Oil had for a long time been at the center of Iranian politics. High oil prices were essential to funding the white revolution. By 1960, the Shah's Iran was a founding member of OPEC. The money that's coming in from increased oil revenues, there's just enormous amount of evidence of widespread and massive corruption.
Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the third episode in our four-part series. We pick up in the wake of the US-British 1953 coup against Mossadegh, assess the Shah's repression and attempts to manufacture consent through passive revolution, and then close by laying out the 1979 Islamic Revolution in all of its wild complexity.
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