right to vote uh would allow public servants to swear their office using whichever holy book they wanted and establish ties with Israel. All boogeymen. At the time.

This fucking place sucks. It gets worse. Jesus. It was an effort to force Iran into modernity to kind of like force out its old traditional elites. Instead, it led to huge protests by Islamic students and led to mass shootings by

police and two more assassination attempts against the Shah, which both failed. I imagine these are pretty bad assassination attempts. I don't know. There's a lot of guns in the country. Someone's probably taking shots at them. Probably. Probably strays. Assassination attempt.

They probably weren't military because his military is pretty loyal to him. You kind of have to be to open fire on college kids. The Shah's glorious white revolution, however, would lead directly to his downfall. Widespread demonstrations against the Shah began in 1970s. And the Shah couldn't help but just keep shooting himself in the dick. Because in the middle of the protest, he just had a hugely expensive party commemorating the 25th hundredth anniversary of the fallen founding of the Persian empire. Uh, the celebration cost upwards of tens of millions of dollars.

And as one historian put it, quote, as the foreigners reveled in drink forbidden by Islam, Iranians were not only excluded from the festivities, but some were starving to death in the streets. Yeah. The party was lit. Yeah.

But the party was awesome. Uh, as long as you weren't Iranian, everything was sla lit. Yeah, but the party was awesome. As long as you weren't Iranian. Yeah, everything was slapping. Yeah. Party was the hottest thing on the block. Assuming you weren't dying of starvation. Except your oven.

Yeah. To make matters worse, inflation began to skyrocket, which caused steep austerity measures to be taken by the government. You know, cutting spending pretty much everywhere. Except for where the spending was really bad, which was the Shah's personal expense fund. Fucking partying. He came up with some really interesting ways

to keep money. So all political parties are banned except one. That party's membership was mandatory. Being a party required you to pay dues. All of those dues went directly to the Shah. How much? I mean, even like any kind of party dues. Because, I mean, if membership is mandatory,

you have to think the vast majority of the people in this country are poor shit. Yeah. Any kind of money out of their pockets is too much. That makes sense. And they all knew it went directly to the rich guy. They were literally sitting at a golden throne full of golden eagles and shit. Full of golden eagles. With the gay jester next to them.

Yeah, the gay Swedish jester guy. Of course, these cuts did not hurt the rich. cuts did not hurt the rich and uh instead it affected the poor and unskilled uh laborers who were largely social and religiously conservative from the countryside uh all of those groups would end up fueling the uh soon to be protests that would just destroy everything um so this place sucks it's not good if you're not the shop. No, it's not. So do the people, all right, they pay the dues. Do they get a party as well? They weren't invited to the last one.

See, that's horse shit. Why am I paying dues if I can't party? Yeah. I think the only thing you get for. What do you get out of it? Yeah, what do you get out of being in the party? It's only one party and there's no elections. Like, yeah.

Like, what's the point? This party seems like a pyramid scheme. Like, theah was like and and his advisor like dude how can we get more money on these people just really good at selling a shitty pyramid scheme yeah yeah it's like all of the really really bad uh pyramid schemes that like military spouses take part in except there's not even a product if you just if you don't pay you just get visited by the deadly secret police who will rip your toenails out here's your product right here yeah um to add fuel to the fire uh whenever there was a protest the uh police would just shoot at them okay and uh then the protests were taken over so originally the protests started out as secular and egalitarian in nature.

Like it was just the broke, poor, hungry people like this is fucked up. We need something. Um, and then they were joined in mass by religious students and devout Muslims from across the country, which is how,

um, the, the revolution turned into what we know today. Also, uh, interesting footnote, uh, one of the major organizers and foot soldiers,

I guess you'd call them of the beginning parts of this revolution were women. And of the major organizers and foot soldiers, I guess you'd call them, of the beginning parts of this revolution were women. And if you know anything about modern-day Iran, it's pretty goddamn surprising. Seeing as they can't really do anything. They have one step over Saudi women. That's about it. So the Shah's army had no riot control training.

They actually had no less than lethal weapons. One of the weird footnotes is the Carter administration refused to sell them tear gas and rubber bullets, afraid of how they would use them. Even though at this point, the Shah's army had been machine gunning people. Here's some bullets.

Yeah, there's some shit that actually kills. They wouldn't sell them rubber bullets, but they'd sure the fuck sell them conics after conics of real bullets um imagine them going over the paperwork on that yeah uh so the and i'm i'm not forgiving the soldiers for this but um they had no other way like there was a there's two options here listen to the protesters which obviously the shot wasn't going to do. Right. And the only other thing that he had was a giant fucking army. Couldn't he just use his jester?

It's probably his fucking idea. I don't know. Like, hey, go out there, make them laugh. Make them forget about their terrible situation. They'll give them a fucking yuck. Maybe they'll stop protesting. Yeah, so instead the army would just fucking machine gun protesters in the street.

And eventually, this wasn't like an army-wide thing. Some units completely refused to take part in it, and they would just leave their weapons in the ground and go home. Other people would join the protesters. I wish I could do that. Yeah. Some of my days suck. Yeah, well, at least you're not machine gunning people in the street.

It's true. Unless you took part in Jade Helm anyway. Next week. That was last week. Yeah. This is the one after Jade Helm. My days are off. Well, I mean, it also helps that Jade Helm episode literally came out today.

And we were recording today. Wait, no. It comes out tomorrow. Well, it'll be today to me when I release it at like 1 a.m. That's true. Wait, no, it comes out tomorrow. Well, it'll be today to me when I release it, like 1 a.m. That's true.

So on September the 4th, 1978, during the celebration of Eid, the holiday at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, for those not familiar, nearly half a million people decided to go pray outside in Tehran. It was greenlit. It must have been a nice day. It was. And, well, it wasn't supposed to be a demonstration.

That's how they got around it. Obviously, the Shah does not allow demonstrations against him. I can tell. Yeah. If you haven't picked up on that. So they framed it as, well, we're just going to go celebrate Eid, and Eid is like one of the biggest holidays in Islam. So, of course, the Shah was like, sure, okay.

Well, it quickly turned into a protest march with about a half million people taking part um yeah do they get machine gun i feel like that's a stupid question to ask right now spoiler alert they get machine gunned figured soldiers responded and shot somewhere between 60 if you listen to uh reports time or 1000 people holy fuck if you listen to other sources of time uh the event became known as black friday which now um united states celebrates and goes uh basically the same thing happens uh in certain areas yeah i mean that's it's something common there's like a hundred different black fridays through history and black sundays yeah i've heard and bloody sundays but yeah uh this is pretty uh run the mill despotic type destroy the protest movement type stuff um and this is where you see uh mass um desertions from the military starts to start to begin um

and uh in response the opposition and the strikers called for a general strike. If you aren't prepared or aren't aware, a general strike is where just everybody refuses to go to work. Regardless of what your job is, it's not like your local, you know, Teamsters local 405 decides to strike. It's everybody. So it cripples economies, which is the whole point. The strike paralyzed the country as millions of people took to the streets. Holy um protested protesters became calling for the military and police to join them and they did by the tens of thousands that's awesome um which is interesting you don't see this happen very often in popular like a good version is the maiden uprising in ukraine um the police and i think they're called like the bear coots or something like that the

police special forces were shooting unarmed protesters until the very end um the military was uh didn't take huge part but they weren't on the side of the protesters either um normally in situations like this um two things tend to happen the police almost always back the state um for reasons that are deeply sociological and everything else and the military ends up backing people mostly because the military remembers that they probably have family members in the crowd yeah

and their job is to fight invading armies or invade other people not to shoot their own people and the police end up staying on board because maybe they assume it's gonna fail they don't want to lose their job yeah not so many worries about that this time. Um,

and once they started, uh, deserting by the thousands, uh, they started also giving guns to the protesters. Oh, uh, yeah.

Uh, so the once unarmed protesters now managed to get their hands on thousands of weapons and now they have thousands of soldiers and police in the ranks. Um, and again, another footnote, some of their best, um, early revolutionary fighters in Iran were women. I think many of them probably regret that now if they're still alive.

At the same time, Iranian military leaders stopped issuing orders to their soldiers who didn't defect, leaving them just sitting around and doing nothing. So they just went home. Protesters surged through the streets of tyran burning everything that could be considered western to the ground this is um uh one of the biggest out uh surges of like anti-western sentiment because uh while the protests were originally against the shah then they ballooned to be who was propping this shot up and everybody knew it was the West. So in October,

1979, the Shaw flew to the U S for cancer treatment. This spawned wild anti-American sentiment among the revolutionaries who began to fear another American coup was in the works. Remind you people knew who did it last time. It was not a good secret. This time it was going to be directed against the revolutionaries. Also by now,

everybody knew the Shah was on his way out one way or another whether this protest finally surged through the gates of the palace and killed everybody or he stepped down or what have you they knew the end was in sight the end game could be seen so the revolutionaries

wanted the Shah to stand trial for his crimes against the people whether it be machine gunning protesters or having the Sifak break into people's houses in the night and make them disappear. Shit like that. They wanted him to stand trial. You didn't pay your fucking dues.

Yeah, yeah. You didn't pay dues to my political party. And by my political party, I mean my sweet pool fund. You see that sweet chair? It's your due money right there. Yeah. When do I spend your dues on last night? Check out this robe.

Jester, dance for me. It's real raptor skin. See these boots? Eagle feather sun. Bald eagles. Necklace is pure California condor. Jester, dance. Dance for me, gay Jester. Look what he's wearing nothing at all armani

also uh god he was so bad about hiding it like i understand now we have a president who literally has his name and gold letters on the side of golden buildings and shit yeah but at least he had those before he became president. Does he have a jester? Yeah, his name is Mike Pence. I saw that in your head turning like, oh, yeah. Thanks for knocking that one out of the park, man. Good setup. No, that was not scripted.

So the revolutionaries decided they need to get some leverage and I know, you know, what's coming next. You just don't quite even put the pieces together quite yet. They did so by storming the American embassy in Tehran and taking everybody hostage inside. Oh God. Yeah. Was it? It's that one.

It's the one you're thinking of. Yeah. Sweet. Uh, there's some, okay. So there's some debate, uh, whether or the storming of the mc was always planned uh which i do believe it was uh or it was a protest gone wild i'm not taking a stance neither side here uh other than my opinion uh but i will say most historical evidence sides on the fact that this was absolutely a planned operation going on the wild side i mean it, this is kind of like, if you believe Benghazi, it was a protest gun under control or a planned attack.

Most things point to a planned attack. Yeah. You really don't bring thousands of rifles to a protest. Wild. Yeah. Clearly. But I will say it was an oddly specific target at an oddly specific time for a random raid to happen

at that exact moment. What is a specific time? Well, like I said, the shot went to the United States. Oh, okay. And they wanted leverage for the Americans to give them back. Okay, so he's still in the United States at this time. Yeah, yeah. Six months later, of course, the U.S. launched a rescue mission

that we won't go into here because it was called Operation Eagle Claw, I believe. It went terribly bad and made everybody that was involved look like a jackass. It was pretty much, maybe it could be like a side episode or an addendum at the end of the series. But just know it went badly. It made Carl look like a fucking idiot. So the Shah stepped down from the throne and fled to egypt on the morning of january uh 1979 the same day that his prime minister a guy named shahpur bakatir attempted to assert himself as a new ruler of iran rather than the revolutionaries

bakatir was a monarchist but he wanted to put things back how it used to be with the prime minister really controlling it. This went nowhere for quite a few reasons. Everybody saw Bacchettier as a Shah loyalist and a puppet of the Western powers, both of which were absolutely true. He had lived the majority of his life in France, and he was actually motivated specifically to get into government because he hated the

leader of the opposition. A guy many of you have been waiting for me to talk about, and all of you know about, His name is Ayatollah Rojia Khomeini. Bacchantier wasn't stupid, though. He knew how much power Khomeini had, so he came up with a plan to kind of push him to the side.

A plan that, when I explain it to you, you'll quickly realize how fucking stupid it is. His plan was to create a Vatican-like state in the city of Khoms and appoint Khomeini as a weird Muslim pope, which had never existed before. This plan sucks already. It's really bad.

It's the type of plan that only makes sense to you if you are so fucking desperate you can't think of anything else. He invited the exiled Ayatollah to come back to Iran, and he did, and he was greeted by crowds so large he could not travel by road and instead of trail by helicopter because millions of people clogged every road in the country to welcome him back fuck he was popular yeah um pretty much immediately uh komini denounced bakatir's government and set up his own down the street. What? Which is, he had to have seen that coming.

Yeah. That's fucking awesome. Yeah. I still like the whole, he had to travel by helicopter. Yeah. That's fucking awesome. That's actually pretty common. I told a comedian, he was so popular,

he really could not go outside without being swarmed by crowds, which is interesting because it was around this time where Comenio was never secretive about what he wanted to stand up. From the beginning of the revolution, when he kind of became the revolution's figurehead, when it was co-opted from everybody, he always said they needed Islamic Republic set up with Sharia law. And everybody everybody's like you know it's fucking better than the shah yeah and that's how a lot of people think like how the fuck did this popular revolution because you know there's no way that many people to include millions of women would support effectively going back in time um but when you realize that they that the shah was an even worse option, it's kind of mind-blowing.

That's how you know you're a real piece of shit. Yeah. You have to think, how bad do you have to be the ruler to think in a repressive theological republic, because they call themselves a republic, was a better choice than you? See, because at the time, I mean, they have several, I'm not going to go into like all the different layers of revolutionary

Armenian government. Cause there's, it's, it's in depth, but, um, it's effectively a theological dictatorship. Like they,

that was willed into power by the people. Yeah. Let's keep going. Uh, so, uh, like I said, immediately set up his own government, uh uh back to your insisted that he was

the one that was really in charge but he had no means to enforce he was in charge um because ayatollah was so popular any move against him was suicide he had no military because it deserted and went to the revolutionaries and the police is all gone so it was him going no really guys i'm the one in charge and that's it it would be like some the governor of fucking north dakota going no guys really i'm president and then just screaming really loud and then people in north dakota not even knowing that they're in north dakota like what's north dakota why do we exist uh if we have any listeners from north dakota we we love you uh but also why are you in north dakota why are you not just dakota why is there a north and a south did you have a revolution i mean if you if you put the two dakotas together your population

is about 50 people so oh also they're the two states that literally have never met anybody from same and i don't know if i can say that about any other state same as well so i'm going to say and this is just a theory they don't actually exist oh yeah it's like the uh was it the finland doesn't exist joke conspiracy theory yes you know what with your uh uh patreon money i think we can go investigate this i don't know we might get thrown in a walmart death camp oh fuck uh so uh the military deserted like i said in mass uh but the ones that were left behind weren't getting paid anymore because there was no real government uh and so he literally had nothing there was no state army at this time did he even have a jester no as you know i couldn't

really find what happened to that guy when this whole thing yeah i'm really wondering what happened i i know he escaped with the shah but his later life is kind of a question mark also i didn't really look into it because i'm a fraud and then oh yeah oh i mean updates to come yeah yeah uh so um uh to make things even worse so you know back to you took over he formed a whole government uh like cabinet ministers everything well within a week all of them defected to the other government how does it like pick someone that's so unloyal, like, they're only going to stick around for, like, six days. Like, sorry, bro, I got to go. The other side, way cooler.

Yeah. Like the other side of the pillow. Yeah. Within 10 days, back to yours, government completely collapsed. So what is real? What do you mean what is real? It's almost like, all all right so there's no government so there's no military there's no police it's fucking chaos other side is like we're kind of

not but we kind of are the government it's total chaos um during this time there's uh people randomly wandering the streets getting revenge on one another um and we'll talk about a little bit later when we talk about the iranian army but it's like a rage against the machine it's almost anarchy yeah um people are like stealing shit from places that used to belong to the shah um normal post-revolutionary activity like anybody who they think was loyal to the shah was probably gonna die uh shit like that uh so back to iran back to france uh after all this within and then this all happened within 10 days of Ayatollah returning to the country yeah to make matters

worse for Bakhtiyar the agents of the Islamic Republic would find him there in 1991 and assassinate him on his front porch via kitchen knife fuck not a happy ending for Mr. Bakhtiyar so the country that the

revolutionaries took control of was in total shambles months of striking had destroyed their aisle the oil output to make matters worse there's no technicians to run the oil fields and anyone from the West had ran from revolution months ago their economy was completely destroyed half the country went to shit half the

cattle had been burnt down in the revolution and now they had to figure out how to run the government. As anybody remotely connected to the deposed monarchy was not allowed to hold any office whatsoever. Anybody who can fit into the gold chair really well can sit in government's spot. Oh, there's definitely no gold chair anymore.

They melted that shit down or it went missing. I would imagine it's probably still sitting there. Yeah, the Ayatollah definitely was like farting on it. Just pulling his Robes up and bare ass farting on it It's like when you fart in the shower You're like Those are like the worst ones

Imagine this old ass Ayatollah in the 60s Like cozying into the fucking Shah's golden shower. You just see fucking skin. Loose skin. Dusty fart. So as for the defense, and by defense I mean the military,

the military which was formerly known as the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces ceased to exist since about Black Friday. Wrecked by mutinies, indecision, and desertion, there's almost nothing left. What left of the professional military was wiped out by what? Their own government! The new revolutionary government itself was wiped out so thoroughly that Stalin himself would be proud.

The military had been the Shah's main power base, so there wasn't a trust between the two I mean you think this is the same military was machine gunning people in the streets even though thousands I wouldn't trust anything going on especially something connected to like the Shah so you have the thing like when they took

over like the military is the enemy that's how they looked at it honestly at that point I'd imagine anybody's the enemy everybody is everybody's enemy. Exactly. Like the little kid on the side of the street. The fuck are you looking at, kid? He's got shifty looking fucking eyes.

Call the SAVAK. So the military and the police being the Shah's main power base and means of repression got torn to shreds. Almost every single general officer was dragged in front of a firing squad and everybody else was pretty much exiled. Everybody's fucking dying. Yeah. It turns out the Aitola really just wants to rule a country full of corpses. Yeah. The Aitola instead created the Revolutionary Guard Corps, something to counterweight the regular army just in case.

He also established another well-known group and one you may have heard of named Hezbollah. Yeah. Really? Yes. Thisbollah. Yeah. Really? Yes. This is a... Yeah. I'm so glad I came into this blind. This is great.

It gets worse. So the people of Iran joined in on these purges. Reportedly, so many Iranian citizens were breaking into people's homes and murdering them. Anyone that was considered any enemy of the revolution and that Ayatollah had to kindly ask them to stop murdering each other

it got that bad yes hey I really want to rule people can you people stop dying I would like that to rule a fucking Halloween hellscape full of skeletons like you know you're acting like drastic when the guy who's like, OK, everybody with any stars on their military uniform is going to get shot. But whoa, guys, you went a little too far with killing the baker.

Yeah. So the Revolutionary Guard Corps was now in charge of protecting the revolution, which is actually something they're tasked with to this day. They're still fucking around? Yeah, they still exist. Holy shit. Pretty much everything you ever hear about Iran, like every run-in with the United States military. Remember the time where a whole bunch of sailors got taken hostage?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Revolutionary Guard Corps. Ooh. Well, one of the sailors was wearing white socks. Yes, he was. So that's one of the reasons. He got turned into a meme hardcore. Yeah, he did. It was great. To this one of the reasons he got turned into a meme hardcore yeah to this day the revolutionary guards are considered um the main body of power for the islamic

government like uh everybody talks about why isn't there an uprising why does the everyday irony military upright uh like join in an uprising the guard corps is armed better oh that's how they keep everybody in check. They're called the guard corps. They're called a revolutionary guard corps. All right. One second. I'm a part of the guard corps. No,

I don't want to be a part of it. It sounds really, uh, I believe their, their, uh, Persian name is like the positron. Ooh.

Yeah. The positron. Yeah. It's a transformer. It transforms into someone just kills your neighbor. Yes. Um, so them being the,

the, the guardians of the revolution, whatever you want to call them, they found coups being plotted pretty much everywhere they went. Not real ones, mind you. And the Atola insisted everyone they found to be involved had to die. Coups at Ant's house. Yeah. Kill that bitch.

Everybody who looked at them wrong was plotting something. Yeah. By 1980, what was left of the Iranian military was a little more than untraded, badly armed militia that was really only good at killing its own people. They seemed like they were really fucking good at that. They were. To make matters worse, Iran's number one enemy and,

sorry, to make matters worse, imperial Iran's number one defense supplier, the United States, was now a sworn enemy. Remember, they still have the hostages at the embassy during this time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's okay. They also, the Shah was a puppet that they overthrew, so they did not collect that very much.

So the Islamic Revolution made no friends in its neighborhood either. And the Ayatollah did not make this any easier in anybody uh so when he took over uh the ayatollah did not think this as an iranian revolution he thought that so this is actually a good way to think about this um if you know anything about the russian revolution there was two ways of thinking uh one was the trotskyist line of thought where everybody need all workers of the world need to launch revolutions against their government. And then there's the Stalinist way of thinking was socialism in one country. Just focus on Russia.

When you think about it that way, the Ayatollah was certainly Trotskyist in his revolution. Every Arab and every Muslim had to join in on the revolution. As you can imagine, other Middle Eastern countries did not like this. Because, I mean, they didn't want to lose their positions as being dictators. Yeah. And there was a handful of pretty secular leaders in the Middle East at the time. People think of the Middle East now as a hardline Muslim dictatorship of where they look.

Right. And while strongmen are still super popular during this time in the region, most of them are secular. You have Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which we will obviously talk about more. Um, you have Anwar al-Sadat in Egypt who believed in like pan Arabism, um,

to the point that they actually formed a weird pseudo EU for a while. Um, yeah, it didn't work out. It was called like the, uh, the what the fuck yeah at one point someone i believe it was iraq even changed their flag to i it's i didn't i didn't do a lot of so somebody out there's gonna prove me wrong in this but um yeah there's a lot of pan-arabism going on, which is like an ethnic nationalism. Yeah.

Because you have to think, the Middle East, the way you look at it, it didn't naturally form that way. There's a reason why there's such crisp lines in between those countries. They were just cut up and divided by mostly England. Like, oh, look, boom, there's Iraq. Boom, there's Iran. Boom, there's Egypt. The borders for Egypt and Israel and Syria and Jordan, like in Saudi Arabia.

Those didn't exist that way. Right. So there's a lot at the time. There's a lot of pan-Arabism. And Iraq being a huge part of it and Egypt being another. But Ayatollah Assad told us as pan Islamism, uh, everybody had to join the revolution.

Uh, if you're, if you're, if you don't join the revolution, you're a bad Muslim. This made him a lot of enemies. Um, so that meant,

uh, the surrounding secular countries that were Arabs, mostly Iraq was vehemently against them. Uh, could it be cause I don't know, shit talking? Well, they didn't want to lose power. Yeah, that. Okay, yeah.

And you have to think. Even before this, Iraq's a dictatorship. I mean, even if they have a president, sure. But nobody wants their government to collapse and be taken over by a whole bunch of dudes from across the border. Those dudes are fucking savages. And even the ones who were Islamic dictatorships themselves, like Saudi Arabia, were like, whoa, no, thank you. So he wanted a revolution to go across yeah he wanted he wanted a religious wide revolution to to put in theocracies across the region um i could see

where which is exactly not not exactly different but the same uh of why like i said the beginning of the episode how revolutionary france ended up involved in so many wars. Nobody wanted that revolution to be exported, so they had to contain it and kill it. This idea clashed with one Mr. Saddam Hussein. Even after this, this whole time, the Aitul is like, you need to revel,

you need to revolt, you need to revolt revolt you need to arm yourselves you need to kick out your rage yeah uh so even after that saddam made a speech in july 1979 where he praised the revolution because saddam hated the shah for constantly fucking with iraq so um before before uh the shah got kicked out a long, long time before, I believe in the 50s, 60s. Yeah. The CIA, go figure, with the Shah funded full scale Kurdish uprisings in northern Iraq more than once. Ooh. Yeah.

The future president of Kurdistan, a guy named Barzani, was actually one of the people he helped, uh, the CIA and the Shah helped fund an arm. So there, there's a reason why Iraq was kind of happy to see the revolution. Yeah. Um, but also they saw the revolution as a super weakening force in Iran. Um, I mean, they saw the chaos that was going on. They saw a country break. Yeah. The country was just folding in on itself and stabbing the shit out of itself um he also called for an iraq iran friendship based on just leaving each other alone like hey the shah's gone and the cia isn't there anymore so let's be buddies yeah um the idol on your side yeah let's just not fuck with each other the iran totally rejected it um you know and this is something that i don't mean to do but it's gonna happen you have to be have to be a real bastard to make Saddam Hussein look like the adult in the room here.

No, yeah, no. I can see that. Yeah. Because honestly, I was on Saddam's side right there. Yeah. I don't see who wouldn't be. I don't think I know anybody. It's weird to think that, I mean, going forward when we talk about the war and going forward

during this episode, it's really hard for me to make A, the Iranian revolution look like a bad idea at the time, and B, makes Saddam Hussein look like a bad guy right now. I mean, obviously, he had his own machinations that he was working on. He absolutely wanted to take over parts of southern Iran. He definitely wanted to take over the Shaddaa era waterway uh to further his own economic needs but like he didn't have like i don't think he would have tried if um if the atoll is like okay let's be cool because he wouldn't have had a reason he wouldn't have had a even if it was a bad reason to go to war he didn't have one yet yeah um that would quickly spiral out of control um like everything going on so far. Yeah, it doesn't really come.

Nobody really gets a handle on things until this war is over. Nothing's looking too good. I wish I could say it gets better, but it gets worse so much. Yes. Soon people start gassing one another. So, Oh yeah.

Uh, so Saddam completely abandoned his overtures of friendship and began to instead to see, uh, see Iran as a serious threat. When he was like, hey, let's be buddies, he was kind of hoping all the Ayatollah's calls for revolution were for his audience. They weren't for his. Kind of like today you hear politicians talking about, hey, countries need to do this.

But they say that in the U.S. because they're not going to go over there and say that to them because it's considered a dick move. But the Ayatollah was like, no, really, Iraqis should kick you the fuck out and install me. So, like, he's like, OK, he's serious. He's not just he's not doing this for the home crowd. Yeah. There's also a lot of underlying factors at play. underlying factors at play. He saw the Algiers agreement, uh,

which was the agreement who actually created Iran, Iran and Iraq, uh, as unfair because, uh, Iran's Southern Kujastan region was populated by Arabs rather than Persians. Uh, so he,

so that he saw that meaning as well. They're Arabs. They speak Arabic. They kind of have a lot in common with Iraqis. They should be Iraqi subjects. Um, that was kind of like how Hitler thought, uh,

just because people spoke German meant they should be Germans. They settled in the Sudetenland and parts of Poland during World War II. I'm sure the fact that the Kyrgyzstan region just happened to be the main area of Iranian oil wealth had nothing to do with it. Really? Holy shit.

That's like where all their oil is. Oh yeah, they're Arabic. Yeah, they're totally Iraqis. Wink, wink, nudge,udge we're not we're not dude that will come into play too uh so uh saddam also wanted to finish iraq's transformation into a true regional power uh like the main arab superpower replacing egypt uh to further bolster his opinion towards the war, Saddam poured money into his military, which is being heavily supplied by the state-of-the-art Soviet equipment at the time. And the Iranians collapsed entirely in comparison. Now, the Ba'ath Party, which Saddam obviously was president of, was the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party.

So because socialist is the name, you know what happens next. Soviets make it rain nice yeah uh he wasn't love it socialist or communist whatsoever uh which we'll talk about a little bit later uh but yeah that's what he knew how to get stuff and you'll see that again later he knows how to play everybody so nam's not stupid no uh i mean for how long he ran that country right there's no way you could be that stupid. Right. Incompetent in a lot of aspects, but not dumb when it came to holding onto power.

Right. Kind of like the Shah himself. Sweet. Yeah. So Iranian exiles. So a lot of allies or monarchists of the Shah ran south to Iraq to save their own lives, to escape the fucking seas of blood in the streets.

And every time they came to Iraq, they're like, dude, the government's weak as shit. Ayatollah doesn't control anything. You could go in there and take them out. I imagine they're still like fucking each other up on the streets.

More importantly, they told Saddam that it was incredibly unpopular. Ooh. Now we know that's stupid, and anybody who's looking at newsreels that we have seen knows this revolution's popular uh but saddam believed it um yeah he kind of thought uh the same thing hitler did right before hitler launched operation barbarossa if you just kick in the front door the whole rotten structure will come down he thought that about Iran, which almost looked true. I mean,

they kind of, they cannibalized military police. Sounds true. Yeah. At the time, I actually don't fault Saddam for believing. Yeah. Um,

it didn't help that, uh, Saddam was emboldened by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait who hated Iraq, but we're afraid of, I told his revolution coming to their doorstep. They were giving them like a neck rub, like, Oh, you got this dude revolution coming to their doorstep. I feel like they were giving him a neck rub like, oh, you got this, dude. Oh, more than that, they paid for his army.

Yes. They're like, look, we're not going to help you help you, but we'll pay your bills if you go next door and take them out. If you know what we mean. Yeah. Their whole plan was to go in and kill the revolutionary movement before it could flourish. Okay. Yeah. their whole plan was to go in and kill the revolutionary movement before it could flourish

okay yeah so by September the two countries were shooting at each other on the border and alternatively shelling each other's border towns eventually Iraq got bolder and bolder each day realizing hey we're not exactly facing a lot of resistance and they started

attacking towns okay they launched full-scale raids in iran and uh iran's shambling corpse of the military was totally unable to repel them um there's actually more than one occasion where they would go into an area that by all means should have been heavily guarded because the strategic completely empty um the the units that were there were incredibly understrength and hardly armed. Their vehicles had no gasoline or replacement parts. Nice. And the worst part is, this just made things worse.

Everything was 10 level. Yeah. Well, you have to think like Iraq's like, we are going to be fighting the Imperial Iranian Army, which has spent the last 50 fucking years getting a blank check from the West to fund. 50 fucking years getting a blank check from the West to fund. And they rolled into town and found some dudes in flip-flops and pickup trucks out of gas.

And they're like, maybe we can invade these dudes. Oh shit, it's working. Yeah. These attacks swelled Saddam's head about how easy a ground invasion would be. Is he using tanks at this time? Oh yeah, I am.

Okay, I figured. He's not like, this isn't the invasion yet. These are just like border clashes. okay saddam really liked his tanks okay um i don't know he never learned how to use them no but he liked them i have a battle on the top of my head yeah i think i think it's considered um especially in the region, huge armor formations are kind of like bling. Like, look at this giant tank division I had. Like, the Medina division during the Gulf War.

He named them all. They all had cool names. And they all had super state-of-the-art, expensive Soviet tanks, which, you know, this is the time where these were actually cutting edge. This isn't like rolling on a T 72 in 1990. Like he did like, this is like,

Oh shit. Like what he's got. Yeah. Um, he's hot shit. Yeah. Uh, so after a numerous,

numerous border skirmishes, the Iranians actually made things worse for themselves by completely withdrawing from the Algiers agreement, meaning they no longer agreed what Iraqis' borders were. So that means, like, with the message of, we'll settle it ourselves. So did they openly say this? Yes.

Okay, so at that point, I imagine Saddam was just like, okay. Yeah, like, it's really fucking stupid. It reminds me of Monty Python, the Holy Grail. I'm like, the knight has all of his fucking limbs cut off. He's like, just a flesh wound.

I got this. I'll fucking bite your shins. That was the Iranian military right now. Like, bring it on. And they have no legs. Good movie.

Yeah. So, three days later, Saddam, standing in front of the Iraqi parliament, said, quote,

the frequent and blatant Iranian violations of Iraqi sovereignty have rendered the 1975 Algiers Agreement null and void. This river, which he means the Shat al-Arab, is the main body of water that bisected the two countries' southernmost borders, must have its Iraqi Arab identity restored as it was throughout history in name and in reality, with all the disposal rights emanating from full sovereignty over the river. We in no way wish to launch a war against Iran. What? Yeah, literally the next day he launched an attack on Iran.

So to ensure, so he attacked a border crossing, but it wasn't a raid. He attacked and secured it to ensure that the route stayed open for future armored assaults into Iran. I'm starting to think we just can't trust them. Weird. Yeah, I know. So then on September 22nd, 1980, Iraq launched a full scale invasion of Iran. And that is where we will end for this week. Nice.

Yeah. and that is where we'll end for this week. Dun, dun, dun. Nice. Yeah, so as you can tell, like I said, if it wasn't for the revolution, this doesn't happen. But at the same time, I feel like Saddam wasn't so stupid that he would have been like, I'm going to do this if it wasn't for everybody footing his bills.

And also, Saddam's starting to get another supplier during this time. Well, he's getting gassed up the whole time. The United States of America. Yeah, everybody's gassing him up. Well, so we'll go into a little bit in the next episode, but Saddam lost the support of the Soviets. So now the revolutionary Iran is United States, like sworn enemy outside the Soviet Union right now who are still hiring,

is still holding hostages. So, and so Saddam Hussein's like, I'll be your boy. And he became a huckleberry and that's, that's what we'll pick up next week. Yeah. It is,

like I said in the beginning, it's, it's a proxy war war but not because they also had their own reasons to go to war yeah but that war wouldn't have happened without them being used as proxies it's it's all sorts of weird cold war inception diplomacy i'm just uh like when you say that they use big armor formations as bling, this is how I imagine their tanks looking. All iced up. Yeah, I posted a picture of the chromed out

Abrams on our Twitter page that sits on our mixer. If all the road wheels had spinners. So that is this week's episode. You can join us next week. We'll recover Iran-Iraq part two where we will quickly learn the iraqi

military isn't as good as he thinks it is um so thank you for joining us this week you can follow the podcast on twitter at lions underscore by you can follow me for all your stupid shit posts at jcast 99 and you can follow me on nickcastm1. Thank you, everybody, for donating to the podcast. Our podcast will always be free, but if you think what we do is worth a dollar or however much money, you can throw it to us and get cool perks.

If you feel we should investigate North Dakota, let us know. That can be our next crowdfunding venture. Although I would not want to go to North Dakota, so don't. Send us be our next crowdfunding venture although i would not want to go to north dakota so don't yeah send us i'm gonna send it to north dakota don't but also uh for the patreon guys who did get the stickers and stuff that i sent out uh send me a picture i haven't seen one yet i kind of yeah uh so see you next time later hi this is nate bethea and i'm the producer of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast.

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