Reza Shah Pahlavi
Former Shah of IranWikipedia
40
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17
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15
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Search complete. 40 mentions across 17 episodes found for "Reza Shah Pahlavi".
Oct 28, 2026
Blake HinckleyHOST
By understanding the past more clearly, we can better understand the present and prepare for history's next rhyme.
Blake HinckleyHOST
During World War II, Mohammad Reza Shah, the son of the original Reza Shah, seeks to curry favor with the United States as a counterweight to the British and Soviets.
Blake HinckleyHOST
But when Germany invades the Soviet Union in June of 1941, support to the Soviet war effort during World War II becomes a priority for the Allies, who view Iran as the, quote, Persian corridor.
Blake HinckleyHOST
a vital route for the delivery of weapons and supplies to the Soviet Union.
Marshall NewmanHOST
resulting in this happening two months later.
Marshall NewmanHOST
Two months later, definitely.
Marshall NewmanHOST
So essentially what we see is a return, even after all this effort from Reza Shah, a return of the country being kind of partitioned between Moscow and London, back to where we were under the Khashoggi's.
Blake HinckleyHOST
And this is what he wanted to avoid.
EnochNARRATOR
For many Europeans, it represented an exotic, distant and decadent East, an image shaped by ancient Greek narratives that portrayed the Persians as a people of excessive luxury, opulent palaces and absolute rulers.
EnochNARRATOR
It was in this context that, already in the 20th century, Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Iranian monarch with strong ambitions for modernization and nationalism, made a deeply symbolic decision.
EnochNARRATOR
In 1935, he sent a diplomatic circular to all foreign embassies requesting that, from that moment on, the country be officially called by its endogenous name, Iran.
EnochNARRATOR
But this decision was not merely a linguistic preference.
UrbanHOST
The name change from Persia to Iran.
UrbanHOST
From Reza Shah Pahlavi.
UrbanHOST
Germany was our age old ally and natural ally.
UrbanHOST
Right here, in 864 AD, the Westphalian monk Christian Druthmar of Aquitania recorded in his Latin treatise, Exposito and Evangelia Mate, quote, there exist people under the sky and regions where no Christian can be found whose name is Gog and Magog and who are Huns.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
He's probably the most successful Arab leader of the 20th century.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
But another key one is Reza Shah.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
another giant man who starts as a peasant soldier, becomes a horse groom, and then ultimately in 1921 seizes power in Persia, renames it Iran, makes himself king or shah, and modernizes Iran, bans the hijab, and is the father of the shah that we know of our era.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
who was overthrown in 1979.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
He's probably the most successful Arab leader of the 20th century.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
But another key one is Reza Shah.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
another giant man who starts as a peasant soldier, becomes a horse groom, and then ultimately in 1921 seizes power in Persia, renames it Iran, makes himself king or shah, and modernizes Iran, bans the hijab, and is the father of the shah that we know of our era.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
who was overthrown in 1979.
EnochNARRATOR
This region carries immense historical weight, and it was around 550 BC that the Greeks began using the term Persia to designate the entire Iranian territory.
EnochNARRATOR
Until 1935, the West continued to refer to Iran as Persia until Shah Reza decided to request the international community to adopt the country's original and native name, Iran.
EnochNARRATOR
Interestingly, Iranians themselves have referred to their land as Iran since at least 1000 BC.
EnochNARRATOR
Although Iran is the mandatory term in official contexts, Persia still resonates culturally, evoking a rich and glorious past that permeates national identity.
Marshall NewmanHOST
So let's talk about...
Marshall NewmanHOST
Our leading character in this episode, he starts off with the name Reza Khan, and he was kind of put on the road, the upward trajectory road, because he was favored by the British.
Marshall NewmanHOST
He was from the northern part of Persia in Azerbaijan.
Marshall NewmanHOST
And like Sharon said, his family had fled from the Caucasus when the Russians took over in the 19th century.
Marshall NewmanHOST
it was the best and most capable military formation within Persia at the time.
Marshall NewmanHOST
So he is with kind of the elite organization here.
Marshall NewmanHOST
Like so many people did in the early part of the 20s, Mussolini, for example, Reza Khan led the Cossacks, led his military formation to march on Tehran in February 1921 and seizes control of the government.
Marshall NewmanHOST
He does not seize control of the government himself immediately.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
A person even minimally acceptable as a political leader can take over the formal post as well, becoming the visible head of the government.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
Nasser in Egypt, Reza Shah, the father of the present Shah of Persia, both accomplished this after a short period of transition, but there can sometimes be racial or religious reasons that bar the strongman from an official position.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
The man who controls the bayonets may be totally unacceptable as a public figure, but he can still rule indirectly by manipulating the official leaders he keeps under control by the ultimate sanction of force.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
This chart you're about to read was one of the more confusing charts that
John FieldhouseGUEST
Um, so yeah, historically you tended to have palace coups, which generally meant that, uh, the military and/or the elected and/or the appointed government of a monarchial state forces a current monarch to abdicate and usually forces their son, sometimes their daughter, to go and take over so that they would have a more compliant or more cooperative, um, figurehead ruler on their behalf.
John FieldhouseGUEST
Um, I mean, recent examples of that, um, think the two big examples that stand out is, number one, the, uh, the Shah, or excuse me, the coup against Mossadegh in Iran in the '50s, um, in which his father, I don't know if his father was removed or the Allies or he was, uh, or Reza Shah was in charge at that point.
John FieldhouseGUEST
But anyways, they wanted to, uh, remove Mossadegh, the, the elected prime minister, um, and they wanted the younger Shah, Reza Shah Pahlavi, to take over and essentially run as an actual executive monarch, an actual monarch that actually is in charge of the government.
John FieldhouseGUEST
Um, and the other big example would probably be the Meiji Restoration when a, um, when a bunch of samurais kidnapped the Emperor of Japan in order to, uh, force the country to modernize.
John FieldhouseGUEST
Um, so those are the two biggest examples.
3 HRS 38 MINS LATER
Pete QuiñonesHOST
Onward.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
In the good old days of gunboats and plumed viceroys, the British oil company in Persia, originally named Anglo-Persia and later Anglo-Iranian, before coming clean as British Petroleum, illustrated very well the phenomenon of a business enterprise forced to intervene in the domestic affairs of the host country under the impellent pressure of local political realities.
Pete QuiñonesHOST
Anglo-Persian received its concession from Shah Mozaffar al-Din of the Qajar dynasty, head of the modestly titled Sublime Government of Iran in 1901, but soon discovered that the Tehran government had very little control over the southwestern and coastal Khuzestan region where the company was actually exploring and later producing oil.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
All of them are here.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
Ataturk and Reza Shah and, of course, the Shah.
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
And then huge figures, you know, Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor, Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated in the last scene of the book on the 28th of February this year by a joint...
Simon Sebag MontefioreGUEST
Israeli-US attack on Iran.
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