The Shah was trying to defang the possibility of a red revolution, again, a communist revolution. Escandar: He is feeling very pressured to show himself as an enlightened modern monarch. And what he starts calling the great civilization is a utopian sort of imperial nationalist, modernist, imaginary.
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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