Iran's History and Geopolitical Relations w/ Prof. David N. Yaghoubian

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Adnan Husain: Hello, salaam, peace to you all. Welcome to the Adnan Hussain Show. It still feels really strange to have a show named after me rather than some other name, but we're getting through it. I'm your host, obviously Adnan Hussain, Professor of Medieval Mediterranean and Islamic World History at Queens University. in Kingston, Ontario. I'd like to ask you to please subscribe to this new channel. It's a new channel we're launching. I think you're going to enjoy it. Share the love. Like and share the video with your friends on social media and feel free to support on Patreon if you can, patreon.com slash Adnan Hussain, H-U-S-A-I-N. You can find all of this information in the show notes, in the episode description, whether you're watching on the channel on YouTube or as an audio podcast on your favorite platform. Today's topic comes as a request from a listener and former guest host, Mehmet Ali Arslan. And do check out our discussion, which was entitled something like Divide and Conquer about the use and abuse of history to inflame sectarianism in the modern Middle East. He asked if we might have a backgrounder on the history of Iran. And it is absolutely a vital topic right now with very little genuine understanding of the country and its long history informing current public policy in the West and particularly in the United States. Everyone remembers that Iran is a founding member of the so-called axis of evil, announced by George W. Bush back in 2001. And it has been the target of a great deal of animosity, especially now that we're re-entering the Trump, the second Trump era. And people will recall that Iran was subjected to unbelievably harsh sanctions called the maximum pressure sanctions. General Qasem Soleimani was assassinated and he was an important figure in building the capacities and capabilities of the so-called axis of resistance. And of course, we remember that under Trump, the previously negotiated Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, was torn up. So we're at a cusp and a moment where it's very important to be thinking about the status and position of Iran in the region, its relations with the United States. And I just wanted to say, as somebody who's a medieval historian, who's interested in the pre-modern, that it gets neglected and ignored very often how incredibly long and deep a history of Iranian statecraft exists. And that when people dismiss Iran as some kind of a rogue nation, an upstart, I think that they can be bullied and intimidated what they're forgetting is that Iran has been a state, has engaged in diplomacy, has been a major geopolitical power since pre-history, since the earliest history that we can imagine. If you recall, the Greeks, were confronting the Achaemenid Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great, Darius. And this is all even before Iran became a Muslim nation and far longer before it became a majority Shia nation. And so it's something to be appreciated that Iran or Persia, as it was often known, and the Persian speaking world that was closely associated culturally and politically with Iran extended from Central Asia to parts of the Middle East. And, you know, in the furthest extent of the Sasanian Empire, they fought the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire to a standstill and ruled over what is today Palestine, Israel, the Levant, and even part of Egypt. So we're talking about a country that has deep, deep roots in statecraft, in geopolitical thinking. And so they can't be dismissed so easily. And so it's very important However, when we come to the modern history of Iran, which is much more relevant to our discussions about those issues I just set up as concerning us in the contemporary environment, that we have some genuine expertise, that we rely upon serious scholarship. And that's why I'm really delighted today that we have a wonderful guest, Professor David Yagoubian. Welcome, David. It's great to have you here because I'll tell listeners that in addition to your scholarly credentials and your bio that I'm about to read, that we are old friends and graduate student colleagues from our time in the PhD program in history at Berkeley. And to me, it's just absolutely so wonderful to be in touch and in conversation with you after having enjoyed and benefited and learned from so many of our discussions in our training, but to rely on you and come back to you as a serious expert who can bring light on these issues. It's wonderful to have you here. So welcome. Oh yeah, I'm so looking forward to it. So you are a professor of modern West Asian and Islamic history at California State University in San Bernardino and received PhD in 2000 from UC Berkeley, specializes in the history of Iranian nationalism and Iranian-US relations. And he is the author of Ethnicity, Identity, and the Development of Nationalism in Iran, which was published in 2014. And you are also, very interestingly, I love this book so much, co-editor with Edmund Burke of Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East, which is going to be coming out in its third edition very soon. This is absolutely, we're going to have to have an episode and a discussion when this book is published in its third edition, because it's so important in giving profiles sort of important kind of bio histories. I mean, I wouldn't call them just biographies, but bio histories of people from the Middle East that does so much to humanize and make palpable the common shared sense and texture of human experience, social experience. So, I mean, thank you so much for that work. But lastly, I'll say that you are also an Iranian citizen who travels frequently to Iran to visit family and to conduct your research. And so we're really delighted that you will be bringing these perspectives to our discussion today. So I wanted to maybe start off with people who are interested in particularly the fraught and tense U.S.-Iran relationship to think a little bit about and to ask you, you know, how did it arise, this hostility? Because was it always, you know, a case of enmity between these two countries? What was the relationship before the Islamic Revolution in Iran of U.S.-Iran relations? How would you characterize this history between the two countries?

David N. Yaghoubian: I think it would probably be logical to begin with the entrance of the United States into Iran because, and I'll just make a few general background points, and that is that the United States, until 1942, was very reticent to get involved in the politics of Iran, to really have any involvement. This was based essentially on its Monroe Doctrine position in which it was not going to become involved in the politics the, say, old world politicking and nationalisms of Europe and Asia. And the expectation was that, you know, say, the British and the Russians and the French would not become involved in this hemisphere. So the entrance of the first Americans into Iranian politics really came at the behest of the Iranian government in its attempt to offset the power of the British and the Russians, who had during the 19th century essentially by default divided the country into their own respective spheres of influence, a Russian sphere in the north and a British sphere in the south. And this was made public in the 1907 Anglo-Russian Accord, which Iranians found out about by reading their newspapers. So this was not something that the Iranian government was involved in. And midstream in the Constitutional Revolution, which we might touch on, the Russians and the British made this announcement, which, because it came during the Constitutional Revolution, essentially was blamed on the constitutionalists. But this Anglo-Russian Accord of 1907 actually just put on paper and made official something that had been happening really since the 1850s. And so in an effort to try to offset the power of these two imperialist colonialist entities, the British and the Russians, who had divided Iran into two spheres of influence, it was Iranians who approached the American government, hoping that the United States government would establish an embassy and would become basically involved in Iranian politics to offset the Russians and the British. In short, the United States was not at all willing or interested in getting involved in Iran. In 1882, a basic legation was established, but this was not a full embassy with an ambassador. Despite the fact that you do have the participation of Americans in the Iranian constitutional revolution, Americans who were deemed by Iranians through to today to be heroes, the Howard Baskerville, a teacher who died during the constitutional revolution, fighting with constitutionalists, and as well, Morgan Schuster, who came in 1911 to serve at the behest of Iran's government as its financial advisor. He ended up writing a book based on his experience, The Strangling of Persia, in which he is extremely harsh against this old world Russian and British imperialism, which was stifling this movement for democracy in this fledgling country. And so they're heroes. There are carpets woven depicting Baskerville and Schuster. And, you know, through to this day, their memory as heroes of the constitutional revolution is maintained. But this did not advance the American government's interest in becoming involved in Iran. And it really wasn't until, we can kind of jump forward, 1942, in which... The State Department officials began to craft documents looking forward to the post-war period and asserting that it would be a model, a representative example of American disinterest and a policy that was not selfish. So a selfless policy, a disinterested policy where the United States, not by its own interest, but because of geopolitical realities, was forced to come to Iran to essentially show these old world imperialist colonialist powers how something could be done from a selfless and, you know, humor me, neutral perspective. This really only lasted for just over 10 years because, as I'm sure your viewers are aware, in 1953, the incoming Eisenhower administration makes the decision to follow along with a pre-existing British plan to unseat democratically elected Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadegh and his dominant National Front Party and to essentially reinstall the Shah uh with full dictatorial powers because he had essentially since the constitutional revolution of 1905 to 11 served as a constitutional monarch or rather his his family the qadr shahs then his father reza shah and subsequently uh uh himself from 1941 to 1953. so The the whereas, you know, to summarize, the United States is very reticent to get involved in Iran by 1953. It has begun the process by which it would create a very, very strong client relationship with Iran that would grow. to a point where in the late 1960s, Iran is considered one of the twin pillars, as it was referred to, the twin pillars policy, one of the twin pillars of American defense in the Persian Gulf region to stop the southward spread of Soviet communism. And so... It's at this stage that the Shah of Iran is literally, as per the Nixon Doctrine, then subsequently going to receive any and all American military hardware that is non-nuclear, and so just basically given a blank check. So it's in the context of the Cold War and American geostrategy that Iran— as what was considered to be a northern tier nation uh uh part of a band of northern tier nations if we want to think about it in the context of the baghdad pact later to be sento even though these nations don't seem very north if you will they are the northern tier of defense against southward soviet expansion and so in this regard iran was always considered to be the strongest and the most important of the twin pillars the other pillar Sometimes people sort of either forget or will just guess that it was Israel, but it was never Israel. It was Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia was, if you will, the small pillar, and Iran was this very, very large and central pillar to American geostrategy during the Cold War. And so this is why the loss of Iran, if you will, to the Islamic Revolution in 1979 was considered such a blow to American geostrategy during the Cold War.

Adnan Husain: Well, that's a wonderful capsule summary of these changing US relations to Iran. And I think we're going to talk a little bit more about that revolutionary period and its consequences in shaping the position of Iran and US relations to it, of course. I did want to go back because you raised a couple of very interesting points that I wanted to develop or have you develop a little bit further. You know, one was, of course, in the contemporary context where we see Iran being associated as an ally with China and Russia, that you mentioned that, of course, the British and the Russians are had spheres of influences. Although Iran wasn't technically directly subjected to colonialism, there was never a mandate sort of period. Much of the Arab world, of course, was carved up between the French and the British under the League of Nations mandates after the fragmenting of the Ottoman Empire. But like Turkey, Iran, or at least the modern territory that is Turkey, the nation state of Turkey, Iran wasn't subjected to direct colonization, but it was pressured by these imperialist ambitions for influence, for trade concessions that really mimicked in many ways colonialism. And so I wondered if you maybe because this might be surprising for people to realize how recent this actual positive relationship with Russia is that, you know, in the whole course of the 19th century and then, of course, subsequently in much of the 20th century, when The Twin Pillars policy was in effect, and you mentioned that Iran was a major ally of the United States during the Cold War as a result of U.S. opposition to the Soviets and attempting to keep them out as much as possible from the Middle East. that for much of this history, there have been actually inimical relations. So in order to understand what has happened today to change some of these conditions, I wondered if maybe you could talk a little bit more about the situation in the 19th and early 20th century and how Iran was positioned. I think this is more a question of its geography than it really is of other factors or questions as a neighboring power to an expansionist country. empire under the Tsars. And then, you know, one could argue about this. I don't like to use this terminology of the Soviets as an empire, but obviously it was a major political force right on the borders on both sides of Iran's relationship to Azerbaijan and the Caucasus regions and on the other side into Central Asia, where it historically has been, you know, a Persianate or a Turkic So maybe you could talk a little bit more about that. And then also, I guess, as a sub component of this is maybe talking a little bit more about that constitutional revolution and the way in which it was or wasn't a kind of response to these geopolitical pressures and a sense of the weakness of late Qajar rule. the dynastic polity that ruled Iran, the weakness of it to be able to guarantee sovereignty under these pressures of the British and and the Russian empire and how that may have galvanized Iranian nationalism in the particular forms that it took, but also to understand that there were democratically oriented politics that were taking place, which is something that may be very unfamiliar to many of our readers who think of Iran as one of the authoritarian regimes of the world and don't think that it has a tradition or a history. then or now of democratic politics. Of course, if we talk about Iran today, it does have a, you know, it does have a, you know, it has regular elections. It has, you know, a legal system. It has actually more, you know, women per capita at a certain point in recent history, you know, in positions of elected power than, you know, the United States did, you know, so maybe it would be worth spending a little bit of time on that kind of geopolitical context and its effect and consequences on Iran's politics and particularly the shape of nationalism, which is something I know you're an expert on and study.

David N. Yaghoubian: Certainly, certainly. And I'm not going to go back too far for too long, but the Khadra dynasty, which is officially established in 1797, I'm going to make some generalizations here, but as one of several different competing tribal alliances and tribal blocks which vied for power during the 18th century, and there were the Zans, there were the Afshars, there's the Bakhtiaris, I could go on and on. I'm going to kind of try to typify their understanding of their rule as being not necessarily permanent. So they were, if you will, going to get while the getting is good. And so in terms of long-term planning for the development of the nation or even a concept of Iranian nationalism, this was completely absent. very soon after the turn of the century, basically 1813, again 1828, they're going to be losing battles to the Russians, who are going to demand territorial concessions as well as economic concessions within the country. The British themselves are going to occupy the Persian Gulf ports, such as Bushir. So the Qajar strategy for dealing with these two encroaching uh, colonialist powers was to offer them each concessions so that the other wouldn't be too angry and that they would, therefore, this is their logic, you know, they're going to show them they would balance the powers. Furthermore, and again, I'm just characterizing this, this sort of, uh, uh, kind of ruling philosophy, you know, why would we develop a bank or a telegraph or a little bit of railroad if the Europeans are going to do it for us? So this Qajar attitude was and I'm not saying that this was was necessarily throughout their civil service. But for the Qajar royals, this was a way to have these, say, infrastructural projects, uh uh such as such as ports such as as the little bit of rail such as the telegraph eventually such as banking heck in 1879 even the cossack brigade itself why develop a modern standing army if the czar is going to just give us a cossack brigade with russian officers so The Qadjar government would seemingly, and the best representative example is 1872, the DeRuiter concession, literally sell out all of the mineral resources and potential productive resources of the country to foreigners in an effort to maintain their position on the throne and to keep these two foreign powers within their country from either waging a war against each other or from simply deposing the Qajar monarchy. So in that sense, the Qajar government was the golden goose or the goose that laid the golden egg for the British and the Russians. The way that, as you characterize, and of course accurately, that the British and the Russians don't establish a protectorate or a veiled protectorate or even a mandate, in fact, by default, by the mid-19th century, they fully controlled militarily and economically their respective spheres of influence. This was what was actually put on paper in the 1907 Anglo-Russian Accord. For all intents and purposes, this was the low-budget imperialism within Iran that supported British as well as Russian imperial goals. Furthermore, they would essentially agree to disagree regarding Iran, and so Oftentimes to my students, I characterize the relationship really as in the context of, you know, when a child will think that he's going to put one over on dad by asking mom for something and then or go to dad and then. But actually, the parents are in the other room having a conversation about what's going on. This is the Qajar government trying to maneuver between the Russians and the British. And for example, when. The Qadar government asks the Russians for a rail linking Tehran and the north to the Persian Gulf or the British. They're not interested in doing that. When they asked the Americans in the 1880s, would you be willing to do this? There are, of course, some American railroad men and businessmen who are interested in it, but the American government, absolutely not. We're not getting involved in Iran. And so the point there is that the British and the Russians would agree to disagree. And, you know, no rail? Yes, absolutely no rail. We don't want to link this country. We want to maintain our separate spheres of influence with, in fact, what on paper was an empty zone in the middle, a sort of DMZ. So they didn't, you know, get in each other's way. In fact, the DMZ, the central zone, was always controlled by the British. So really the British, in essence, controlled 60% of the country, the Russians, the northern and arguably, say, more at that point, agriculturally and economically productive portion of the country. So the country was, in essence, divided. Now, I'll just add that on the top of the 1872 DeRuiter concession, which I forgot the exact quote, but it was called essentially the greatest sellout of a nation's resources in human history, just everything signed over to Baron Julius de Reuter. It was actually canceled because of its unpopularity within Iran. And so this showed that even the Qadjar government couldn't do the inane things that it sought to do to balance these imperialist powers. In 1890, and this is really known as the dress rehearsal for the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 to 1911, the Qadar government under Nasr al-Din Shah provided a concession to the Royal Imperial Tobacco Company that allowed British capitalists to control every aspect of tobacco production, processing, packaging, and sales. They were doing everything except for lighting it up and smoking it for the Iranians, and It was the Tobacco Revolt, which we date 1890 to 1892, in which a coalition of ulama, of secular intellectuals, of tribal leaders, really a broad swath of the Iranian population, including, and I don't think it's apocryphal, even Shah Nasr al-Din's wives, who proclaimed no business as usual at home until this hated concession was canceled. There was a mujtahid, and I'm not sure if he was an ayatollah, so I'm hedging on that, but Shirazi, who argued, and I'm quoting, from today forward, the use of tanbaku or tobacco is deemed as war against the imam of the age, right? So against the 12th imam, may God hasten his glad advent. And so this statement was actually sent around the country using the telegraph that the British had brought to Iran. So what I'm describing here is the Tobacco Revolt 1890 to 92, in which also Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, a pan-Islamic what could you say, agitator, advertiser, was active and was actually exiled from the country for his activity in promoting the tobacco revolt. Ultimately, the tobacco revolt was successful in motivating the Qajar government to cancel the concession. The followers of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, such as Mirza Reza Kermani, never forgot the injustice to Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. And in 1896, Mirza Reza Kermani is going to execute or shoot to death, assassinate Nasr al-Din Shah Qajar. And Muzaffar al-Din is subsequently going to take over. So I could say a little bit about how that relates to the Constitutional Revolution, because it really was these same concerns on behalf of this very diverse coalition of Iranians, including the ulama, including secular and, if you will, Western-oriented intellectuals, minority communities, and as well, tribal elites, in having a movement that, it's called, of course, the Constitutional Revolution, but it was referred to as the Engulabe Mashrutey, and that was the revolution of qualifying or conditioning, that is to qualify or condition the rule of the Shahs. So in other words, this wasn't a radical revolution to bring on a republic or some other form of government, but rather a revolution to create what was argued to be a true Islamic government. using an Adeleth Koneh, like a house of justice, sort of a Shura, to make sure that the inane Shahs couldn't continue to take out loans and make destructive concessions that would end up harming the Iranian people and their livelihoods. Again, the constitutional revolution of 1905 to 11, which included that same coalition of this diverse spread of the Iranian population was arguing for a qualification or conditioning of the Qajar monarchy so that they couldn't make unilateral decisions to take out loans or go to war or to grant concessions. I'll just say to kind of bring it full circle, it's in this context that the Iranian government was literally begging the American government to send some official representative to assist the constitutional government in handling Iranian finances. And the American government was adamant, we have nothing to do with this. If you want an individual to go and help you with your finances, we have a guy. His name is Morgan Schuster. He is operating as an independent individual. What he does, what he says is not official. American government policy does not sanctioned by us. And hence, even though Throughout 1911, Morgan Schuster becomes essentially an extremist Iranian constitutionalist. Ultimately, it is the power of the British and the Russians which is going to send him packing in 1911. And really, the remnants of the Cossack Brigade and Tsarist power being effective and successful in squashing the last hope of the constitutional movement in 1911. So that, I think, is really important background. The United States at this point was still seen by Iranians as this amazing revolutionary government and society where democracy and rule of law was dominant and where they had gotten past this old world colonialism and imperialism Their nationalism in and of itself was unique, not necessarily being an exclusive linguistically based nationalism. And so the Americans seemed like the antidote to offset the power of nationalism. these two very strong and very destructive colonialist powers. I'll just say one more thing and then I'll let you guide it, because I know there were some other elements to your question that I might not have touched on. But whereas the Qadjar's strategy was in balancing these imperial powers by giving one a concession and then, oh, well, the British got banking rights. Okay, well, the Russians better get banking rights. This initial interest in the United States was to bring a third power to offset the power of the two existing predominant powers. Ultimately, what we're going to see through the decades, once we get to the national front and the movement for oil nationalization under Dr. Mohamed Mossadegh, he's going to argue for what is called negative equilibrium. And that is rather than stacking up concessions, which essentially gives away the country's resources and its livelihood and its future economic productivity to foreigners, how about give them less? let's give them each less and less and less until we can actually eject all foreign powers from our territory, thus creating what he referred to as negative equilibrium. So I would say the wellspring of modern Iranian nationalism stems from this constitutional revolution period, and it had as much to do with internal interests in defining the character of the identity and the nation as it did with ejecting the foreign powers who were deemed by this very diverse group of revolutionary actors to be being destructive to Iran and its potentials.

Adnan Husain: Well, fascinating. I mean, so many important themes come out of this narration and analysis of this period of Iran's history. One thing that I'm struck by is how frequently democratic movements, popular democratic movements, on behalf of society throughout the Middle East and probably throughout the Global South have been derailed by colonial intervention, imperialist undermining. That's just a constant theme. And we look at other parts of the Middle East and we can see that similar processes for democratization, for constitutional monarchy, for limiting Authoritarian power and control on behalf of sovereign development and, you know, liberal freedoms and electoral forms of democratic sovereignty. These all get derailed.

David N. Yaghoubian: Can I add on? Can I please just interject one thing because it relates to something you were saying before, and that is that even midstream, in the middle of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, running on the fumes of the 14 points and the League of Nations and Woodrow Wilson's ideology, the British are in the back room with Iranian elites, Vosouka Daleh, these lower-level civil servants, trying to create a secret backroom deal to essentially do what Baron Julius De Ruyter did in 1872. If we will recall, the Bolsheviks had a revolution in 1917. The Cossack Brigade is essentially pulled back to fight with the white forces and the British and General Ironside are sitting there in Tehran wondering, what are we going to do to maintain our control? And so their first option is to try to create an agreement with these Qajar elites to essentially turn Iran into a protectorate. when the it's the 1919 Anglo-Persian Accord, which was actually never signed because when the American government found out about it, they lost it basically. And the diplomatic correspondences are pretty fascinating and I'm characterizing. But what the hell do you guys think you're doing? Aren't we over this? How many people need to die for these old world imperialists and colonialist interests? Of course, the British come back with, yeah, what are you guys doing in Liberia again? And, you know, there's this back and forth. But essentially, it is made public and the Iranian public becomes publicly incensed about even the idea. And so the British are forced to drop the idea of the 1919 Anglo-Persian Accord. Point being, though, as they're in the process of creating the mandates, you know, the Iraq, Transjordan, Palestine thing, They're actually in the back room trying to finagle the same thing for Iran, ultimately, of course, unsuccessful. But this was their interest. This was their goal. And this is still a period in which, despite the ideology, the rhetoric of Wilson and the 14 points, the United States is still not interested in becoming involved. So they're interested to the point where they're going to tell the British, don't do this. but not interested to the point where it's still going to be several decades before the American government even actually establishes a full embassy in the country.

Adnan Husain: Well, indeed, that relates very much to one of the other points and observations I was going to make about the earlier discussion, which is this kind of contradiction. How much the United States has been able to trade geopolitically in soft power terms on this reputation of being somehow a different kind of modern industrial power of the West that doesn't have colonial and imperial ambitions on a global scale to dominate others, but that it itself had had a revolution, a liberation from colonialism and nonetheless, Of course, there's two ways to think of this. One is what changes, you know, in the diplomatic record, in the conditions that drive U.S. foreign policy in the cusp of that transition from, you know, shy economic power, but not one that wants to intervene anymore. you know, globally outside of its own hemisphere. And of course, the contradiction of what it's doing in its own hemisphere, what it had done in its hemisphere, what it had done on the continent, you know, I mean, as a settler colonial project that nonetheless manages to portray itself or even in some ways even believe in itself as a bourgeois democratic kind of power that is an alternative to the old world systems of colonial domination. So I think it'll be worth thinking a little bit about how that changes so rapidly in that era from, you know, entry into World War II, its transformation, and then taking over, you might say, the hegemonic plans and programs and practices of the British in particular in Iran, as so evident in the coup that first begins really as a you know, for BP on behalf of British Petroleum, you know, but is kind of taken over by, who is it, Kermit Washington, Kermit, yeah, that's right, Kermit Roosevelt and the Dulles boys. And, you know, it's suddenly, you know, that's something that needs to be explained because it appears as something of a contradiction that, you know, was the United States. You know, a different kind of power, if it was, what happens to change so dramatically? Or was it always, you know, built on the foundations of colonialism and imperialism? It's just that its scope and its sense of itself moves from, you know, Monroe Doctrine, Western hemispheric control to imperialism. you know, inheriting, you might say, a broader global British condition. But before you get into that, because that's- And it is the latter, but- Yeah, right. It is, absolutely. You know, the naivete of third world nationalists during this era thinking that, oh, well, the United States may be an alternative, you know, to the oppressors that we know. You know, we know the British, we know the French, we know the Russians, these old, old, old world powers. But the other point in that earlier narrative about the constitutional revolution that I think is interesting, we don't have to talk about it immediately, but when we come to the Islamic revolution and its consequences for Iran's position in the region, in our kind of contemporary analysis, It is interesting that the kind of coalition that you described is one that is broad-based, had multiple sources and also nonetheless did build upon what was a pretty productive and interesting era of religious reform and transition. A lot of new thinking taking place that imbues the social and political role of the ulama in a new direct way. that makes the Islamic revolution appear to have deeper and longer roots that at the time when it happened, I remember it being, and in the scholarship discussing it, it was always portrayed as an unpredicted, you know, impossible to really understand how this could have happened to upend you know, the power of the Pahlavi, you know, dynast in this authoritarian pro-Western state that was buttressed by, you know, U.S. military power, transfer of military arms and training of its police forces to, you know, have a complete stranglehold while conducting, you know, surface-level, lifestyle-oriented, liberal westernization. You know, but of course, no real political rights, no real economic rights that are enforced brutally by a secret police trained by the CIA. You know, so I mean. this was always seen as a very stable regime and how it was that they had an ideological Islamist revolution was something that confounded, you know, a whole era of Middle East politics. And yet, on the other hand, if you look historically, as some scholars like Dr. Hamid Algar, whom we studied with at Berkeley, he was somebody who already had developed a thesis about how the constitutional revolution and other political changes in modern Iran had developed from actual engagement by the religious classes who were not a kind of apolitical religious elite, but were people who were engaged in questions of popular sovereignty and in political reform and in challenging what they saw as corrupt leadership in order to bring about a vision of an Islamic polity that could provide justice and development, right? And so he was somebody who was not surprised at all by what happened. Of course, he was heavily involved himself in you know, studying, you know, Imam Khomeini's speeches. He translated them and so on.

David N. Yaghoubian: Yeah, that's right.

Adnan Husain: So I think when we come to the discussion of the consequences of the Islamic revolution, it is worth thinking about the way in which it is maybe a cycle that responds in some ways to an older, deeper history and historical experience.

David N. Yaghoubian: Great framing here, man. Loving this. So for Viewers who might not be aware, the vast majority of American academics and scholars completely missed the story, what was going on in Iran. And in fact, scholars like Marvin Zonas and James Bill are infamous for having put out these tomes looking at the structure of the Shah's government and the ins and outs when it was all essentially swept away by the revolution in 1979. There was one scholar, and this will be written in stone for history, Dr. Hamid Elgar at UC Berkeley, who in 1968 wrote a chapter that appears in Nicky Keddy's book, Scholars, Saints, and Sufis, called The Oppositional Role of the Ulama in 20th Century Iran. He actually goes back a little bit further to... The 1872 DeRuiter concession, the 1890 to 92 tobacco revolt, and then, of course, the constitutional revolution narrating the involvement of the Iranian ulama in these social and political movements. And he basically calls it saying, and I'm characterizing here, but Khomeini's out there. He's pissed. He's coming. He's going to overthrow this government. It's a matter of time. other political orientations because of the work of SAVAK, which Mossad and the CIA had helped set up the Shah's secret police, that the Iranian ulama provided one of the few indigenous sources of political organizing and activism. And so having essentially predicted the revolution based on the motivations, the agenda, the interests of the ulama and the broad swath of Iranian population who they had participated with, I think that's the context in which I can now go back to talk a little bit about how the United States despite the fact that it entered into Iran beginning in 1942 with this idea that it could be selfless and neutral, is actually very quickly and rapidly going to, through the creation of its client relationship with Iran, essentially step into the shoes of both the Russians and the British and become the sole dominant foreign colonial power, imperial power controlling Iranian territory. So context for this, I think, and I can be brief, but this is interesting. Despite the fact that the United States was awash in oil, OK, Washington oil, one of the greatest producers of crude petroleum in the early 20th century, California itself, one of the one of the world's greatest producers. Of course, we know that the British and for most of, you know, if you will, mainland Europe, there is none except for Ploiești in Romania. There simply is none. And so the Darcy concession signed in 1901, having struck at Masjid al-Sulayman in 1908, this was British oil. This was British national security. This was how the British Admiralty was going to fuel its ships. And after they switch over from coal to oil between 1911 and 1914, Iran, southern Iran, Iranian oil, the Persian Gulf, this is British national security. This is British imperial security. So understanding that the British were, you know, touchy about their oil, right? American oil interests nevertheless wanted to get a hold of all of the oil. The Standard Oil Trust, agreements such as the creation of the Iraq Petroleum Company, the Red Line Agreement, the Acme Carry Agreement, they're all an effort to control the supply of oil, to control supply and demand, to control prices so that we didn't have great, great surpluses or lack of oil such as in the post-World War I period. So There was definitely a business interest for Americans to get involved in Iran. And there was definitely an Iranian interest to bring Americans in, to grant them an oil concession in the teens, in the 20s, especially the 1920s. Hey, let's bring the Americans in, and this can offset the Russians. Ultimately, it's the American government that makes the decision, no, we're not doing this. We just can't do this. We have to stay out. until World War II, 1942, the Jernigan Memorandum, and, hey, we're going to be here. We need to take a new position in the world. Now, in this sort of quaint, cute period of whatever 1942 to 1952, I don't necessarily believe American political elites plotted it, but as they, if you will, realize the scope of what American activity globally will mean and what it might necessitate, this will, for example, necessitate a consortium of companies to handle Iranian oil, right? So it's not just going to be the British and the Anglo Iranian oil company, but a consortium. We're going to bring in Royal Dutch. We're going to bring in the French. Of course, it's going to be 40% American corporations and 40% British, right? So the United States by way of the 53 coup and the subsequent consortium that is created is essentially, as I said, going to step right into the shoes of the British and the Russians in Iran and become the dominant power and dominant economically, if you will, dominant socially, dominant politically. So There's a slide I showed in my slide. I'm old school. There's an image I showed to my students in class that is an Iranian in 1955 with Richard Nixon's expected visit to the country. He's writing, you know, yeah, I left and it's Yankee. He's writing Yankee, Boro, Yankee, get out, Yankee, go home. And this is 1955. Who's saying Yankee go home? And these Iranians who had wanted the United States to come and participate to offset the Russians and the British, it turned that fast. Seeing what the United States agenda actually was knowing, understanding what the role of the United States was in overthrowing Dr. Mossadegh, there was instantaneously an anti-American backlash in Iran. So, I mean, I don't want to overblow that. Certainly, and members of my family were, for different reasons having to do with, you know, their Armenian heritage and inherent sort of knee-jerk anti-communism, they were very supportive of the Pahlavi regime. It's in my book, but my dad received a Neshana Bisto Hashdemor Dodd of the third rank, basically a medal for August 19th, 1953 for the coup, because he was scrapping with the two-day party in the streets. So I'm not trying to suggest that all Iranians were instantaneously incensed based on their nationalism and their anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist uh you know uh uh feelings to oppose the united states but what algar was talking about was how people like ayatollah khomeini who in 1955 is about 55 years old and he has seen the shenanigans of the russians and the british and is seeing the americans doing the exact same thing only now what's out on 1957 the creation of savak you know an institution that is is set up to torture disappear otherwise to squash political dissent. These are the seeds, really, of especially the Olamaz anti-American animosity. I'll just add on one more thing. The U.S. government seemed in 1957-58 to be fine with the Shah of Iran running the show as his own Pinocchio wannabe real dictator. Ultimately, the incoming Kennedy administration makes a really important determination, and that is that He's not getting the job done. He really needs to engage in land reform. There's going to be a communist revolution in this country unless the Shah does something to change things. And just in a nutshell, the United States puts forward the name of its favorite, a relative of Mossadegh named Ali Amini. And they say, we want Amini to be the prime minister. Amini is going to run the Majlis and you're going to engage in these reforms. uh again long story short a couple years goes by the shah's freaking out he's gonna lose his power to amini and in 1963 he basically kicks amini out and says it's going to be the revolution of the shah and the people we don't need no stinking prime minister no we're going to do it me and you people the shah and the people we're going to have our wonderful white revolution and he goes through The gyrations that the American media just lapped up, Time Magazine, National Geographic, handing out deeds to poor peasants who are trying to kiss his feet. And, you know, the literacy corps, these strapping Iranians going out in uniform to teach, you know, the script and to give birth control to, you know, the health corps, to give birth control to Iranian women. Certainly a lot of positive benefits from society could come out of these developments, but most importantly, the land reform was just window dressing. It was total BS. And so with that, and with Ayatollah Khomeini's 1963 speech in which he blasted the Shah and the Shah responded with machine gun fire, killing potentially several hundred seminary students and ultimately leading to the exile of Khomeini, first to Iraq and Najaf and then subsequently to Paris. The seeds of revolution that Algar wrote about in his 1968 piece were sown. It was just a matter of time, in his view. Assuming that the United States was not going to change its approach to Iran, was not going to allow the growth of you know, natural political orientations and political parties, this was what was going to happen. And Algar saw it. I will say he wasn't the only one. Even my father in the early 70s was known. His friends sort of criticized him. He was, this is going to blow, guy. This place is going to blow. My dad just was cognizant of the fact that the rich-poor disparity and the, I'll use the the clean term the shenanigans of of northern tehran in light of southern tehran where you know as a seismic geologist he was active throughout the city and the country he he just knew it and and that's why he recommended his country pull its assets out of iran by 1973 and packed my grandparents off in 1976 especially after the shah in 1975 instead of opening up the political system declared a single party, the Rastakhis party. And, you know, we're all members of the same party, right? Because we're all on board with my rule. It was essentially destined to happen at that point. There was no turning back. You add on the inflation and over-revving of the economy, 76, 77, and thus history is made.

Adnan Husain: Absolutely. Fascinating stuff. So interesting how you've woven together some of your memories from within your family in response to these major events, major transitions and the wider global scene and perspective. Obviously, the Islamic Revolution happened. in Iran in 1979 had a dramatic and profound effect on the geopolitical positioning and character of Iranian society. It's obvious from this history that we've been discussing that the large leftist kind of revolutionary social movements that were also there in the two-day party, communists in the 50s and 60s, and despite repression, continued to have some shape of resistance, and in particular in the revolutionary environment. would have been deeply anti-imperialist. It's no mystery exactly why Imam Khomeini would have characterized US intervention as a major problem for Iranian sovereignty and therefore taken an anti-imperialist sort of perspective. But how do you see the consequences and character of the Islamic revolution particularly in terms of the way it has reshaped politics of the region. And as a major blow to one of the key pillars of the U.S. dominance over the region being broken, And in fact, more than just being broken, but now an adverse force has emerged. I mean, we saw during this era that there was an interest, at least in the early period, of... This not just being contained within the nation state of Iran, but an idea to export, you might say, the revolutionary freedom of the whole region from U.S. domination. And of course, this is a key part of the analysis that Khomeini had and other leftists would have had as well, that the United States, in addition to conservative Arab regimes, particularly in the Gulf, built around the dominant position of Saudi Arabia as a very loyal U.S.-backed regime, that the other kind of component for undermining the unity and sovereignty of the region was, of course, Israel, a settler colonial state, U.S. ally. that was one of the conditions for the over-militarization of the region. The region itself has not been able to invest in actual social and economic development because so much of the region's wealth has been invested, if you want to say it that way, but really squandered in militarization. during the 50s, 60s, 70s, and so on. So anyway, I'm wondering, you know, how you would characterize when we get to the immediate context for U.S.-Iran relations and the current positioning of Iran in the region, how the revolution really reshaped its position.

David N. Yaghoubian: Excellent, excellent question. In terms of just establishing the sort of basic elements of the revolution, I think most of your viewers will be aware that the Iranian revolution should not necessarily be termed an Islamic revolution throughout the period of revolution. In other words, let me say this in another way. Ultimately, Khomeini was successful in Establishing the Islamic Republic and the Islamic political system or the political system that is used, the governance of the jurists in Iran. But the movement to overthrow the Shah, and as you correctly identify, included all sectors of Iranian society and all remaining or vestiges of remaining political opposition, including the Fedayin-e-Khawth, the Mujahideen-e-Khawth, the Two-Day Party, Communist Party of Iran, National Front, Freedom Movement in Iran, all of them. to the extent that they were still above ground or whether they had become underground, more secretive movements, the entire society participated, including very strongly Western and secular oriented intellectuals who did not in any way, shape or form advocate for the establishment of an Islamic republic. Getting back to a point I made earlier, it has been argued by many historians that it was really the United States, the Shah and Savak, which were instrumental in winning the revolution for Khomeini and Velayat-e-Fahy, because there was truly so much opposition. So with that said... if you will, I think more than the revolution, the crucible of the antipathy between the United States and Iran is certainly the loss of Iran, but the hostage crisis, which we don't have to dwell on, but which in terms of diplomatic history, um and uh you know say modern uh uh relations in the post-world war ii era was simply something that did not happen right i mean even during world war ii after uh pearl harbor the the japanese embassy was told pack up and go home but they weren't taken hostage so so this was something that The United States, you know, politically, it's considered to be completely beyond the pale. Now, it's important to note that Khomeini did not order the seizure of the embassy, nor was he actually truly in control of the students, although had he said, we need to give these people back right now, they probably would have done that. So Khomeini, as he was trying to solidify his control over the revolution, over the government, to create the constitution, to create this system, Velayat-e-Fahy, i don't think he even felt that he had enough political weight or gravitas to tell the students to to release the americans right so you know whatever the answer to that question is or or whether he did or he didn't um it is also of course let's remember uh it is september 22nd 1980 when iraq having been given the green light by the united states america is going to invade iran so The new revolutionary government, the revolutionary movement has a lot of fish to fry. Some of your viewers might find it fascinating that arguably Iran survived the first portion of the war and arguably potentially the Iran-Iraq war from help from a regional country. Uh, and that regional country, uh, is, uh, the, now the apartheid state of Israel, um, which kept the arms flowing when Carter, the Carter administration cut off arms sales to this new revolutionary government. It was Israel who kept the arms flowing. And of course, Israel had the sidewinder missiles and the F4 tires, um, and the parts because everything that the Shah had was essentially Western American NATO standard. So, uh, Israel did this, and it is rumored, and I don't doubt this, that there were up to 90 Israeli military advisors in Iran throughout the war based on Israel's what is called doctrine of the periphery. And that is essentially you support the enemy of your enemy on the external flank, right? So whether or not there was love between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel, Israel supported the Islamic Republic through the first years of the war. Ultimately, as we know, the Reagan administration cut out the middleman, didn't actually cut out the middleman, Israel would still deliver the weapons, but Oliver North and others in our government eventually you know, found it beneficial to American policy to support Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. So here's what I'm getting at through those details. It wasn't necessarily clear, even in 1981 too, that Iran and the United States couldn't do business. In fact, I mean, let's just jump ahead. The early 1990s, before ILSA, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, American oil companies were getting involved in Iran. There was heavy multi-billion dollar investments being made in Iran. And it was really only the Israel lobby complaining about these new developments and essentially trying to create a new boogeyman for Americans to fear in the region with the loss of the Soviet boogeyman that ended up canceling those contracts, bringing about the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, and then leading to increased sanctions and increased animosity. So I think many people forget the many years where there was constant headlines in the American media. And Robin Wright, she was in a sort of industry writing these articles. Will next week be the charm? Will Iran and the United States say yes again? And because there was a lot to potentially collaborate on. And of course, in the context of the Oslo process, 1993, there was potentially even a solution to, if you will, you know, humor me, the Arab-Israeli conflict. And so therefore, we might be able to do business with these guys. The United States itself was re-envisioning, of course, some President Bush, humor me, kinder, gentler nation, you know, a thousand points of light and new world order. And then you got Wolfowitz in the back room putting together full spectrum dominance, clean break and other plans for the future. So One other thing, just now directly related to your question, that problematized this potential for the United States and Iran to have better relations during the Iran-Iraq war period and then also subsequently, and that was the interest or the attempt, and it wasn't necessarily a very broad attempt, but certainly rhetorically, to spread the Islamic revolution regionally and potentially globally. I've got a really cute tract. It's not cute, but my students find it entertaining. It's written by the students following the line of the imam. And it's essentially their description of American culture versus Iranian, Islamic culture and American racism and American genocide versus Iranian good and Iranian Islam. And they literally conclude by saying, now that you've read this book and you understand all americans should feel comfortable chanting death to america because they know it doesn't mean death to america or your trees or your culture or it's just death to imperialism and so let us all you know with gusto engage in the cry which is essentially a cry against uh anti-imperialism and for freedom so uh it's quaint because there's another piece from that period put out really in late 78 called If Americans Knew. And it's Iranian students basically saying, look, this is happening. Look, this guy got tortured by Savak. Look, this is what the Shah did. And if only Americans know, they'll change this stuff, certainly, because there are great people and they've been bullshitted themselves. So It is really the period during the 1980s when, and of course amplified by the American mainstream media, the Iranian government, in its attempt to counter the support of Iraq by the Saudis, by the Kuwaitis, by all of the Gulf states, starts talking about, you know, Velayat-e-Faqih might be good for everybody. And this is, of course, what motivates them to double down on their support for Saddam Hussein. won't take it too far, but ultimately that support when Saddam is asked to pay it back, such as $14 billion to the Kuwaitis, is going to be one of the catalysts for his invasion in the summer of 1990. But so the... The relationship was not destined to be oppositional or antagonistic, even with the revolution. But again, the hostage crisis, which is, if you will, the biggest beef of the United States against Iran, and then U.S. support for Saddam. And things like the downing of Iran Air 655, July 3rd, 1988. These are, if you will, the biggest beefs that Iran has against the United States. The U.S. and the documents are there for people to read and weep at the National Security Archive, being fully aware of daily CW chemical weapons use against the Iranians by the Iraqis. And the question was, how do we keep this under wraps? you know what are we going to do to to enable this to keep going so so the the hostage crisis and the iran iraq war despite the fact that israel and the united states were provisioning the iranian military um is is really the crucible for the continued uh path down uh uh or i'd say negative path that iran u.s relations have taken because with the early 1990s and even Rafsanjani presidency, the potential for there to be rapprochement, Iranians were all for it. And they were all for American investment in the Iranian economy. And it was really AIPAC, the Israel lobby, which you know brought about the cancellation of those contracts big conoco contract and then subsequently iran libya sanctions act and uh it's almost like the the rest if you will uh history is made right we then proceed uh through uh uh And you mentioned it. I mean, September 11th, many people probably forget that there was between 40,000 and a million Iranians who came out on the street in a candlelight vigil. I don't know what the accurate number is, but it looked more like more than 40,000 to me. and and being rewarded for that and with people will forget iran when when the united states made the determination to invade afghanistan promised the united states overflight rights and that if your pilots get shot down we'll rescue him or heck you can rescue him how about that hell we gave him the number of ahmad shah massoud's troops and the northern alliance to invade with right we the iranians did that um so i've got to get my we straight here but um But so what was Iran rewarded with? In January of 2002, President Bush's State of the Union speech, Iran is an axis of evil with North Korea and Iraq, which threatens us and our allies. So I guess I'll... Stop narrating there, but what I'm saying is, because I think we can all see in our mind's eye the path that Iran-U.S. relations have taken since September 11th, in which, you know, we have binaries now. You're with us or against us. And as Ayatollah Khamenei said, we are neither with you nor are we with the terrorists. We are with Iran and we have a very long history. It's a little more complex than that. You know, that you get attacked or something happened there and all of a sudden we need to make up our mind. So, but it definitely did not have to go that way. And there were many, many off ramps potentially where relations could have improved. And of course, this then brings us to the primary importance of the apartheid state of Israel, the Zionist lobby here in the United States, and the perceived role that Iran has played as a rejectionist or a spoiler. either for the continuation of the expansion of greater Israel and apartheid or for a two-state solution. But in either context, Iran has been deemed to be a bad actor and a hindrance to movement, you know, wherever. I hope that has addressed some of your really awesome and complex questions.

Adnan Husain: Oh, no, definitely. And it is a very complex and interesting history, and it's why it's worth looking at that even in the era since 1979, there have been many different stages and phases and opportunities and, you know, directions and decisions that have taken that have patterned the current set of relations. It's often just collapsed as after the revolution in Iran and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, that of course there could have been no possible relationship. These are, you know, antithetical powers. you know, that are necessarily hostile in every respect. And it's true that, of course, you know, Ayatollah Khomeini did articulate a rather anti-imperialist geopolitical program. But that's the point is that Iran is actually a very complex country. country that has different factions, different constituencies that are sometimes not in complete agreement with one another. And in fact, actually, if you think about it, you know, the very point you were just quoting Ayatollah Khamenei, you know, saying, well, we're with Iran, we're not, you know, with you or the terrorists, you know, a very moderate sounding kind of statement in the context of the post 9-11 geopolitical order. But now, very recently, he said, basically, we can't negotiate with you. There's absolutely no reason to be engaged in any negotiations because he is, of course, also speaking to and against some constituencies that look back at that history, Khatami, previous eras.

David N. Yaghoubian: That's right. I just wanted to mention again for viewers that might not have all of this history on the tip of their brain, President Khatami was elected in 1997 on an agenda of change, change in terms of even laws governing things such as hijab, the relationship between the United States, even potentially the relationship between Iran and Israel vis-a-vis the peace process. Khatami was the smiling guy. Khatami was the guy who was rumored to be shaking hands with Israelis in the halls of the UN. The American press and Christiane Amanpour, they love, love, love them there. Khatami, And essentially, to cut to the chase, we have September 11th. We have the candlelight village vigil. We have we have hot to me essentially coming out and saying, you know, how can we help you? These guys are our enemies, too. You know, Al Qaeda and you know, Takfiri Sunni movements. And what did Khatami get? And by the way, what did, if you will, conservatives in Iran who hated Khatami see what Khatami got for, in their view, his kissing ass of American empire? He got labeled an axis of evil that threatens the stability of the United States and his allies. And of course, the United States then proceeds to layer on sanctions to invade Iraq, to directly threaten Iran because real men go to Tehran. This was the context in which President Ahmadinejad was elected to the presidency. And There's a wonderful article written by Jim Loeb. I don't know if people remember Jim Loeb, but it was a brilliant article that was after Ahmadinejad won, based on his campaign promises and slogans, Jim Loeb wrote a piece, because this was also after Bush's 2004 reelection, and the piece was called Bush and Ahmadinejad separated at birth because he goes through and he shows what their campaign slogans were. And Ahmadinejad was basically pulling a page right out of Bush. They're against our civilization. They hate us for our freedom or for our Iranian-ness. We need to be strong. We need to gather forces. We need to oppose them through internal unity and military strength. we need to quit making concessions and we need to do what we know is right. Just rhetorically, the same thing essentially that Bush was saying, but from an Iranian perspective. And so I think this also speaks to, and certainly we could talk about the Rouhani administration and the JCPOA, but this tension within Iranian politics between if we can just talk about two rough blocks, if you will, the reformists and the conservatives, it goes a lot deeper than that. But, um, that that is is something that is also uh what um uh it's it's it's dynamics and parameters are are uh say to understand those dynamics today are drawn from this historical experience and there was nobody who was a nicer guy with his hand outstretched i actually have a selfie with katsumi he was in the shiraz airport alone with just one bodyguard and i was there with with my mom and my wife at the time and uh I walked right up to him and the dude was like, yeah, yeah. Like he knew all about selfies and even like, let me get free to get the perfect smile. And I mean, he was like a showman and a kind of PR guy and the sort of, yeah, Iranian PR figure, wonderful person. I got to say though, As I went around gleefully and was trying to show people, hey, look, my selfie with Khatami, almost to a person, people were like, yeah, dude, cool, whatever. But what? That's the president. They're like, yeah, yeah, I don't like him. So it wasn't good for bragging points. But I was starstruck at the time. This was 2007. And At the time, I myself wasn't necessarily fond of many of the things that Ahmadinejad was saying and doing to promote what was, in his view, the Iranian line or the Iranian position. I actually thought he came off very clownish, very shooting from the hip. And I really think that in terms of what the American media was looking for at the time, he was their perfect evil Iranian poster boy. But his election and his position, completely understandable in the context of the Khatami experience. You know, we give you the handshaking reformist guy, and you give us axis of evil, and you're next. So this has also conditioned the popularity of reformists within Iran relative to the conservatives.

Adnan Husain: Well, absolutely. The best way to undermine the reformists has been US belligerence. That's definitely the case. I mean, Khatami had the dialogue of civilizations. He wanted to kind of reframe this Huntingtonian clash of civilizations that was all the rage in political science and geopolitical circles and has been the spawn of so much what we might call geopolitics of hatred and contestation, this idea of the necessary clash of civilizations. And, you know, he was trying to posit something about the mutual beneficial relations that could take place through dialogue, through discussion and so on. I mean, the man was you know, holding out an olive branch and got his arm cut off, you know, basically. So that's absolutely the case that there have been various undulations in Iran's like posture vis-a-vis the United States towards the West. I think, however, it does come back to the point that Iran you know, we've been discussing and that you raised, which is things have obviously happened since the mid 2000s and those efforts, the discursive changes under the George W. Bush administration, that demonized Iran and then subsequently seemed to be perhaps somewhat reversed by the JCPOA under Obama, who very courageously, you have to say, in terms of the conventions of what had become Iran, U.S. acceptable political discourse on foreign policy, where there is always a much narrower line than there is variation on domestic policies and questions, but was that we should have dialogue and negotiations and diplomacy with countries like Iran. And this was, at the time, something that could conceivably in typical election cycles, have undermined Obama as a serious candidate. You know, I mean, they could have said, well, he has no foreign policy experience. He's a junior senator for a few years from Illinois. And here he is naively. And this was the attempt, of course, in the Democratic primaries. I remember Hillary Clinton essentially framing this as incredibly naive. And if you don't have the kind of perspective that I have as somebody who's been in and around the foreign policy establishment and take the hard line that American supremacy and hegemony is an unquestioned value and whoever it is, we demonize as an enemy. cannot be negotiated with and said, we have to use force, we have to use power, and so on. So, you know, there were, it seems, differences, as you said, many off ramps. But one thing that has shaped the current and contemporary environment is this identification of Iran as member of the axis of evil, And in particular, because it has consistently maintained a particular position in the region on the question of Palestine. And of course, that's very relevant in the context where we're speaking about, where after 15 months of genocidal assault on Gaza, currently, a tenuous and tentative ceasefire agreement that is entering the second stage and we're not sure if it will continue. We've just reached basically the formal end of the ceasefire in Lebanon with the Lebanese government and Hezbollah that, of course, has been violated constantly by Israel, but has been essentially abided by, you know, in its terms by the Lebanese resistance movement. But we also have as a consequence of that and of the memory of the previous hardline policy of maximum pressure on Iran, you know, a concern and a sense that Iran is in the crosshairs, is being targeted, and that if it's possible to dragoon the United States under this Trump administration into supporting Israel in bellicose intervention against Iran, that they would take this opportunity to remove basically the single standing state You know, there are resistance movements, even Ansar Allah, which is the de facto government in Yemen now, is not still completely in control of the entire territory of the Yemen, of the United Yemen, because that civil war hasn't been completely resolved. So one would still say that they're almost a state actor, but it's really Iran is the single state that stands against U.S. and Israeli plans in the region. So let's talk a little bit more about the situation that we're entering in now and the recent, very recent history that maybe is in some ways is clarifying of the role, you might say, of... Israel in the region and the way that fits into U.S. plans. That is the main and decisive, you could say, impediment to, you know, rethinking the region and having peace in the region, a more regional peace that even had started to, under China's brokering policy, of normalization of relations between Iran and other Arab states in the Gulf that I would have said promised a real possibility for regional realignment. That was quite hopeful and has been perhaps derailed, of course, by the last 15, 16 months of war.

David N. Yaghoubian: Mm-hmm. If we can go back to the 90s, whereas oftentimes or usually the shaping of American foreign policy in the wake of the decline of the Soviet Union, say 1991-92, related to backroom activity by Wolfowitz and the neocons shaping up their ideas for full-spectrum dominance, is not – directly linked to interests regarding Israel and its position vis-a-vis Madrid and what subsequently emerged in 1993, which is Oslo. Whether or not that made sense, I can bring it together. By the time we have the position paper, the Clean Break Strategy, which is published, I believe it's 1996, by the same figures who will later get together and officially establish the project for the new American century and, you know, issue the report rebuilding America's defenses, right? They, the neoconservatives, who have always had very close ties to, if not always, almost been synonymous with Zionists, had an agenda for American global hegemony and as well, Israeli regional hegemony. And the clean break strategy essentially puts forward the need for, and I'm characterizing here, but the United States and Israel to flip the bird to this silly, quaint international law thing and do what we need to do since we're right. We have morals and values and kinetic power on our side to, uh, move past this unworkable peace process, right? This is in the wake of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Netanyahu is in his first prime ministership. So we got to break from this peace process and actually just start taking stuff or acting unilaterally. It's in this context that Iran is deemed to be public enemy number one in the region because of its opposition, direct opposition to the Oslo peace process. Now, it needs to be said that Iranian political elites, going back to certainly 96, 97, White River period, have said in different words, we're not gonna be more Palestinian than the Palestinians. If they accept this two-state solution, we're gonna accept the two-state solution. But until we do something along international law that is agreed upon by the Palestinians, we're simply not going to support it. We're going to continue to support the opposition. Certainly, we know that regional Arab nations as late as 2002 were on board with a peace process that was defined by international law in 242 and 338 through the their proposal in 2002, which I believe is still an outstanding, potentially viable proposal. It's in the interim. It's with the global war on terror, the the the the. the war on Iraq in which even more American troops were based in Saudi Arabia, the United States obtains an even bigger footprint than soon occupying Iraq, occupying Afghanistan, so surrounding Iran. This is the context, along with Sharon's unilateral disengagement, the second intifada, and Iran's continued support for Palestinian resistance, that Iran continues to grow as this boogeyman, and particularly a boogeyman that is anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, certainly anti-Israeli. They hate puppies and ice cream. They're terrible. Look at this Ahmadinejad guy. All of the rhetoric of the global war on terror, the other rising, the binaries, you know, you're with us or against us, there is freedom and there is this terror Islam thing. It all fed into the, say, growth of the antipathy between the countries. Whereas there was this opportunity potentially under Khatami for rapprochement, it's simply gone by 2004 or 5 with the election of Ahmadinejad. So uh i think the big picture what i'm talking about here is full spectrum dominance requires fealty requires nations around the world whether they're european allies slash vassals or the russians or the chinese to kiss the ring we all saw the the biden administration actually thought that the chinese in anchorage were going to kiss the ring do you remember we're back baby and This was the Anchorage moment in which the American government was informed, we're not playing that anymore. You can't act like that. You can't treat us like that anymore. This is Anchorage, I believe, early 2021. So whereas the United States has, I think, through to Trump's election, been pursuing full-spectrum dominance, global hegemony, which inherently makes a nation like Iran, which strives for its sovereignty, which strives to have international law be implemented in lieu of the rules-based international order, and especially with its position not only regarding Israel, but also regarding support for the resistance, it is deemed to be beyond the pale public enemy number one by the United States and by the Zionists. if you will, both of them have a strong hand on the volume knob of the mighty Wurlitzer, right? So this is how Iran is perceived to be a meddler and a negative force, a destructive force by many Americans, including many of my friends and relatives who still uh you know inhale that mainstream media nonsense so um but but it is i'll just i'll just say it again in even more kind of raw terms while the united states was and potentially if the united states still is pursuing global hegemony full spectrum dominance being a lone superpower on earth pulling the strings um unless and until it could engage in successful color revolution against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iran was going to be one of the biggest thorns in its side because it's not going to roll over. It's not going to play ball. It's not going to sell out its regional allies as it didn't sell out the Syrians until I guess essentially it was forced to. And we could we could talk about that one. But Iran is going to stick to its guns. And I'm saying that term right now purposefully because had Iran not engaged in an advanced program of self-sufficiency, especially regarding arms and its ballistic missile capabilities, it would have been invaded and overthrown long ago by the United States, probably 2005, 2006. So just one last thing. Many Americans are completely unaware of Millennium Challenge 2002, which was a $250 million war game put on by the DOD in which Iran won in the first five hours after killing 20,000 Americans and sinking our battleships. They were so shocked, the red team, the American team, that they forced, excuse me, the blue team, they forced the Iranian team under General Van Ripper to surrender. refloat the aircraft carriers and to start the video game over because they wanted to get the most bang for our buck essentially ignoring what had just happened this ended up being a huge scandal in congress and general van ripper was ranting and raving um but this is 2002 iran iran has been on a tear to develop its ballistic missile its drone capabilities its air defense capabilities It's submarine capabilities, et cetera. And so it's really incomparable to the Iran that in 2005-6, we decided to not invade. So the tensions continue to rise. The threats continue to be issued. Iran still has a true promise three that has been promised, if you will. But This would be brutal. This for all involved, an open war between Iran and Israel or Iran and the United States and Israel will not go well for anyone. And in the end, Iran will win. hands down, it will win. How many hundreds of thousands of Iranians might die? That's another question. But in the same way that the Palestinian resistance is going to win, is winning in Gaza at a horrific human cost, Iran will win as well. So it's, I guess, you know, we might then talk about the context or the motivations for this continued tension and animosity. But I this i believe is primarily the the u.s iran tensions uh is primarily driven from the american uh geostrategic posture which is or at least was until donald trump started in with the wrecking ball global hegemony full spectrum dominance you know the wolfowitz doctrine and the 850 military bases necessary to create that global footprint um there's that famous meme it's like Iran doesn't want war. What are they doing? Putting their country in the middle of our military bases. And of course, it's surrounded by American flags. But those flags, if you will, were placed there. Those bases were established in Iraq and Afghanistan in the post-September 11th era as a part of the global war on terror, basically legitimating the plan to engage in full spectrum dominance that the neocons and wolfwoods had created in the back room in the 1980s.

Adnan Husain: Yes. Well, you've been so generous with your time, David. I just wanted to, perhaps by way of conclusion, ask you a little bit more, perhaps, about that geostrategic situation where Iran has, of course, continued hostile situation vis-a-vis the United States in all the ways that we've been describing and that you were just elucidating. It has forced, of course, Iran under sanctions for decades and the most severe possible sanctions in the last decade under the maximum pressure sanctions to have to find innovative ways, new allies and alliances and mechanisms in order to be able to have that self-sufficiency that you were mentioning has been absolutely crucial for its Security in the region to avoid military intervention from the United States or its proxies and agents in the region, Israel, perhaps even as it has been in the past by neighboring Arab countries participating or supporting. These were all possibilities if Iran had maintained. remained weak and devastated as it was by years of war with Iraq, a very devastating and terrible war with so many casualties that are drain on their economy. During this era of sanctions, they have nonetheless been able to build military technologies for its own defense and strategic deterrence, which we've seen has been very important in Iraq. preventing a full-scale regional war from breaking out since Israel's expansionist genocidal assault first on Gaza, but expansion into attempt to take southern Lebanon, its use of various conditions of ceasefires elsewhere to seize more territory as a result of the collapse and overthrow of the Syrian government. So this has been very important. How has it managed to do so? Often people will talk about Iran's recent joining of BRICS and these alliances that it has developed to evade U.S. sanctions, illegal unilateral sanctions they may be, but to evade them through productive economic relationships and military support and technology transfer and so on with these close relationships with China and Russia. So how do you see Iran's position within BRICS and within this kind of geopolitical alliance in an emerging multipolar world?

David N. Yaghoubian: Great question. That's awesome. I think to begin, related to things I was talking about before, related to the necessity for Iran to develop its own defensive armaments, one of the first things that Iran reverse-engineered was the American BMG TOW missile and ATGM and basically a wire guided anti-tank missile point and shoot. This was one of the things that Oliver North was getting to the Iranians so that they could survive the Iraqi tank onslaught during the Iran-Iraq war. And so Iran decided, you know what, let's just take one of those and break it apart and we'll reverse engineer it. And that's why by about 2000, they were asking who wants to buy a Tufan missile? Because we got all kinds of two-fan missiles. We're not buying them from the United States anymore or getting them from Israel. We're making them ourselves. So Iran developed its own indigenous resistance economy and resistance technologies, if you will. They started in. You make a Steyr 50 cal sniper rifle. We can make one of those. So they started with small arms, essentially, and ATGMs are pretty large small arms. It's still considered small. small arms, and then of course simultaneously got more and more advanced development of ballistic missiles and drones, which is really their mainstay. I'll just cut to the chase and say Russia and China were at best only peripherally involved by way of their provision of over-the-counter items that Iran could potentially purchase to utilize in its resistance economy. It has only been as a result of Russia and China increasingly experiencing the same illegal pressures that the United States has been placing on Iran since the 1980s that has brought the Russians and Chinese to have not only a much more close relationship with Iran, but to, as we've seen recently, the Chinese to sign a 25-year, $400 billion development deal, and the Russians signing several agreements just short of an actual strategic alignment with Iran. the, if you will, alliance of shared grievances to paraphrase Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 1997 in the Grand Chessboard put forward that if we want to control the world through our global hegemony in the 21st century, We have to make sure that we don't allow Russia, China, and Iran to get together in a coalition that is shaped by shared grievances. Well, drop the balloons, folks. That's exactly what the United States of America did in the post-September 11th era, not to mention racking up $36 trillion in debt. Keep that in mind. But so, therefore, as the Russians have been increasingly subjected, especially after the Maidan coup 2013 and the subsequent sanctions, and as sanctions and tariffs and threats against the Chinese and their energy resources, which they get a large portion of from Iran, have been increasingly threatened, Russia and China themselves have countered American hegemonic maneuvers in this regard by getting even closer to Iran. And this includes the sharing of, you know, technologies. And I mean, we even saw now Iran sharing its technologies, right? The Shah had drone with with russia and even some of its ballistic missiles the russians responding with potentially su-35s and s-300 air defense systems so what's my point that iran has its own complete indigenous armaments industry that for example produces the bavar air defense system that is believed to be on paper as per iranian officials as as capable as the s-300 whether that is true or not This was part of the motivation for the Russians to sell Pantsirs and S-300 systems to Iran. The Chinese as well, with the increasing overt threats from American political elites, we got to go to war with China by 2025 or 2026, and we're not going to pull it off. You know, Cato Brookings reports on logistics and how are we going to get over there to fight this war. China has increasingly been more open about its support for Iran, its interest in skirting the sanctions regime through ghost ships with transponders off, etc. So China is perhaps the most reluctant to directly support Iran or to be considered a part of Iran's agenda, Iran's foreign policy, but, and I guess this would bring it to more contemporary issues, how could China or any nation stand and not say something about the offense to humanity and international law by way of the genocide in Gaza? Well, this happens to bring China closer to the Iran position. The more the United States threatens sanctions or even put maximum pressure sanctions on Russia, I'm not sure if Russia is more sanctioned than Iran, but there's that, I don't know if you saw the image, it's got the Iranian with the noose all around his neck and he's kind of chilling and he's like first time and the Russian guy's like, yeah, well, Iran's been through it. the sanctions the pressure the the the you know whatever you could say to paraphrase the pejorative indigenations constantly the the the threats from the american empire against the russians as well as the chinese in the context of the attempt to maintain full spectrum dominance has created the alliance of shared grievances that was bignia brzezinski's worst nightmare i might add this alliance of shared grievances is geographically located in the world island the pivot area that mckinder in 1904 at the beginning of the century said would be critical for world for global power they who control the pivot area or the world island control eurasia and control the world um the united states was essentially overtly and what's big was talking about in 1997 was we got to control the pivot area or at the very least keep the chinese and the russians and the iranians divided and away from each other well mission accomplished if you will The United States of America, through its foreign policy and its foreign policy guided regionally through the apartheid state of Israel, has succeeded in creating this alliance of shared grievances, even though I'd say the Chinese and the Russians went kicking and screaming into it. And there's a lot of other reasons. Maybe in another show we could talk about that. But this is truly an alliance of shared grievances, not ideological grievances. commonality or overlap but shared grievances shared threats from the empire regarding their economies regarding their very sovereignty and their very territory and so in this i guess iran can can happily say told you so glad to see you here you know and and and plan for the future, but it's truly Russia and China who have come much closer to the Iranian position in light of not only the sanctions and full spectrum dominance, but also what has gone on in Gaza. I mean, you hear people like Morandi and other, say, Iranian scholars, Fouad Azami, that, wow, you know, in our classes even, it used to be pretty hard for us to teach our Iranian students about the true nature of the great Satan, right? To paraphrase that title I mentioned earlier, the true nature of the United States, the true nature of the Zionist entity. And now they're seeing it with their own eyes. They're experiencing this live genocide, right, supported by the American air bridge and its tax dollars and its diplomatic cover. So it's become much easier for even, you know, Iranian reformists and those who are against the Islamic Republic itself, as well as, you know, Atlanticist-oriented Russians, as well as the Chinese who truly do not, in my view, have an ideological interest at all in buddying up to Iran. They have a pragmatic, economic, military, strategic interest in, by necessity, forging closer relationship and alliance with Iran. And so really that is what is driving this kind of tripartite alliance right now between Iran, Russia, and China. But the United States continues, and I'd say we'll have to recalibrate with what Trump is up to, but has continued all the way through the last day of the Biden administration to simply do all it can seemingly to push these three together, you know, despite the nightmare that it's giving Zbigniew Zbigniew in the grave or Mika today. So.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a wonderful way to conclude this discussion and also lead to future episodes where I hope we'll have a chance to talk a little bit more. I would just remind listeners that some of the themes that we were discussing and you were talking about, Dave, right here at the end, very much coordinate with the discussion I had with the BetBeat Media folks. And we have a wonderful episode on that that relates to a lot of concerns. about the position of China, what is multipolarity and whether the BRICS, because exactly as you've been saying, it's not an ideological coalition. It's, you know, a group that is pursuing their own interests, but being forced to collaborate in various ways because of the position that the United States and the West has taken geopolitically, economically, and so on. And I think that's very true, that in many ways, Russia and China have had to come to Iran. And a lot of times this relationship is seen as Russia and China coming to the aid of Iran, a junior partner in this. And of course, their economy isn't as big, but... you know, the Gulf region, energy resources, absolutely vital for China's economy. And they don't have oil themselves. They do rely on Russian and Gulf oil as the main sources. So it's very important for them, I think. And what I tried to argue in some tweets and in our discussion with that media is that China has or should actually see its interests more fully in supporting investing in Iran as a backstop against its own encirclement. I mean, it really does need these alliances and being a little more proactive about strengthening some of these alliances and allies by investing in them will actually help forestall the potential isolation of China if you strip away You know, I thought this was the case also even with Syria is that, you know, they were going to be part of the Belt and Road Initiative. There were partnerships if they had done more perhaps to invest, not talking about military intervention, but invest in the infrastructure, in the economy to help, you know, Syria, whether the horribly incapacitating and destructive Caesar sanctions, you know, there would have been greater resistance to the plans and programs and priorities of U.S. and Israel in the region. And if it were to allow Iran to fall, I think it's devastating for Iran. for China to do so. So in some ways, actually, instead of Iran being just being supported by these larger, stronger powers, in some sense, the experience that Iran has gone through, as you were pointing out, points the way and may have actually also have been helpful as a model for how to deal with U.S. unilateral sanctions and to grow a self-sustaining economy. So I think it's very important to think about these issues. And I really appreciate so much your insights. And not only based on a long history in deep historical contextualization, but also this contemporary analysis. It's been really great. And I look forward to having you on again soon.

David N. Yaghoubian: Can I just, in light of your excellent recommendation for viewers to watch your conversation with BetBeat Media, if they didn't already, just today, and I wish I had the exact title, but Ben Norton, who does the geopolitical economy report, and he's in China, he did a great discussion regarding multipolarity and current Trump administration intimations that, oh, it's a multipolar world, right? You heard Marco Rubio talking about that. But Ben is very specific regarding the type of multipolarity that the United States is actually attempting to create. And it more involves the creation of hemispheric regional power blocks and the return to great power competition, right? And we were talking in a discussion before this installment just about how essentially just related to the concept of the world island or the pivot area, this is potentially one of the goals that if Donald Trump can bring in Canada as a 51st state and get Greenland to capitulate and join us, then in some way, at least the American imperialists believe that they can compete with the alliance of shared grievances over there in Eurasia that has been created. But the important point about Ben's insights is this is not multipolarity or a multinodal global economy. This is just a return to more John Mearsheimer-esque great power politics. So anyway, that's just with your great upbeat conversation about that, because I really learned a lot from that. I would just recommend that people check out Ben.

Adnan Husain: Oh, well, that's wonderful. Yeah, that's wonderful. I mean, I think we will want to talk a little bit more about whether the overreach of the unipolar era of U.S. hegemony is leading now to a focus on hemispheric control that might be easier to manage, does have longer historical roots. And of course, if this is a resource war now, you know, that we're returning to control over you know, nickel and various, you know, lithium and other kinds of rare earth metals, as well as, of course, energy resources. There's a lot to be had in this hemisphere. And the risk and the threat is with the globalized economy that inexorably these might be pulled into the orbit of you know, Chinese, the Chinese market. And so, you know, it's going to be very interesting. And it's, of course, very instructive to see the way in which the Middle East region. And I think this is just maybe by way of conclusion, something that we have to acknowledge is that there has been no region of the world that has had the kind of devastation because of its resources, because of its geopolitical position in that pivot area. that the last 40 or 50 years, the number of wars, imperial wars, invasions, regime change operations, fomented civil wars, creation of sectarianism and sectarian division, this region has been absolutely devastated by the wages of imperialism. As we were talking about before, I think in some ways, and it's something that Leith Marouf has said that I completely agree with and have thought similarly, and it was a position that Tariq Ali took in a recent book, or actually it's not that recent anymore, but about the way in which the Iraq war and U.S. entanglement in the Middle East because of wars in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, you know, a dirty war in Syria, NATO toppling of Libya, that basically its attention, its resources, its geostrategic kind of resources and attention, its military were so heavily invested in sowing the kind of chaos that we've seen over the last 40 years in the Middle East that in some ways other spheres and areas of the global South have managed to resist and have fight back successfully in the space that's been created by the heroic resistance of the people of the Middle East. And when we have uh liberation in the future it's going to have to be built upon solidarity across these regions and so we need to appreciate these histories and the way in which these struggles are connected and that the empire's devastation in one region has allowed perhaps popular forces and sovereignty to at least create a modicum of livable structures of resistance to change the political calculus and that we owe something. Wherever we are, we owe something to the resistance that's been taking place last 15 months in Gaza, for years in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so anyway, I think that geopolitical perspective and thinking about this going forward is something I think we're going to be talking about a lot. And I'm hoping we'll do much more of that together, Dave. So thank you again so much for coming on.

David N. Yaghoubian: Great to talk to you, Adnan. This was wonderful. Really had fun. Thanks so much.

Adnan Husain: All right. And listeners, check out and support, share, like, subscribe this show. You can listen in audio podcast form or here on YouTube. in video. Don't forget, we do have a video editor. He needs to eat too. So if you can support this show, go to patreon.com slash Adnan Hussein. But until next time, solidarity and peace.

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