Iran's complex revolutionary history

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This is on point. I'm Debra Becker in for Magna Chakrabardi.

As the war with Iran continues to shake the Middle East and the global economy,

we want to spend the next hour looking back partly because you've asked us to examine some of Iran's

history to help better understand the context behind President Trump's decision to join Israel

in attacking Iran last month. Today, the United States military continues to carry out large-scale

combat operations in Iran to eliminate the grave threats posed to America by this terrible

terrorist regime. Many say this latest conflict is another phase in hostilities that started decades

ago and has affected at least eight American presidents, perhaps most notably Jimmy Carter,

who was in office during the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the taking of 52 American hostages

for 444 days. We are facing a horrible example of international terrorism,

the holding of innocent people as kidnapped victims, supported by and condoned by

the government of Iran. Also, many may recall President George W. Bush, who in his 2002 state of

the Union address, said Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, represented a quote,

axis of evil that threatened the world with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror

while an unelected few repressed the Iranian people's hope for freedom.

And in 2013, then President Barack Obama announced an interim deal with Iran over its nuclear

program. It was called the first high-level contact between the U.S. and Iranian leaders

since the 1979 Revolution. Iran, like any nation, should be able to access peaceful nuclear energy.

But because of its record of violating its obligations, Iran must accept

on its nuclear program that make it impossible to develop a nuclear weapon.

In these negotiations, nothing will be agreed to unless everything is agreed to.

The burden is on Iran. To prove to the world that its nuclear program will be exclusively

for peaceful purposes. That interim deal led to the 2015 limiting of Iran's nuclear program,

that deal, by the way, President Trump withdrew from in 2018. These moments of the U.S.

relationship with Iran represent just a sliver of the country's vast, complex history

that many of you told us you wanted to learn more about. So we're bringing your questions to

the experts this hour as we take a look at the long thread of this conflict in Iran. Joining me first

is Abbas Aminat, Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University and author of the book

Iran, A Modern History. Professor, welcome. Thank you very much for having me.

So I guess I would like to start broadly. What would you say are some of the main

threads from Iran's history that you think people should be aware of as this war continues?

It's worth remembering that Iran, as you have just mentioned in your introduction,

is one of the oldest countries that survived on the world map, going back to the ancient times.

And has a certain sense of resilience that culturally, to some extent, politically,

survived up to the modern times. So it is a wrong impression, it seems to me, the way that it was

characterized often by mostly American politicians as a land of bigots and fanatics

that may be, to some extent, applicable to the current regime in power, but certainly to

when we are talking about the population of 90 million and more, majority of that population

really are very different. Particularly since the latter part of the 20th century, we are dealing

with the population, which is highly educated, highly westernized, and certainly are not in line

with many of the radical policies that has been implemented by the Islamic regime ever since

1979. We got a question from Kathleen Jones in Austin, Texas. And she says she wants to go back

to the 1950s, really, and the leadership of Muhammad Mosadek, he was a democratically elected

prime minister of Iran, ousted in a coup in 1953 that was reportedly orchestrated by the U.S.

and the UK. Was that sort of a main turning point for Iran and certainly for Iranian and U.S. relations,

would you say? Well, to some extent that is true, although there is a level of exaggeration about

the significance of 1953 coup. Ever since the early decades of the 20th century, Iran experienced a

relatively powerful, very modernizing, a Parlevi regime that is the dynasty that ruled over Iran

ever since 1925. And this is a period which Iran turned from an empire to a modern nation state.

And experienced the period of democratization, of rule of law, at the same time there was a contrast

between that tendency and emergence of a autocratic regime under the Parlevis. Now what happened in 1953?

After the Second World War when Iran was occupied by the Allies, there was an interlude

when political parties emerged, when there was a desire for nationalization of oil industry,

which was the most important source of income as far as the Iranian state was concerned.

The British government and particularly the Anglo-Iranian oil company had control over the Iranian

oil resources. And there was a tendency through the Iranian parliament led by Mahmoud Mossadir

and his allies in the National Front to try to nationalize the oil industry that was very

strongly resisted by the British government. As a result of that Iranian oil was boycotted,

there were sanctions that was imposed in the early 1950s. And eventually that led to a confrontation

that brought about the involvement of the British intelligence along with the American CIA.

As a result of that there was a military coup that brought back Mahmoud Mossadir from exile

back into power. So although it's an important episode, one should remember that there are all kinds

of complexities associated with it. Yes, the British and the Americans played a very important part

in re-establishing, re-stating Mahmoud Mossadir in power that survived up to 1979.

But that does not mean that the entire course of modern Iranian history was determined by that.

The process continued Iran further secularized Iran further modernized. And if you can compare Iran

to many of the countries in the region, we'll find it as a very, very different country in terms of

its populace, in terms of its resources, in terms of its general direction, majority of the

Iranian population were greatly supporter of westernization. They were at one stage in the 1960s

and the early 70s, the largest population of foreign students in the United States were Iranians.

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How did it get to the revolutionary point in 1979?

Like many other societies, as Iran developed, sectors of the population remained less modernized.

There clinked more to their own traditional Islamic practices, particularly she Islam,

which is the official creed of Iran. And they were more or less ever since 1920s sent back into

their seminaries and were isolated from the process of modernization. In the 1930s, 40s, 50s and

60s, they became more radicalized. The religious establishment, although was isolated and was left out

of the political process in the country, they had managed to broaden their support within

the traditional sectors of the Iranian society, particularly in the lower income neighborhoods,

and as such, since during the Pahlavi period, unfortunately, because of the lack of any other

form of political freedoms, political expressions, political parties, free press, we see that there is

a greater appeal of religious establishment in the mosques. And that gradually, over the course

of the 1970s, grew. Even members of the middle classes had a certain nostalgic interest

for this kind of an Islam, radical Islam, that tend to emerge from the religious establishment,

Ayatollah Khomeini, who was in exile ever since 1963, maintained a position for himself

among many of its supporters and network of the clergy in Iran. And once he returned to Iran,

he was looked upon as some kind of a prophetic figure that would be able to change Iran

back into its authenticity, whatever that authenticity meant. And as such, we can see there was a kind

of a popular revolutionary mass support for him at the time of the revolution, but almost

immediately at the same time, we witnessed the gravitation towards an anti-Westernism

that becomes part and parcel of this radical ideology, Islamic ideology, that dominated Iran.

With the United States being defined as the great satan, that is the term that Ayatollah Khomeini

used with reference to the United States. And that is not something new. That was part of the

radical left's portrayal of the United States in non-West ever since the Vietnam War.

But the way that it was fused to an Islamic identity of Iran, that was something novel. And that

was something quite actually appealing, particularly to the population who felt that all the problems

that comes with any kind of modernization process is because of the superpower like the United

States that imposes on Iran, it's will. Yes, the United States was a great ally of the Palavir regime.

It had a privileged position in Iran, but I don't think that if you look at the figures where

the United States basically exploiting Iran in any particular fashion. Iran was growing,

it was selling its oil in the market, it was developing its country, and this was very different

from the way that it was portrayed by the revolution, it is from 79 onwards. And more and more,

it was used by Khomeini and his supporters in order to, in a sense, create a new hostile

other through the Islamic revolution. And the course of the events unfortunately supported,

helped them, most significantly the Iran-Iraq war, the hostage crisis, that was completely

manufactured in order to benefit from the creation of this kind of hostile force against the true

Islam, as it was portrayed by Atullah Khomeini. Why? Why do that? Why create this bad guy? What was

the point there? One reason for that being that the religious establishment, or at least a large

sector of the religious establishment was highly conservative, totally against many of the values

of modernity, as we know it today. The role of the women in public life, the society not

observing any more district religious demands of she-Islam, allowing a greater degree of equality

among all Iranians, contrary to the way that the religious establishment wants also to see

its own position in the society, as privileged. All of these together helped portray the

West and particularly the United States as an alien, as a hostile, as a corrupting force in the

society. You know, you mentioned women, and we spoke with exiled journalist Fatima Jamalpur

about this. She's been on our show before. She's the co-author of the book for this

Sun After Long Night, the story of Iran's women-led uprising. We talked to her just before today's

conversation, and we asked her to tell us about some of the roots of the woman's movement in Iran,

and she said before the 1979 revolution, women in Iran had a lot more legal protections,

and were very active, but afterward things dramatically changed for women.

1979 Reveslamic Revolution, and founder promises about women could be free, the hijab would not

be obligatory, and other, you know, empty promises. After the Islamic Republic,

the founder of Islamic Republic announced that hijab is compulsory. So mostly women lost many of

the achievement, which we have fought for decades, after a 1979 revolution. And several world

political leaders have said that protecting women and girls in Iran has been an objective,

really, of Western intervention. We asked Fatima if women in Iran would agree with that,

that they needed intervention. I don't think so, because what we saw in Afghanistan,

showing us that the U.S. doesn't have a good deal for women, because during all these years,

that Taliban took power in Afghanistan, and the prevailing women from the school and education,

no one stands like that from women, you know. It's all about empty promises, and we don't

believe in empty promises, and I don't think that the war and education will bring freedom for

anyone, especially women. Professor, can you talk a little bit about the role of women,

especially after the 1979 revolution, and also a look at the U.S. military's actions and other

areas of the world, and how women in Iran might be thinking about that today.

There was a drastic change that came about with the revolution of 1979, particularly with a,

one might say, symbolic re-imposition of the hijab, and the appearance, the attire, of the women being

kind of very modest, modest colors, modest designs, and so forth. They were also, as far as the

position in the society, were more restricted. They were not allowed to, for instance, enter into

the job market without the support of male members of their family, the husband, the father,

etc. However, that is a great irony of the Islamic revolution, that in the course of the 47 years

that we are witnessing today, we see that women in Iran, quite contrary to the

social religious engineering of the Islamic Republic, gained a much greater presence

in the society of today's Iran. The number of women who were educated in Iran, in the universities

is larger than men. Of course, it could be much better, there is no doubt about it, that women

is a potential force for transforming Iran. They are already transforming Iran. In the

in the protest movement, you see that women are no longer abiding by that strict rules that

the Islamic Republic has imposed upon them. It is changing society, women appearing in the

different attire, without a headscarf, and they basically are much more visible, much more

vocal than one would have expected, as Fatimim mentioned, compared, for instance, to Afranistan.

So, in that respect, this is one of the areas that the Islamic Republic's policies misfired and

created the society very different from what they expected. Professor, I want to go back a little

bit to where we were before. We talked about the revolution, and really there was this anti-Western

sentiment that was strengthened throughout Iran, and created deliberately, you said.

And then we got to the 1990s, and I seem to remember that there was some movement to reconcile

with the West at that point. Did that change anything at all in terms of relations between the

US and Iran? As far as the hardcore of the Islamic Republic's leadership is concerned, no,

under Ayatollah Khamenay, we can see that there was a consistent resistance to any

improvement in the relations, even under Obama, which was probably the best. Of course,

one should also remember, one should be rather fair in that regard. The nuclear

agreement that was achieved between the Europeans and the United States with the Iranian government

was a breakthrough, and that could have, in due course, led to a change in the environment.

It could have removed some of the sanctions, greater prosperity for the ordinary Iranians,

better economy that was not coming about because of the sanctions, and that was a trend. But at the

same time, the religious establishment did have an ideological position that could not abandon,

even after today. We'll talk a little bit more about that when we come back after a break.

We're talking about Iran's history, and what echoes of it we're seeing in today's conflict.

I'm Deborah Becker, this is on point.

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opt out. Tell us your thoughts and your experiences by recording a message in the on point

box pop app. If you're not on your phone already, just search for on point box pop wherever you

get your apps. And you can also call us at 617-353-0683. We're talking about nuclear weapons.

And we understand, Professor, that Iran has pursued a nuclear program since at least 1957,

right, with varying degrees of success. I'm just wondering how exactly these nuclear ambitions

of Iran are looked at within Iran. And then you talked about the nuclear deal with President

Obama, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that nuclear deal that the US has since withdrawn from.

How that has affected things and whether you think there might be some kind of compromise,

it's even reachable here. Well, perhaps if I start by the very end of the point that you have raised,

if there has been a possibility to return to that agreement and try to develop a peaceful

nuclear program in Iran, that seems to me with the recent aggression by the United States and

Israel came to an end. Now I can see that the Islamic Republic in Iran is going to be much more

adamant in its creation of some kind of a nuclear shield to in order to protect itself against

further future aggressions like the one that we witnessed it. Let me make it very clear that whatever

the nature of the Iranian regime is, whatever the nature of the Islamic Republic is,

to the extent that you can see in the rhetoric, anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Israeli rhetoric,

I don't think these are creates any ground whatsoever for a legitimate immoral aggression

upon Iran in such a way that we are witnessing today, that is virtually bringing Iran to the point

of destruction. I'm not here trying to be a supporter or apologizing for the Islamic Republic

that has committed enormous amount of crimes of its own, but this is not the Islamic Republic,

this is Iran that is being destroyed. And I don't think that is going to go down in history

in any favorable terms for the United States. These are the kind of stories that we've had in the past

in one way or another ever since the 1960s and the United States with the Vietnam War

and we are witnessing it again. The British in the course of the 19th century British Empire,

the Russians in the course of the 19th and the 20th centuries, the latest of which being Ukraine

are the other examples of how these superpowers behaving. And in this case,

I think the victim unfortunately is the people of Iran, not only the Islamic regime,

the Islamic regime would survive in my opinion. The chances of course, I cannot predict

what's going to happen tomorrow or future in any time, but it seems to me it's going to survive.

I want to take a moment here to bring someone into the conversation,

Karos Ziyabari, who is a New York-based journalist, a media researcher and contributor to

New Line's magazine. I want to talk with Karos Ziyabari for a moment about what's happening right now

on the ground and how exiled residents of Iran are feeling about this as well. Karos, welcome to

on point. Hi there, brother. Thanks very much for having me. It's a pleasure to join you today.

Can you talk about how dissent is really affecting folks within Iran and outside of Iran who are

watching right now? So, I guess opposition domestically to the Iranian government and its

policies, its crackdown on the repress and its violation of human rights and other forms of

human rights violations has been going on for decades. And in the recent years, it has gained momentum

starting in 2009, the green movement really demonstrated the resilience and bravery of Iranian

people and defying their own government and its authoritarianism. This is something that has

been somewhat belatedly acknowledged by the international community. There have been two

and Nobel Peace Prize laureates from Iran, both of them, women, one of them is actually behind bars.

I mean, a woman, I guess, Mohammadi, who is at this time raising her voice, both against

foreign aggression and also against domestic authoritarianism. So, Iran's civil society has been

dynamic resilient and this has been somewhat belatedly acknowledged. Many of these people have been

actually working at great personal risk in order to advocate improved Iran-U.S. relations.

So, would you say that the demonstrators now that there is almost a different opponent than

there has been in the past? I mean, it's quite likely because Iran is not a monolithic society,

there are multiple elements, the countries made up various ethnic religious groups, people with

different political persuasions, ideological convictions. There are, I mean, of course, people who

have certain belongings and certain sympathies, some of them pretty much sympathize with Iran's

exiled monarchy, some of them believe that the only way to achieve democracy is to organic,

it's true organic change and it doesn't happen via foreign intervention assisted or encouraged

or egg-done by exiled leaders who do not have to actually endure the brunt of destruction.

Being elected upon Iran, I mean, what we have seen over the past weeks has not been any remotely,

I mean, representing any form of targeting, the establishment in power in Iran, Iran's culture

sites have been damaged. People's businesses have been struck, popular and bookstores, bakeries,

businesses. I mean, just a few days ago, I heard about a major music academy set up by

a man and his wife who have been actually boring loans and they have to repaid for the next

several years was entirely demolished under a drone strike that was attributed to Israel and

US. So that's that's not certainly going to assist or accelerate Iran's civil society. It's not

going to further democratic change. It's only going to reverse democratic change because

wherever there has been an element of foreign intervention or foreign aggression or the efforts

of Iran's civil society have been undermined through, I mean, radical acts such as withdrawing

from the JCPOA the 2015 nuclear deal. We have seen the civil society taking the first hit.

I mean, basically that that achievement was kind of like the groundwork for the further

consolidation of a pro-Western base in Iran that was kind of gaining momentum. It was

able to assert itself. There was a time in Iran under former president Khatami that even mentioning

the idea of normalization of ties with the United States was kind of considered as a taboo.

Some publications were simply being closed down for proposing that there should be normalization

of relations with the US after several years of animosity. But I mean, after years we saw that

things were really changing by the centers of the Islamic Republic in a very unorthodox way and

then that the JCPOA withdrawal in 2018 by then president Trump kind of delivered one of the first

blows to Iran's civil society later groundwork for the coming to power. Our president who was

apparently being groomed to become next Supreme Leader Abraham Reissi who actually was killed

not helicopter crash in 2021 and then we saw what happened next. Right, right. Just I wonder very

briefly Karo Shif you could just tell me you know how you think perhaps what we know right now is

US public opinion is primarily against this action that's taking place in Iran. Does that affect

what's happening on the ground? Does that affect things in Iran at all like it did in the past?

I'm hoping that I mean opposition to this military action and the war on Iran might somewhat

convince the US administration on Donald Trump that what he has decided to start is not

generating popularity. It's not resonating with his mega base. It's not even delivering any

transformative change in Iran. I'm not sure if what happens in the next stages of Iran's social

developments would be promising in a sense that of course this is generating some form of

further authoritarianism in Iran and but I hope that things will change for the better at some

point. Professor Aminat last word last minute goes to you and I guess what I wonder is when we look

at this what do you think might be the end game based on the history of Iran there've been obviously

numerous conflicts, revolutions. How has Iran survived that and what's the main lesson there that we

might look at going forward? Well I tend to agree with much of what Kurosha said. I tend to agree

also with the fact that the near future unfortunately is going to be rather dark. I don't think that

the regime that we see in power is going to be weakened. The image of the United States

tremendously suffered as a result of the recent aggression and the future for Iran in long term

is very hopeful. The young age generations of Iranians are going to eventually play a very

important part in what Iran is going to be in future and to reach between now and then it's

going to be a very difficult period of transformation. Professor Abbas Aminat of Yale University

an author of Iran a modern history also with us was Kurosha Ziaberry a journalist and contributor

at New Line's magazine. I'm Deborah Becker this is on point.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere answering internet searches, writing emails even making music.

Most people I think kind of want the short-term advantage and don't look at the long-term

disadvantage like that's what happened with social media people gave up their privacy.

People could have opted out but most people didn't. I'm Deborah Becker is AI really making our lives

better and at what cost that's coming up Monday on point.

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