Khomeini Taps Into This Reservoir of Myth and Symbolism and Memory and All These Sorts of Things

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In 1964, Khomeini famously compares the Shah to the figure of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid. He's arrested after this speech, and then there are huge protests in Rome, but other cities sort of outraged at this. And senior clerics step in to recognize him actually as a source of emulation. That itself has been enshrined as kind of a key watershed in the islamous historiography.

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. If you love The Dig, support the podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Check out our newsletter and archives at thedigradio.com