Politico Is Full of It—A Conversation with Rob Morris
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Hey all,
I had this chat with Rob back in June, when some of you might have caught it live or on Rob’s Youtube channel, the More Freedom Foundation. I didn’t get it re-edited and trimmed down for a podcast until this past week, and here it is, in lieu of a Monday short, for you today.
I’m going to be traveling for the next couple of Mondays, but I crushed a couple of tight essays over this past weekend, and I’ve got them recorded and uploaded and ready for release, so we should be on schedule even if I’m on hiatus.
The only other news, as you’ll hear on the show, is that SFD’s first news analysis cast is up on Patreon for patrons putting up five dollars or more. Go ahead and check that out if you’re interested. I’ll have another one next month if that’s when your check comes in.
Morris and I are talking about maybe doing another one of these, especially since the President and his twin anti-Muslim crypto-fascists Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon, along with his Iran-hating generals, has been doubling down and doubling down on threatening Iran and cancelling the nuclear deal. If you like me talking to Rob as much as I like talking to Rob, keep an eye out and maybe catch us live and ask us some questions.
Well, this is the tenth short, which means we’re putting out a helluva lot more content this year than last, and I hope that’s to the good.
Our very first Patreon-exclusive news analysis show is going up this week, so head to our page to check out the details. Otherwise, share this show, man. You can get the post I’ll be putting up at SFD’s Facebook page or you can write your own, for whatever network.
That lady up there, by the way, is Hannah Arendt, and if, God willing, some future person ever writes about me as an intellectual, they’ll be listing her as my ‘spiritual mentor.’
Musical credit goes to Kai Engel again, this time for his album caeli.
Not much to report but that the next Iran show is coming along and that my first Patreon-exclusive show is going up probably early next week.
We’re talking this time around about TR Fehrenbach, a major in the US Army during the Korean War and latterly a historian:
Fehrenbach wrote This Kind of War, which I picked up as preliminary reading on Vietnam (the French war in Indochina started to go south in a hurry once we reached the ceasefire in Korea; the Chinese could then take all their Korean War surplus and send it to Ho Chi Minh).
It’s a good book, but more than that it lays out a compelling explanation of why the US had to go to war, in Korea and elsewhere, after WWII. I don’t agree with it, but given that I’ve given folks with other ideas about the Cold War short shrift in the Guatemala and Iran series, I figured it was time to start getting their side of things and my explicit objections on the air.
I think it’s a pretty good one.
Last but not least, musical credit for this episode goes to Kai Engel and his album Cold.
Well, like I can’t remember if but might have said last week, we’re back from hiatus and onto regular production again, which means a show for you this Monday.
It’s kind of an experimental one today, with a whole lot of half baked but interesting thoughts and an intermediate but definitely no final or satisfying conclusion.
So let me know what you think. If it’s a total zero, in the future I’ll make sure to keep everything under my hat until it’s done through. In either case, maybe more than on anything I’ve done so far, this is an episode that calls for feedback. So give it to me.
Here we are, the absolute last episode (I promise) before we get to the Iranian Revolution and, I think, the Iran-Iraq War.
In this episode, we’re covering the Shah’s White Revolution, the new liberal, socialist Shi’ite theologians like Shariati, and the dark reign of SAVAK in 1960s and 1970s Iran, along with the Shah’s famous birthday party for Iranian monarchy.
The Shah rang in the decade with a poorly-dated extravaganza attended by most of the ‘Free World’ heads of state, catered by Maxime’s of Paris and funded to the tune of anywhere from $17 to $200 million in 1970s dollars.
Complete with parades of Medes and ancient Persians
The party was supposed to mark, for the Shah, his assumption, finally, of full control, and of an authority equal to his father’s, and, presumably, the ancient kings of kings.
The party was, unfortunately for the Shah, also an indication of his total disconnect with his people. And to them, another example of the Iranian monarch’s profligate spending of what could, or might, have been the people’s share of Iranian petrodollars.
The knock-on effects of the Shah’s White Revolution, combined with distaste for American conduct, culture, and imposition, were beginning to create pervasive discontent with the Shah’s regime, both inside Iran and among its emigres in Europe and the United States. That Mohammad Reza Pahlavi failed to catch wind of that dissent was no surprise, as his brutal secret police, the Organization of Intelligence and National Security, or SAVAK, had been disappearing and torturing everyone who crossed the political line in the country, even in private, since the late 1950s.
The agency’s much-feared emblem
Set up with the help of the CIA and Mossad, SAVAK operated first with the help of the American General Herbert Norman Schwartzkopf, the father of the General Schwartzkopf you know from Desert Storm. Once the General died in 1958, a team of CIA advisers took over his role with SAVAK, which effectively repressed nearly all political expression in Iran and did its best to silence the expatriate communities overseas as well.
But this man, in exile in Najaf, was waiting in the wings. And it would only be a matter of time before the grand edifice the Shah had built would come tumbling down.
And last but never least, references.
Abrahamian, Ervand. The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations. New Press, 2013.
Abrahamian, Ervand. A History of Modern Iran. Cambridge, GB: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Abrahamian, Ervand. Iran: Between Two Revolutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 1974-1975 — Iran. 1 January 1975: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol10/001/1975/en/
Axworthy, Michael. Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Baraheni, Reza. “Terror in Iran.” The New York Review of Books, 28 October 1976.
Byrne, Malcolm. “The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup.” The National Security Archive, last modified 29 November 2000, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/.
The Cambridge History of Iran: From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic. Edited by Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly and Charles Melville. Vol. VII. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963.
Fatemi, N. S. 1985. “The Anglo Persian Agreement of 1919.” Encyclopaedia Iranica Vol II: 59.
Katouzian, Homa. The Political Economy of Modern Iran: Despotism and Pseudo-Modernism, 1926-1979. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1981.
Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Wiley, 2003.
Roosevelt, Kermit. Countercoup: The Struggle for Control of Iran. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Rothschild, Emily. “The Boom in the Death Business.” The New York Review of Books, 2 October, 1975.
Steel, Ronald. “Impossible Dreams.” The New York Review of Books, 12 September 1968.
“Unrest in Iran.” National Archives – National Security Council. Central Intelligence Agency. (09/18/1947 – 12/04/1981). – ARC 647011 / LI 263.400. YouTube.
I know I’m running a little late on the next Iran show, but with some law school stuff, a family reunion, and a neat little piece I’m putting together on Ancient Aliens for The Awl all done by the end of this week, I should have that out soon.
In the meantime though, we’ve got this, following up on our last short about the erosion of democratic norms and the death of republics.
Mitch McConnell seems to be doing his level best to tear down what democracy we’ve got, and not in the service of the New Deal or the Great Society, but in an attempt to pry health insurance out of the hands of the poor to give a minuscule number of hyper-rich Americans a marginal tax cut.
History will not be kind to this monster.
Also, check out our Patreon! We’ve now got at least one patron pledging $5 monthly, which means that SFD will now be producing a monthly news analysis show (which will be something like this short, but with a little more topical focus and a little like a spoken version of the news posts I was trying out for a while) for patrons who’ve signed up for $5 or more.
Conversation with Rob Morris—Iran v Saudi Arabia: Backing the Wrong Horse
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Hey folks, does just about what it says on the box.
We’re having another conversation with Robert Morris of the More Freedom Foundation, a YouTube Channel (and a website) dedicated, at the moment, to exploring and exposing the toxic relationship the West has with Saudi Arabia and its poisonous effect on world Islam.
Rob’s a principled conservative. Like with actual principles, for a change
It’s a pretty great conversation, and if after you’ve heard it you’re interested in helping either Rob or me out with these projects we’ve got going, well, the first, easiest, and almost most helpful thing you can do is just to share these shows. Now that I’ve finally got social buttons up, it’s as easy as clicking to the right of your screen.
If you want to go one step beyond, though, both Rob and I (now) have Patreons. For very, very low monthly contributions, you can tap into what are, for Rob, an already extant, and for me, a soon to be blossoming, set of benefits and bonuses.
If you’re considering it at all, try to hop on soon, because for the first month, anybody who signs up on my page will, by way of Patreon’s referral system, also be helping Rob out.
Hey everybody, so two things I’ve mentioned coming to fruition this week. First, I’m gonna be having another conversation with Rob Morris of the More Freedom Foundation like the one we did a few weeks ago. That is, if I can find a library study room around here where I’m in Tennessee for a family reunion. This’ll go down on Thursday afternoon, and I’ll let you know on Facebook when it’s imminent. Get on while we’re doing it live to give us questions or comments, and leave them here or on the Face beforehand and we’ll get to them on Thursday.
The second thing is that we’ve now got a Patreon page at which you can support SFD! Namely, you can sign up to give me regular and very small amounts of cash every time I put up a show. Everybody wins.
I’m going to be starting up a Patreon, probably sometime next week, and when I do, for the first thirty days, signing up with me will result in Patreon sending bonus cash to Robert Morris, the guy I talked to the other week.
So when I get on that, think about signing up for a buck a show so that I can keep making this podcast and keep eating beans and corn and, sometimes, squash.
Tried and true!
Keeping these brief, enjoy the show, tell your friends.
Hey folks. We’re getting on with it, but research and length got away from me again, and it’ll be another episode before we’re edging up towards Revolution.
For now, though, we’ve got the reign of the Shah. Here’s our boy at his coronation in ’67 with the incredibly British commentary that Pathé apparently monopolized:
The Shah’s greatest eventual antagonist was already pricking the king in the early 1960s, though. We usually see the Ayatollah Khomeini like this:
But he was a seminary student, once:
And, as soon as he grew the beard out, always bore a striking, striking resemblance to Sean Connery:
But while we’re more-or-less used to Khomeini’s glowering brows and (I’m just noticing now) sensual pout, his more liberal counterparts in the fluid Shi’ism of mid-1960s Iran have pretty much never been on our radar screens.
Here we’ve got Mahmud Talaqani, or Taleghani, depending on who’s doing the spelling, the also-Ayatollah who founded the Liberation Movement of Iran along with Mehdi Barzagan, one of Mossadegh’s proteges.
Talaqani was into liberationist, socialist Islam way before it was cool. Talaqani hammered out the early road with the politician Barzagan, but the guy that (Ervand Abrahamian and Michael Axworthy tell me) was the real ideologue of the Iranian Islamic left and a major part of the ’79 Revolution itself was Ali Shariati Mazinani:
We’ll have a whole host of other figures to get to next time, but for now, listen to the show, share it, tell your friends about it.
And last but never least, references.
Abrahamian, Ervand. The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations. New Press, 2013.
Abrahamian, Ervand. A History of Modern Iran. Cambridge, GB: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Abrahamian, Ervand. Iran: Between Two Revolutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 1974-1975 — Iran. 1 January 1975: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol10/001/1975/en/
Axworthy, Michael. Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Baraheni, Reza. “Terror in Iran.” The New York Review of Books, 28 October 1976.
Byrne, Malcolm. “The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup.” The National Security Archive, last modified 29 November 2000, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/.
The Cambridge History of Iran: From Nadir Shah to the Islamic Republic. Edited by Peter Avery, Gavin Hambly and Charles Melville. Vol. VII. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1963.
Fatemi, N. S. 1985. “The Anglo Persian Agreement of 1919.” Encyclopaedia Iranica Vol II: 59.
Katouzian, Homa. The Political Economy of Modern Iran: Despotism and Pseudo-Modernism, 1926-1979. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1981.
Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Wiley, 2003.
Roosevelt, Kermit. Countercoup: The Struggle for Control of Iran. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Rothschild, Emily. “The Boom in the Death Business.” The New York Review of Books, 2 October, 1975.
Steel, Ronald. “Impossible Dreams.” The New York Review of Books, 12 September 1968.
