331. The Iranian Revolution: Will The Shah Return To Iran? (Ep 2)

12:16Scott Anderson:Personally, I feel terrified by US intervention because we've seen where it's gone so wrong every single time in the region. Yes, but you know, as an Iranian as well, as terrified as I feel living outside Iran, I also feel that I'm not the one to have the say. And it's for, you know, my fellow Iranians living under that regime that should have the say.

12:40Anita:The souls of many of those dissidents just died because they said, hang on a minute, please don't. I can't stand it. Apart from the fact we don't want you to bomb us, we do not want to have anything. This is our uprising. This is not something that's being orchestrated.

12:55William:And it is a country with many hundreds of years of suspicion of outside. Oh, absolutely. The whole colonial period was a period of predatory colonial powers, whether it was Britain or France or Germany or Russia, particularly Russia, actually, all wanting a chunk of Persia, eating up all the northern Persian territories, which are now Georgia and so on, but places we now think of as entirely different countries, which were originally under Persian rule.

13:24Anita:Sometimes, you know, when you have this sort of pattern bias, you think, oh, there are parallels, and everything you see is a parallel. You guys tell me if I'm wrong or right about this. But one of the catalysts for the end of the Shah in 79 was the controversial then measures, because of what you were saying about this sort of religious, grouping in the rural areas, a powerful religious lobby, was giving Iranian women the right to vote and agrarian reform, that that was a massive thing. Now, to speak a little bit about, you know, particularly the giving the women the right to vote, how did 70s Iran chafe at that and react to that?

14:04Ramita Navai:So this was really where, so the Shah started what was called the White Revolution in 1963. And it was 19 different platforms, everything from reforestation to women's emancipation to agrarian reform. Most arable land in Iran was in the hands of aristocratic landowning families or of the mosques. They had huge land holdings. So when he called for agrarian reform in 1963, it directly threatened the wealth of the mosques. And so really with Khomeini.

14:39William:Just to clarify that, so this is the waqf? The waqf, yes. Which is land owned by the religious establishment. That's right. Which was, he thought, going to waste and not being properly That's right. And he wanted to break them up. And this is a very quick way. He thought we could just get new amounts of land for these landless people and we can sort this all out. But it went badly wrong.

14:56Ramita Navai:It went badly wrong. But the two things that really brought Khomeini out, and no one had heard of Khomeini until the white revolution, was women's emancipation and the Bulgarian reform. Those were the two things he went against the Shah with. His militancy sparked clerical riots in 1963, in which several hundred people were killed. A year later, Khomeini had become such a lightning rod that the Shah sent him into exile in 1964. And that began Khomeini's exile in Iraq. Weirdly enough, that is also the time that the Americans finally thought the Shah had a backbone. In the 1953 coup, the Shah got on a, he was a pilot, he got on his own private airplane with his wife because of the revolt, the coup was undecided for a couple of days.

15:46Ramita Navai:And he first flew to Iraq and then with things still uncertain, he went on to Rome. So when the word came back that this coup had actually succeeded, he was having lunch at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome. And he came back with his tail between his legs two or three days later. So from the 53 coup, this is one of the great ironies, the Americans actually saw the Shah as a coward. I mean, who leaves their own coup? And it really wasn't until 63, putting down the clerical riots, which was not the Shah, it was his prime minister ordered it, and then the exiling of Khomeini, that they finally thought, oh, he actually has a backbone after all.

16:24Ramita Navai:And that's when you start seeing the embrace of the Shah hardcore by the Americans.

16:28Anita:So, I mean, Ramita, it's, I suppose, a parallel that women are at the center of this political battlefield once again. But, I mean, I feel, and I'm an outsider, so you tell me if I'm wrong, I feel that actually it is the brutal way they crack down on women asking for, you know, more freedom and to express themselves that has actually alienated a great number of Iranians. Am I right or wrong about that? First of all, that women are a catalyst for where we are now. and second of all that actually rather than saying no push them back push them back being the causes bellow back then in 79 sorry before that even that it is now actually a catalyst again but pushing forward against the regime yes i mean this is a more recent development

17:14Scott Anderson:so i i would say scott that what's interesting when the revolution happened is that more women especially from working class and religious families ended up in universities women from traditional families that's right because of course universities during the shah's era was seen as kind of dens of western influence and iniquity um so that was one of the plus points of the revolution of the islamic revolution is that it allowed many more women to be educated and to go to universities then what you had throughout the 2000s and when i was there you had this growing women's movement and I went to many women's protests where Basij the Islamic militia would turn up with chains you know and start beating the women and any men with them

18:02William:an important point to note is that not only was the Basij but also many they used to fly in Hezbollah and non-Iranian supporters I think particularly during the women life and freedom movement.

18:16Scott Anderson:Yes, that's been happening more recently. That happened. There was good evidence in 2009 that there were foreign militias who were meeting out the violence. But yeah, so I'd say...

18:27William:Were willing to crack down on ordinary Iranian civilians in a way that Persians would not.

18:31Scott Anderson:Exactly. But certainly through the 2000s, women's activists and women's rights groups grew stronger and stronger and more prominent. And they became the thorn in the side of the Islamic regime. And what happened in 2009 with the Green Movement is that the women's groups were pretty much obliterated. The women were mass incarcerated and there was an absolute crackdown on any women's groups. Now they have been reforming. And as we know, they played a vital role in the Women Life Freedom protest. So there's been this really interesting kind of rise and fall and rise again of women's groups and women now at the forefront of all these disparate activist groups.

19:18Anita:Look, we're going to take a break. Can we just all agree with ourselves? It's sort of same but different. You know, you've got women as catalysts, but in very, very different ways in these two areas.

19:26Ramita Navai:I just want to add one small thing to that of women being catalysts. Farah, the Shabanu, the queen, some of the hardcore clerics, I think Khomeini among them, probably hated her even more than they hated the Shah because she represented everything. She made a point of never - Astonishingly glamorous. Yes, glamorous, never wore a headscarf, going on construction sites and being photographed wearing a hard hat.

19:51Anita:And wearing Iranian couture. Yes, yeah. That's important. She didn't do the French couture thing. No, she did not. She wore the Iranian couture thing.

19:57Ramita Navai:But she represented everything that the ultra-right clergy despised and were afraid of. And, you know, she lived for probably 25 years under a death sentence. I mean, they were trying to kill her desperately.

20:11Anita:Well, look, let's take a break now. Join us after the break, because actually one story that I'd love to know is that one of us in this room was there in 79. And I don't know how many memories we can share, but I'm kind of looking forward to asking. Join us in a moment.

20:33Ramita Navai:I'm RJ Decker, a private investigator uncovering the sunshine state's darkest secrets.

20:40William:Tuesdays, it's the premiere of ABC's hottest new crime show. RJ freaking Decker as I live and breathe. He's a private eye. It's not a standard murder. It's someone bigger. And a public mess.

20:51Ramita Navai:Trying to get someone back to prison today?

20:53William:You go to prison one time and suddenly it's all the jokes. R.J. Decker, series premiere, Tuesdays on ABC and stream on Hulu.

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21:36Anita:Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but so does laundry.

21:40William:So Rinse will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door expertly cleaned, and you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and cueing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting beef wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us rinse it's time to be great welcome back well we are now in the 1979 revolution and we are finding the extraordinary parallel sometimes inverted parallels but but parallels of some sort or other between uh the revolution to oust the Shah in 1979 and the revolution now where people are shouting on the streets, Javed Shah, long live the Shah again.

22:30William:Unimaginable to many of us even a year ago. So Ramita, you alone of the people in this room were at the revolution. I got in there about five years afterwards. I still could see displays of the spectacles of the martyrs in my first day in Tabriz, I remember, in this museum. They cleared out the exhibits and put the martyrs' spectacles It was all fresh. But you were there. You were actually there.

22:53Scott Anderson:You have got a great Khomeini speech story of why Western media was so taken by Khomeini speeches.

22:59Ramita Navai:Because there were so few people at the embassy and journalists who spoke Farsi. Certainly by the time Khomeini got to Paris, the people right around him who were acting as his interpreters knew they needed to soften Khomeini. Because, I mean, this is a man out of the 14th century. And there was this one great moment where Khomeini had given the Shah an ultimate. this is probably in November, maybe even December, he'd given the Shah an ultimatum when he had to leave Iran. And the journalist asked via Ibrahim Yazdi, the translator, if the Shah doesn't leave on this day, what will you do? And Khomeini's answer was, I will call for rivers of blood to flow.

23:40Ramita Navai:And the way Yazdi interpreted it to the Western journalist was, he'll be very upset. And this happened again and again. I'll just to jump in.

23:51William:Many, many Iranians today blame Western liberals. Yes. For, in a sense, letting the Khamenei back. Right. And promoting him.

24:02Anita:I mean, you go and leftist intellectuals. Yeah. I mean, you went as far as to say they thought he was like Gandhi.

24:08Ramita Navai:That's right. This idea. Well, I mean, again, I think this parallel right now with the crown prince, this idea that you need the spiritual guide. And I mentioned these three Western-educated Islamists, all in exile, that were around Khomeini in Paris and prior. I think they all thought, oh, he's an old man. He's going to go back to home, the holy seat of home. Certainly, he's not going to try to have political power.

24:31Anita:No, he's a friendly grandpa. I mean, that's how he was being portrayed. That's right. I've seen articles and photos of him saying, you know, sort of like, you know, a vuncular grandpa is speaking.

24:43Ramita Navai:No, yeah.

24:44Scott Anderson:And we were talking about this, weren't we, Scott? But I actually interviewed that man, Khomeini's right-hand man in Tehran. Oh, go and tell us. Ebrahim Yazdi, who was an original revolutionary. That's right. And actually, the man behind the revolutionary guards now realized that the new Islamic regime couldn't trust the army and needed an army that was loyal to them and answers only to them.

25:10William:So the founder of the revolutionary guards? Yes, the founder of the revolutionary guards.

25:14Scott Anderson:I sat in his garden. He died in 2017. And we were discussing his regret. He didn't tell me that he regretted his role, but he told me that he was really angry with what the regime had become, that it had lost all its values and that, yeah, the regime had turned on him. You know, the regime ended up eating its own children.

25:40William:Right, right. And looting its own coffers.

25:43Anita:I feel like we left a little girl in the middle of a protest riot. Can you describe for us what it felt like and how old were you? And just paint us a picture of what it was like.

25:55Scott Anderson:Five years old. My dad was in the Navy and my mum, unbeknownst to my dad, my mum took me out to the protests. And I remember the revolution really well, especially the Tracer fire and when the violence started. So we remained in line.

26:13William:Were you at the back?

26:14Scott Anderson:No, we we just you know, there was there was curfew. So you had to be home by a certain time. But I remember my parents describing everything that happened to me. And there were lots of men with guns. And there was shooting and, you know, it's the period where it got pretty bad. My mom was a teacher. And she we stayed on after the revolution. And my mom was then teaching secretly because then you had the cultural revolution when schools were shut down and universities. And every single time she'd teach secretly, somebody would snitch and she'd be busted. And so it just got more and more dangerous.

26:48Scott Anderson:And in the end, we managed to get out. But my father stayed because he was in the Navy. He didn't have Swiss bank accounts, like lots of rich Iranians and Tarantulis, money squirreled away. And his whole family was in Iran. So he always wanted to be able to come back. So he didn't want to abscond. So he had to wait in order for the regime, the new regime to accept his resignation, which they did just before the Iran-Iraq war. So he got really lucky and he joined us in London.

27:16Anita:So look, I mean, we're sort of coming to the end of this and it's just so interesting. Again, going back to the past, what to me was fascinating is that Mohammed Shah Pahlavi, the father of the current crown prince who is in Washington, was described at the beginning as a taut little boy, you know? He was completely dismissed. And then as a coward, as you say, he goes off to dinner during a revolution. And then he sort of surprises the United States and the rest of the world by saying, you know what, that oil that's ours, we're kind of more interested in it than you might think. So sort of the reading of the man - This is an important point,

27:53William:that he saves Iran's oil revenues. And these are what absolutely, superpower, the amazing, I mean, today we don't think of Iran as a rich country at all. We think of Saudi Arabia or Qatar or Dubai. But the 1970s Iran was that. It was the rich oil country.

28:11Ramita Navai:And the Shah engineered it. He was the one who engineered the quadrupling of oil prices.

28:16Anita:Well, he had a great place in OPEC to do it. I mean, and OPEC listened to each other at that time. So, you know, it was a different time.

28:21Ramita Navai:This gets to this interesting idea of the psychology of the Shah. In some ways, I feel it's almost a kind of a personification of the average Iranian's view of the West. I think that the Shah, he was always, he could never get enough affirmation from American presidents in particular.

28:39Anita:Oh, he liked the Queen an awful lot, didn't he? Yes, yeah. He liked Queen Elizabeth. Yeah.

28:43Ramita Navai:But he never fully trusted the Americans. And he was very aware of, and again, it's almost like Persia with the West, very aware of how they'd been taken advantage of. Wanting to emulate the West, but also deeply resentful of what they'd done in the past. So the Shah, the first president he met was FDR at the Tehran Conference of 1943. It was the first meeting of Churchill and Stalin and Roosevelt during the war.

29:10Anita:This is pre-Yalta, which we did a whole series on. So this was the template for Yalta.

29:13Ramita Navai:So it's in Tehran. The Shah is not even invited to the conference. He's the official head of state of this country. It was held at the Soviet embassy in Tehran. The Shah begged to meet with Roosevelt in particular. He got a 10-minute meeting with Roosevelt. They had just made him the Shah. They had kicked over his father. And there's a picture of the Shah sitting on this couch with Roosevelt, looking like a little schoolboy. There's not even a recording of what was said during that 10-minute meeting because the Americans in the room, they thought this meeting was so inconsequential, nobody took notes.

29:47Ramita Navai:That burned the Shah. And it stayed in his mind. He talked about it for years later. He hated Kennedy. nobody really gave him any time of day up until LBJ but really then he was really anointed by Nixon and Nixon finally in 1972 said short of nuclear weapons you have a blank check you can get any weapon system you want no questions asked

30:13Anita:but there's a reason for that Nixon had his hands full in Vietnam well that's right

30:17Ramita Navai:can we just leave you to can you be a

30:19Anita:sphere of influence and just do what we want you to do will you just take care of it We just take care of this little lake of trouble for us.

30:24Ramita Navai:And this, of course, so this is what's very interesting. So now he's been in 1972. He's anointed by the Americans finally, you know, after being in power for 31 years. And then two years later, it's like he takes revenge by quadrupling oil prices. And he goes back to the West and says, you know what, you know, saying, oh, we have a recession. You know, people, there's gas lines. And Michelle goes, well, you'll get used to it. So it's this very complicated thing. I feel it was kind of, there was an element of revenge to it.

30:55Anita:So, I mean, that sort of starts me thinking about where we are today again and what has led us here. So, you know, we've had this before where the West characterizes a leader, particularly in the East, whether it be in the Arab world or Iran, you know, a taught little boy. Somebody not to, you know, and then they get it so wrong, they got it wrong with Assad. You know, they thought this is a boy who's grown up in our universities. He's someone we can do businesses, someone we can control. The homology and acting.

31:21William:Yes, I mean, he's one of us.

31:23Anita:He's one of us. Can we talk about Reza now, the crown prince? I mean, tell me about him because I suppose everybody wants to know. Everyone's talking about him. What is he like? Have you met him? I have not.

31:38Ramita Navai:I tried to interview him for my book and he wouldn't. I interviewed his mother, but he never would get in touch with me. What I always heard is that the younger son was the really smart one. He was one of the two children who committed suicide. He's the one who committed suicide, yeah. Yeah, tragic story. But of course it had to go to the eldest son. But I mean, I've heard this again and again, that one of the reasons why the Shah felt a crisis coming in and around to the degree he did was he knew he was very ill. He knew he was not going to be around in 10 years. He had very little confidence in raising him.

32:09Ramita Navai:He had cancer, didn't he? Stepping in. He was trying to set things up for a different sort of monarchy for the son. Not a constitutional monarchy like in Britain, but something less kind of a strong man than he had. I just want to add one thing. Looking forward, when you look at how the Iranian Revolution of 79 finally worked, it was economics. They just shut the country down. The entire country went out on strike and was paralyzed for two months. And actually, well, a little bit earlier, it was like November. And so the gears just ground to a halt. and I think if the opposition movement now is smart or has this kind of self-survival idea, that's the path they'll take now.

33:00Ramita Navai:What do they have to lose? Economically, they're devastated. Just do a nationwide strike and freeze the government.

33:06Anita:Be done with it. Ramita, as an Iranian woman, what do you think? How is this all going to end, do you think?

33:14Scott Anderson:Well, I think we're agreed on this, Scott, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong. You know, my fear is that the Revolutionary Guard are not going to let go of power easily. Right. And we're talking about a criminal mafia state. They have done very well from sanctions. They control the black market. They have control of the charitable, the bonyards, the charitable foundations that are worth hundreds and hundreds of millions. You know, it is not for no reason that whenever there have been moves within the more technocratic and reformist parts of government, moves at detente, moves at sanction lifting, talks with the West, that the Revolutionary Guard at that point will grab a dual national as a pawn and imprison a dual national and scupper any talks that happen.

34:03Anita:I mean, Nazneen Zaghari Radcliffe will have a huge resonance with British audiences.

34:07William:And you get the impression that these guys are really digging in. They're completely ruthless. They're happy to murder people in large numbers and they've got nowhere else particularly to go.

34:15Scott Anderson:Exactly. And that's my big fear. And I have heard that they have been sending messages to Trump and there are back channels and they will do anything. And that's what I'm worried about. You know, Trump is, you know, he's a businessman. I'm also very suspicious to see in things like the Wall Street Journal articles suggesting the breakup of Iran and other options like this.

34:40William:Well, that's what Israel wants, right?

34:42Scott Anderson:I mean, that would be an Israel-friendly Iran.

34:43William:There are many powers in the region that would benefit by, that have benefited over the last 30, 40 years from a weak Iran. Iran is potentially the strongest state in the Middle East. It has brilliant people, it has high education, it has enormous oil wealth still. and properly run, it could be the great power again in the Middle East. Many, many powers, not just the Israelis, but the Dubai, Qatar, Saudis, they don't want that. They do not want a strong Iran. And the idea of either a hobbled Iran with a damaged Mueller government still clinging on, or an Iran which is broken up with maybe a sort of Kurdish enclave or something, These are, Iran's enemies have all sorts of options that they would prefer to a resurgent, democratic, free Iran with its people liberated to rise up and take over the region.

35:40William:Right.

35:40Anita:So, I mean, look, in conclusion, we don't know because we're right in the middle of it at the moment. But it has been so extraordinary at this moment in history to have you both in the room. So very grateful for your time. Thank you.

35:52William:Pleasure to be here. And particularly thank you for doing this so quickly. This has been turned around very, very short notice. Neither of you knew this was happening in this form a few hours ago.

36:02Anita:No, we didn't either, to be fair.

36:04Scott Anderson:We just met on a bus. We met on a bus.

36:06Anita:I mean, that's not even a joke. I was like, oh, this woman is utterly fascinating. But it has been a real pleasure and an insight. Thank you both very much indeed. My pleasure. Until the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon.

36:19William:And goodbye from me, William Durrumpur. We recorded these episodes on January the 17th, 2026. As of January the 30th, 2026, the US-based human rights activist news agency has confirmed that 5 ,459 protesters in Iran have died, and the organization is investigating 17 ,031 more. Two senior figures of Iran's Ministry of Health have reported that as many as 30 ,000 people have been killed. In such a The volatile situation predictions is difficult to make, and these figures are ever-changing, but relentlessly rising.