Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are continuing our series on non violent action by looking at the Iranian revolution. I know that there have been listeners to this podcast from around the globe, including at least one listener from Iran. My assumption, however, is that most listeners don't know too much about the Iranian revolution or the subsequent green revolution decades later. While most listeners likely know of Gandhi and King, that is the extent of of most nonviolent action to which people, you know, are are familiar.

So I'm looking forward to discussing this particular action to make the bravery of nonviolent actors from a different sector of the globe than we typically think about in regard to nonviolence, to make those those actors known. And I think this is this is especially important to me at least in in 2021, and as a US citizen because I know the horrible stereotypes so many in The United States have about different cultures and parts of the world, specifically Iran and The Middle East. So shedding light on the bravery and peacefulness that can be seen at times in a country that The US considers a very significant enemy is very important to me, helping to humanize those who many around me consider enemies. But it's also important to me because understanding the history of Iran highlights how those that we consider our enemies are so often enemies of our own creation. It's that whole cyclical violence or that that notion of concomitant means and ends that we've talked so much about last season.

You reap what you sow, in other words. Iran is a perfect example of this. If you listen to the Independence Day episode, 07/04/2020, I think, I discussed Iran in quite some detail, and we'll rehash some of that stuff here and get into more detail as well because I think that's vital for this episode and vital for our international relations. I think you could see that very clearly in January of twenty twenty when Soleimani was killed, right? He was killed as a terrorist and The United States rejoiced.

But not only is that a problematic response as a Christian, think, it's also a problematic response because it's very duplicitous. And when I went around and asked friends and acquaintances about why Iran was our enemy, like were we at war with them? Not at war, but you know, why not a literal war, but why were we essentially at war with them in terms of our economic sanctions, our hatred of them, calling them terrorists, all that kind of stuff. And interestingly, the only history anybody I ever asked knew about Iran and The US was started basically at the hostage crisis in the late seventies. Now granted, that was an important incident and it was inappropriate, like it was violence done to The United States.

Sure, that's not warranted. I don't think that any violence is warranted, and that's why I have a whole podcast about it. But the question was, to me, why were hostages taken in the first place? And no American that I talked to knew the history of Iran prior to basically 1979 or the late 1970s. They didn't know, and they knew that there was like a gas shortage if they were older people.

They knew that there's some gas crisis that had something to do with Iran. But they didn't know the history of how the West basically created Iran to be its enemy. And that's something important that we're going to get into today because it's a part of this discussion, you know, we are focused on non violence, but a part of that focus is to understand why things why people become enemies, how they deal with that, and then what the implications are long term. Why why are we facing the things that we're facing today? So let's go ahead and jump into the episode then.

The history of Iran in the twentieth century alone is a tumultuous one. And World War one did a number on The Middle East as the West sought to dominate and exploit them. In 1925, Great Britain supported a successful coup in Iran which installed a dictator favorable to Britain. Around World War II, that leader stopped being the pawn that Britain had become accustomed to, so the dictator's son who was more malleable was installed as leader and his father was pushed out. During this time, Britain prospered off of the Iranian oil reserves with an essential monopoly there.

They were just raking in the dough from exploiting Iran over its natural resource of oil. Well, after World War II, it became clear that the West's empires were deteriorating and global sentiment was becoming more liberal and more pro independence for for once colonized nations or nations under the boot of the West. So independence kind of came into the sights of the Iranians and they thought, Hey, let's let's take advantage of this. In 1950, a prime minister, and I'm going to say his name wrong, but Mohammed Masagda was elected, the first democratically elected leader there. And this prime minister obviously represented a good number of the Iranian people because he was an elected official, so he had to win the majority of the vote.

At this time, it was really clear that nationalistic tendencies had grown in Iranians and that the people wanted economic independence free from the exploitation of the West. There's a large movement to free themselves from the exploitation of the West. The West, however, was pretty attached to its oil. Glad that's over and we don't have any more wars as a result of oil. Just kidding.

So Masaga began to nationalize Iranian oil and push out the British. And when he did that, Iranian oil exports were boycotted by a number of buyers. That, of course, led to a significant economic crisis in Iran. Now, let that just sink in your head for a moment. Iran tries to nationalize its oil and say, You can't exploit us anymore.

And the countries purchasing the oil begin to boycott them for trying to keep their oil and kick out people who have been taking advantage of them. Well, anyway, as always when there are economic crises, people can take advantage of that kind of thing and the Shah attempted to do that, the current monarch, the leader. So even though Masagda was Prime Minister, there was also this monarch who was technically over him. And the Shah had been in league with the West for a long time, and he likely preferred his own comfort and maintenance of the status quo. So during this economic turmoil, he confronted Masagda, the Prime Minister, and ended up losing his power struggle with him, and therefore, the the Iranian people and the prime minister, in essence, forced him out because of that confrontation, and the monarch, the Shah, left left the country, he fled.

And that's the history of Iran because at that point, a democratically elected official was in charge and the people had their will and that's all that The United States wants in the world, other people to have democracies. Sadly, no, that is not the end of the story. The West, including The United States, wasn't going be stopped that easily. Great Britain, with the help of The United States, facilitated a coup, two coups from my understanding actually, a first kind of failed one and then a follow-up one. The Great Britain obviously wanted their oil money back and The United States, you know, is in red scare at the moment and so they're thinking, Hey, if we have this kind of weak democracy, this fledgling democracy, they're just getting off the ground, they'd be susceptible to Soviet invasion or influence.

We wouldn't want the Soviet Union to have their hands in Iran, therefore, we want to install an autocratic leader who is going to be tyrannical and suppress dissent. So tyranny favorable to the West as opposed to tyranny in favor of the East. So The US and Britain staged a coup, funded a coup, influenced a coup, and the Shah, who is favorable to the West, was reinstated and immediately began to crack down on political opposition. And to to paint a picture of what that crackdown looked like, let me go ahead and read a quote from one of the sources that I will link in my show notes here. Quote, through mass arms transfers from The United States, Shah Mohammad Reza Pallavi built one of the most powerful armed forces ever seen in The Middle East.

His American trained secret police, the SAAVAC, had been thought to have successfully terrorized the population into submission during the next two decades through widespread killings, torture, and mass detentions. By the mid nineteen seventy's, most of the leftist, liberal, nationalist and other secular opposition leadership had been successfully repressed through murder, imprisonment or exile, and most of the organizations banned. It was impossible to suppress the Islamist opposition as thoroughly, however, so it was out of mosques and among the mullahs that much of the organized leadership of the movement against the Shah's dictatorship emerged. End quote. So let's summarize up to this point.

Iran had long been exploited by the West, particularly for its oil. When Iran elected its first democratically elected official, and sought to stop exploitation of its resources by the West, Iran's Monarchical Leader who was installed by the West was pushed out by the will of the people. Britain then, for economic reasons, and The US for relations with Britain and for fear of weak democracy that could potential potentially be exploited by the USSR, assisted Britain in facilitating a coup of Iran's democracy. In place of a democratically elected official with Iran's interests in mind, the West installed a monarch and made Iran an absolute monarchy. In that absolute monarchy, aka Western supported tyranny, The US spent resources to train and encourage the suppression of political dissidents like secularists, nationalists, and they attempted to with devout Muslims as well.

This suppression included the murder, torture, and intimidation of dissidents, as well as their exile. Now, want you to try to wrap your mind around this if you're a US citizen. We literally overthrew a democratically elected leader who is enacting the will of the majority of his people in order to install a dictator who would benefit us and our allies. Not only did we install a dictator, but we trained his secret police and tactics used to oppress, murder, and torture his people because we knew the dissidents had to be suppressed in order for him to maintain power because the will of the people was not that he be in power. But of course, our history books only begin in 1979 or so.

And in our minds, there was no legitimate animosity that made the people hold Americans hostage and not trust The United States, we who are benevolent purveyors of democracy wherever we go in the world. Course, once you start looking at other hotspots in the world and at other enemies of The United States, you find that we've undermined quite a number of democracies and we've exploited a large number of countries. The United States is an empire like every other country in the world desires to be, has been or will be, right? We're empire, that's what power seeks. And we're wicked.

We're not the first benevolent nation in history and we're not benevolent at all, really. Now, you might argue that The US felt a need to do what it did because a weak Iran may have been exploited by Russia, and maybe it would have. Maybe that's true. But there's that consequentialist ethic coming out into into play again. Now, a willingness to do great evil and excuse it with hypotheticals is is just not a Christian ethic, that's not morality.

Iran is an enemy that we created, and we created out of our self interests and desire for self preservation. While I don't believe hate is ever justified, if such a thing were justified, then Iran has great justification to hate us. Yet, we sit here calling them terrorists and enemies of democracy. Now, that does bring up something that I want to make the main point of the nonviolent discussion, the nonviolent aspect of our discussion here when discussing Iran. It is true that after all of this oppression, Iran's Revolution in 1979 was, for the most part, nonviolent.

They implemented many of the strategies that we've seen throughout the series, and they implemented them on on a large scale with quite a lot of people. But we don't need to recap the various strategies, I don't think. You know, those are those are easy facts, standard actions in in nonviolent history, and and you can look them up in some of the resources that I'll provide or or look them up on your own. What I want to pull out of the Iran story is that non violent movements, especially ones which are purely pragmatic in nature, can be exploited by the violent and the power hungry. And this is exactly what happened in Iran.

When the non violent revolution pushed out the shah, something religious extremists had had tried to do with violence for years and without success. The religious extremists that that couldn't be weeded out because they were in the mosques and and, you know, Iran, and Iran, they're Muslim. These religious extremists were ready and waiting to take power, and they had no qualms with using violence. So is the Iran that we see today, the Iran that was created from this, is it problematic? Sure.

Religious extremists usually are problematic. But the bigger picture shows us that Iran's tyrannical present and its status as our enemy is likely only so because of our use of violence and manipulation long ago. Now playing hypotheticals, which is a favorite game of my opposition, what might have happened if the democratically elected prime minister had remained in power and we didn't have a coup, and we didn't boycott their oil? If we didn't boycott the oil and the world continued to buy from them, and that money started to pump into a young democracy, what might that have done to them? Would religious extremists have had an opening to domineer and exploit Iran and take control if the will of the people was playing out and things were running smoothly with their economy?

What complaint would they have had if Iran was no longer pro West and in the pocket of the West and being exploited? I don't know the answer to all those questions, but I would imagine that Iran's economy would have taken off, our relationship with them would be way better than it is now, and it would be a democracy today, maybe even A or D stabilizing force in The Middle East, as opposed to the force that were scared of acquiring nuclear weapons. Interestingly, there's another revolution in Iran in 02/2009, '30 years after the original revolution in '79. It was called the Green Movement. Now this revolution wasn't successful like the nineteen seventy nine movement, though it did have some solid impact.

An article linked in the show notes explains what went right and what went wrong with that that second revolution. But it's fascinating that that we are seeing this undercurrent of resistance that's been in Iran since at least the fifties. Iranians want independence not only from the West but also from the tyranny within. The tyranny that took over with the power vacuum left from the revolution, which was instituted to overthrow the Democrat or the the Western puppet leader. It's like a soap opera.

Point is, Iranians want independence and they've wanted it for a long time. And when they had it, The US helped to take that away and installed tyranny. Now The US has given lip service to our desire for democracy to reign across the globe, throughout the world including in Iran, yet much of what we have done has been contrary to this goal. The reason that we help or we sabotage countries has nothing to do with our benevolence and everything to do with our self interest. Why don't we help in Rwanda, but we have a coup in Iran, or we attack Iraq when they invade Kuwait, but we don't attack when other countries invade other countries.

Self interest, right? We're not benevolent. So the history of Iran teaches us another a bunch of important things here. First, as I mentioned, nonviolent movements can be co opted by others who have nefarious goals and seek to take power opportunistically. This is very important for nonviolent actors to understand that there could be many around them who are just looking to exploit the power vacuum that's created.

Second, the revolutionary spirit that you see at one point is rarely ever stamped out within a people. We've seen that not only in Iran but, you know, in the continued resurgence of civil uprisings in the Black community in The States, all the way from slavery with the abolition movement and then through the Great Migration and race riots and protests and civil rights and now modern protests, right? You see that spirit just lingers because that desire for freedom is there, and it just takes the right circumstances and the right catalyst to get that to come out. All that's needed is a spark to reignite the latent desire for freedom. Finally, the story of Iran shows us how violence creates enemies and problems.

Iran as a nuclear state is probably only a concern to us because of the West's actions in the world which has made Iran the way that it is. They hate us for a reason. And if there ever was a good reason to hate someone, they have a good reason to hate us. Yet, rather than repent for our actions and seek to make amends, we double down on our violence, assassinating leaders and implementing economic violence through sanctions, not to mention our continued verbal violence towards them. This underscores one of the reasons that nonviolence is so important.

There are many times that our enemies hate us because we've made them hate us. While nonviolence may be done towards an oppressor, as in the case of Gandhi and King's movements, there are plenty of times that like as with Iran, we find that non violence is important because it's we who have been the oppressor and creator of hatred. And non violence is the only appropriate response that can show true remorse and stop the cycle. Only humility and repentance, not retaliation and power, can have any hope at healing such wounds. That's all for now.

So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.