Okay, so if I pitched you a screenplay, a story
about a man who starts his life as an orphaned
village boy, literally a stable hand, joins the
military as a teenager with absolutely nothing
to his name, leads a coup, crowns himself king,
then builds a modern nation state from the ashes
of a medieval empire, and then ends his life
in exile while his country is invaded by world
powers. You'd probably tell me to tone it down.
I'd say it's too much. It breaks the suspension
of disbelief. It sounds like a novel. It does.
But that's the thing. That is the reality of
the 20th century in the Middle East. Yeah. History
was moving at warp speed. Yeah. And the figure
we're diving into today, Reza Shah Pahlavi. He's
basically the engine of that speed. Exactly.
We are looking at the founder of the Pahlavi
dynasty, the man who took Persia, a name that
in the West, you know, you think of rugs and
cats and ancient poetry. Right. Very romanticized.
And he just violently rebranded it as Iran. And
this isn't just a biography deep dive. This is
really a case study in forced modernization.
And forced is the key word there, isn't it? Our
mission today is to try and understand how one
man really single handedly dragged a country.
into the modern era we're talking railways universities
a centralized army all the hardware all the hardware
while at the same time ruling with an iron fist
that crushed descent completely alienated the
clergy and you could argue set the stage for
the revolution that would topple his own son
decades later We have a huge stack of source
material to get through today. I mean, we're
talking declassified diplomatic cables, biographies
of his ministers, even eyewitness accounts of
his temper. Oh, yes. And, of course, the historical
records of that chaotic post -WWI era. So we're
going to cover the rise, the reforms, that brutal
clash with the religious establishment, and the
geopolitical tragedy of his fall. And we have
to navigate the contradictions because, I mean,
depending on who you read, he's either the father
of modern Iran, who saved the country from just
falling apart. The great state. Or he's a brutal
oriental despot who looted the nation and completely
trampled on its soul. The sources are very, very
divided. It's a story with beatings and shrines,
secret mummies, international espionage. So let's
get into it. Let's start with the soldier from
Sabadku. Because usually when we talk about Shahs,
you know, we picture palaces and silk. That is
not where Reza starts. Not even remotely. He
was born in 1878 in Lasht, which is a village
in Sabadku County, Mazandaran province. So up
in the north? Exactly. The north of Iran. It's
rugged, mountainous terrain. And his start in
life was, well, it was catastrophic. His father,
Abbas Ali, died when Reza was only eight months
old. Wow. An infant fatherless in a society where
family and tribe are everything for protection.
It's the worst possible start. And his mother,
Nusha Farin, she was in a really desperate situation.
She was actually an immigrant from the Caucasus,
either Georgia or Yerevan, territory that Persia
had lost to Russia. So she had no local family
network to fall back on. None. She was destitute.
She had to flee the mountains and take the infant
Reza to Tehran. And there's this harrowing account
of them crossing a freezing mountain pass where
she literally thought the baby was going to freeze
to death in her arms. That really sets the stakes
for his character, doesn't it? He's a survivor
from day one. He absolutely is. ends up living
with an uncle. But he's not getting a royal education
or anything like that. He's tree smart. And there's
a detail that I think really grounds his whole
rags to riches story. Something about working
for a diplomat. Yes. In 1903, when he was around
25 years old, records suggest he was working
as a guard and basically a domestic servant for
the Dutch consul general. I just want to pause
on that for a second. The man who would later
demand to be addressed as your imperial majesty
and light of the Aryans was once opening doors
and polishing boots for a Dutch diplomat. It
shows the sheer vertical climb he made. He was
completely self -made. And his ticket out of
that life, out of poverty, was the military.
He joined the Persian Cossack Brigade when he
was just 14. OK, so we need to clarify what that
was, because Cossack sounds very Russian. It
was. It was an elite cavalry unit that was modeled
on the Russian Cossacks. And for a long time,
it was actually commanded. by Russian officers,
even though it served the Persian Shah. So it
was basically the only disciplined, effective
fighting force in the whole country. It was the
only one that mattered. Yeah. And unlike the
rest of Qajar society, which was, you know, deeply
nepotistic, your last name got you your job,
the brigade had a real streak of meritocracy.
If you were tough, if you could shoot, you moved
up. And Reza was tough. Oh, he was tough. He
was known for his proficiency with the Maxim
machine gun. He was a machine gunner. And he
rose strictly on merit. Private, gunnery sergeant,
lieutenant, all the way to brigadier general
by 1921. He didn't buy these ranks. He earned
them in the dust and the mud, fighting tribal
bandits and securing roads. But we have to set
the scene for what Persia looked like around
1920. Because if you're imagining a functioning
country, you're just wrong. It was a complete
disaster zone. Disaster might be an understatement.
I mean, post -World War I, Persia was a vacuum.
The central government in Tehran was a fiction.
The Qajar kings were weak, often off vacationing
in Europe, while the country literally fell apart.
And you had the great powers just carving it
up. Exactly. You had the British in the south
effectively controlling the oil fields in the
Persian Gulf. You had the Soviets in the north
occupying Gilan province and actually setting
up a Persian socialist Soviet republic. This
is the great game in action. The country was
just a battlefield for Britain and Russia. It
was on the brink of total disintegration. Bandits
controlled the roads. There was famine, chaos.
And Riz Khan, looking at all this through the
eyes of a nationalist soldier, he realized that
if someone didn't grab the wheel, Persia would
just cease to exist as a sovereign state. It
would be partitioned for good. Which brings us
then to February 1921, the coup. Yes. Looking
at the logistics of this, it wasn't some mass
uprising. It was a surgical military operation.
It was surprisingly small, really. Reza Khan
leads about, what, 3 ,000 to 4 ,000 Cossacks
from Khwazbin. That's about 150 kilometers west
of Tehran. And they just marched on the capital.
And he had a political partner in this, right?
He wasn't alone. He joined forces with a pro
-British journalist named Zia Uldin Tabatabey.
The idea was that Zia would handle the politics
and Reza would provide the muscle. But the actual
taking of the city. There's this incredible detail
about the commander at the gates. Ah, yes. General
Mahmoud Mir Jalali. He was the artillery commander
in charge of defending Tehran. His orders were
to fire on Reza's approaching troops. Which could
have ended the coup right there. Absolutely.
A few rounds of heavy artillery into those columns
and it's over. But he didn't fire. He just disobeyed
orders. He disobeyed. He opened the gates. And
then in this moment of just pure theater, he
fired his cannons. But he aimed them over the
Golestan Palace. He fired blanks or warning shots
just to make noise. And a psychological warfare.
Completely. He wanted the young king, Ahmad Shah
Kajar, to hear the boom and think, it's over.
The army is here. And it worked. It worked perfectly.
The king was terrified and surrendered immediately.
The coup was practically bloodless. But this
brings us to the British question, because you
can't talk about 1921 without talking about General
Edmund the Tiny Ironside. Right. The British
commander in the region. Yeah. There's always
this narrative that Reza Shah was basically a
British puppet because Ironside gave him the
green light. It's more nuanced than that. Ironside
definitely identified Reza Khan as the most capable,
the most ruthless officer in the brigade. He
wrote in his diaries that he believed a strong
military dictator was the only thing that could
save the country. And crucially, save British
interests by stopping the Bolsheviks from spreading
south. That was the main goal. Stop the Soviets.
The British provided ammunition. They helped
with pay for the troops. So they facilitated
it, yes. But calling him a puppet misses the
point. I think so. It ignores his own agency.
He used the British to get to Tehran, but his
ultimate goal was Iranian sovereignty. He wanted
the British out just as much as he wanted the
Russians out. He was a nationalist who took help
where he could get it. So he takes power. He
becomes the commander -in -chief, or Sardar Saipa,
then minister of war. He's consolidating. And
this is where he shows he's not just a grunt
with a machine gun. He outmaneuvers Zia, the
politician, within months. Oh, completely. Zia
thought Reza would be his silent enforcer, his
muscle. Right. You stay in the barracks, I'll
run the government. And instead, Reza forced
Zia into exile and took the prime ministership
for himself by 1923. He was systematically gathering
all the livers of power into his own hands. And
this is the plot twist that I think surprises
most people. Reza Khan didn't initially want
to be a king. He actually wanted to be a president.
This is one of the great what -ifs of history,
isn't it? He was looking right next door at Turkey.
He saw Mustafa Kemal Ataturk dismantling the
Ottoman Empire and building a modern secular
republic. And he admired Ataturk immensely. He
saw that as the model. He wanted to do the same
thing, create a republic of Iran. So what happened?
Why do we get a Pahlavi dynasty instead of a
republic of Iran in 1925? Who stopped it? Well,
the irony here is just incredible. The two main
forces that stopped the republic were the British.
Who preferred the stability of monarchies? Sure.
The clergy, the Shia religious establishment.
Wait, the mullahs wanted a king? They were absolutely
terrified of the word republic. They saw what
Ataturk was doing in Turkey, abolishing the caliphate,
secularizing the law, and they equated republic
with... They thought a shah would be traditional,
a protector of the faith. They thought a king
was a known quantity. They could work with a
king. So they lobbied hard against a republic.
and for Reza to take the throne. Talk about a
monumental miscalculation. They practically begged
him to put on the crown, thinking he'd be this
traditionalist. And of course, he turned out
to be the most secularizing anti -clerical ruler
in the country's history. Wow. So in 1925, the
Majlis, the parliament, officially deposes the
Qajar dynasty and votes Reza Khan as the new
Shah. And he chooses the name Pahlavi, which
is an ancient Persian language, to link himself
and his new dynasty to the pre -Islamic, you
know, imperial glory of Persia. So 1925, the
coronation, he sits on the peacock throne. Now
we enter the era of his rule. And historians
usually split this into two very distinct periods,
right? Yes, the two periods. The first half.
From about 1925 to 1933 is seen as the period
of the great cabinet. He surrounded himself with
these brilliant Western educated reformers. These
weren't yes men. Not at all. Men like Abdul Hussain
Tamirtash, his court minister, and Ali Akbar
Davar, who was the architect of the entire modern
judicial system. They were the brains. They drafted
the laws, designed the institutions, formulated
the plans. It was, if you can imagine, a kind
of collaborative dictatorship. But then something
changes. The second half, from 1933 to 1941,
gets much darker. It does. That's when the paranoia
really sets in. He starts seeing plots everywhere.
He becomes convinced his ministers are conspiring
against him with foreign powers. And what happens
to those brilliant men like Timurtaş and Devar?
Timurtaş dies in prison, almost certainly murdered
on the Shah's orders. Devar, fearing the Shah's
wrath and seeing what happened to his friend,
commits suicide. So he ends up ruling alone.
Completely alone, trusting no one, surrounded
by terrified sycophants who would never dare
to question him. It becomes a one -man show.
But throughout both of these periods, the drive
for modernization is just relentless. Let's talk
infrastructure. The Trans -Iranian Railway. This
is a project that European engineers had said
was basically impossible. It was a monumental
engineering feat. We're talking 3 ,392 kilometers.
Yeah. They had to cross the Alborz Mountains
in the north and the Zagros Mountains in the
south. I mean, hundreds of tunnels and bridges
through some of the most difficult terrain on
Earth. Connecting the Caspian Sea all the way
down to the Persian Gulf. Right. But the funding
of it is the real story. Reza Shah had one rule.
No foreign loans. He'd seen how the Qajars sold
off the country's assets to pay their debts to
Europe. So how do you pay for the most expensive
project in the country's history without a loan?
You squeeze your own population. He instituted
a massive new tax on two things, sugar and tea.
The two things every single Iranian, no matter
how poor, consumes all day, every day. Exactly.
It was a brutally regressive tax. It hit the
peasantry the hardest. He literally built the
railway on the caffeine and sugar habits of the
poor. It's brutal economics, but it worked. It
worked. The railway was fully paid for by domestic
revenue, which was unprecedented. No foreign
debt. Critics, though, always pointed out the
route. It went north -south. Yes, and that was
a huge point of contention. A commercial railway,
logically, should have gone east -west, you know,
to connect Iran to Turkey and India for trade.
But the north -south route... It looks suspiciously
like a military supply line for the British.
A way to get troops and material from the ports
in the Gulf up to the Soviet border. But Reza
Shah defended it. He defended it as a tool for
internal unity. He could now move the army rapidly
from Tehran to the rebellious tribes in the south
or the north. For him, it was always about control.
And alongside the hardware, he's updating the
country's software, the financial system. Bank
Meli, the National Bank of Iran. This is huge.
Before this, the Imperial Bank of Persia, which
is a British institution. Has British Bank printed
Iran's money? Yes. Can you imagine the national
humiliation of having a foreign private bank
controlling your currency? Reza Shah broke that
monopoly, created a central bank and assorted
financial sovereignty for the first time. And
then education, the University of Tehran. The
first modern secular university in the country's
history. He wanted to create a new class of technocrats,
engineers, doctors, lawyers who... didn't go
through the religious madrasas. He wanted them
loyal to the state, not the clergy. Which brings
us to 1935 and this decision that seems to have
confused the entire world at the time. He asks
everyone to stop calling the country Persia.
The name change, yes. So in the West, the country
was always known as Persia. But internally, among
the people themselves, they had always called
their land Iran. And Persia is specific, isn't
it? It's very specific. It refers to the farthest
province, the homeland of the ethnic Persians.
But the country is a mosaic of different peoples.
Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, Lurs, Arabs. So Iran
was a more inclusive term. That was the idea.
Iran means land of the Aryans. He wanted a name
that unified all these disparate tribes under
one ancient pre -Islamic identity. It was a nation
-building exercise. We are not just Persians
or Kurds. We are all Iranians. But this nation
building had a very, very sharp edge. You can't
modernize a deeply traditional religious society
overnight without breaking some bones. And this
is where we get to what you could call his war
on tradition. This is really the defining conflict
of his entire reign. Reza Shah believed, to his
core, that the clergy were the anchor holding
the ship of state back. He didn't just want to
separate church and state. He wanted to completely
subjugate the church to the state. So he starts
chipping away at their power piece by piece.
He bans private religious schools. He nationalizes
the religious endowments. These were vast tracts
of land owned by shrines and mosques that generated
huge income for the mullahs. So he's taking away
their money. He seizes it and says, we're using
this to fund state schools and hospitals. He
hits them directly in the wallet. And then he
hits them in the courtroom. Devar's judicial
reforms. They replace Sharia law with the civil
code modeled on the French and Swiss systems.
Suddenly, the mullahs aren't the judges anymore.
They lose their social authority, their role
as arbiters of daily life. But for the average
person, the most shocking change was visual.
It was the dress codes. The uniformity of dress
law. He forced men to abandon their traditional
tribal robes and turbans and wear Western -style
suits and the Pahlavi hat, a cylindrical brimmed
hat. Which seems like a minor thing to us now,
but for a devout Muslim man, a brim is a serious
problem. It is. You can't touch your forehead
to the ground during prayer if you're wearing
a brimmed hat. Many people saw it as a deliberate,
calculated attack on their ability to practice
their faith. And then the real earthquake, the
unveiling. Kashf -e Hijab, 1936. He banned the
shador and all forms of headscarves for women.
And it wasn't a choice. It was a government mandate.
This is one of the most controversial policies
in modern Iranian history. Because it's so contradictory.
It is. On one hand, it forcibly liberated women
from seclusion. They could go to university.
They could enter the workforce. For a certain
class of urban, Western -oriented women, this
was freedom. But for the vast majority of traditional
women. It was a profound trauma. Police were
ordered to patrol the streets and physically
rip veils off of women. There are countless stories
of women who didn't leave their homes for years,
literally years, because they couldn't bear the
shame and humiliation of going out uncovered.
It created this massive psychological rift between
the state and the people. There is one specific
incident that just perfectly. captures the violence
of this conflict the incident at the shrine in
kum we have to walk through this because it plays
out like a scene from a movie it was march 1928
during the nowruz the new year holidays reza
shah's wife the queen went on a pilgrimage to
the fatima masuma shrine in kum is one of the
holiest sites in shia islam okay she was in a
special gallery and apparently her veil slipped
or she wasn't covered properly according to the
very strict standards the clerics there and a
cleric actually calls her out on it in public
A preacher shouted at her from the pulpit, incited
the crowd, criticized her for exposing her face.
The queen was humiliated and terrified. Word
got back to Tehran very, very quickly. Now, most
kings would send a letter or have the guy arrested
later, quietly. Not Reza Shah. He got into his
car with a detachment of his guard. He drove
to Qom himself. He marched into the shrine. And
this is critical. He didn't take his boots off.
Which is a massive desecration of a holy space.
It's a calculated insult. He walked in with his
military boots and his riding crop. And he finds
the cleric. He found the cleric who insulted
the queen, and he personally beat him. He whipped
him and kicked him in front of all the other
pilgrims. He had him dragged out and arrested.
The image of the Shah in military boots beating
a mullah inside a holy shrine, that must have
shattered every remaining taboo. It signaled
that there was no sanctuary. The Shah was the
supreme power. Even God's house was not off limits
to his authority. But that violence only escalated,
didn't it? We have to mention the Goharshad Mosque
Rebellion in 1935. This was the popular backlash
to the dress codes. In Mashhad, another holy
city, huge crowds gathered in the Goharshad Mosque
to protest the Pahlavi Hat and government corruption.
They locked themselves in, thinking the Shah
wouldn't dare attack such a sacred site. They
were wrong. They were tragically wrong. He sent
in the army. Troops broke down the doors and
opened fire with machine guns on the protesters
inside the shrine. A massacre. A massacre. The
official death toll was in the dozens, but eyewitnesses
said it was hundreds. The bodies were loaded
onto trucks at night and buried in secret mass
graves. It proved, beyond any doubt, that this
modernization would be implemented at the barrel
of a gun. So he has the clergy against him. He
has many of the tribes against him because he
disarmed them and crushed their power. But he
believes he's building a strong, independent
state that can finally stand up to the world
powers. Which brings us to his foreign policy.
Reza Shah spent his entire career trying to balance
the two great predators, the British and the
Russians. He hated them both. In 1932, he famously
canceled the Darcy oil concession. He literally
threw the document into a fireplace during a
cabinet meeting. A bit of theater. A lot of theater.
He wanted to demand a better deal from the British.
He got a slight increase in royalties from about
16 percent to 20 or 21 percent. But he realized
he couldn't fight them alone. He needed a friend.
He needed a third power. And in the 1930s, the
rising power that had no colonial history in
Iran that seemed like a viable alternative was
Germany. This is where it gets really dark. The
Nazi connection. It wasn't just about trade,
although Germany did become Iran's biggest trading
partner by the late 30s. It was it was an ideological
seduction. The Nazis launched a massive propaganda
campaign targeting Iranians. Playing up the Aryan
myth. Exactly. The shared Aryan heritage. They
sent that library, didn't they? They did. Hitler
sent a library of 7 ,500 books to Tehran, many
of them focused on eugenics and racial theory,
all designed to prove that Iranians and Germans
were, you know, long -lost racial cousins. And
they made it official. The Nuremberg Laws. which
stripped rights from non -Aryans, officially
exempted Iranians. They were declared pure -blooded
Aryans. Can you imagine the psychological impact
of that? You've been treated like dirt by the
British and Russians for a century, called natives.
And then the most powerful military machine in
Europe tells you, actually, you are our equals.
You are part of the master race. It was a massive
ego boost. And I think it blinded Reza Shah to
the reality of the situation. He filled his ministries
with German advisors. He thought he was being
clever. playing the British against the Germans.
But then June 1941 happened, Hitler invades the
Soviet Union, and suddenly the entire geopolitical
map just flips upside down. Overnight, his two
mortal enemies, Britain and the Soviet Union,
become allies against Hitler. And they look at
the map and they realize they have a huge problem.
How do the British and Americans get supplies
to the Soviets to keep them in the war? The Arctic
route. is too dangerous. They're old bayou boats.
Yeah. So the only safe, reliable land route is
through Iran. Using his railway. Using his brand
new trans -Iranian railway. It became the bridge
of victory. They needed that railway. And they
were terrified of the thousands of German nationals
working in Tehran. They issued an ultimatum.
Kick out the Germans. And Reza Shah. He stalled.
He declared neutrality. He tried to play for
time. He completely miscalculated. He thought
the Germans might still win the war or that the
British and Soviets were bluffing. August 25th,
1941. They were not bluffing. A coordinated surprise
invasion. The Soviets crossed the border from
the north. The British invaded from the south
and the west. And this is the moment of truth
for Reza Shah's entire life's work. He had spent
20 years in the nation's treasure building a
modern army. He bought tanks, planes, artillery.
This was supposed to be the force. that defended
Iran's sovereignty. And it collapsed in about
three days. Three days, the whole thing. A total
humiliating collapse. The generals were either
incompetent or compromised. The conscripted soldiers
had no morale. I mean, why would they die for
a Shah who taxed their tea and beat their mullahs?
They deserted en masse. There's a scene from
the palace during the invasion that's just heartbreaking
and terrifying. The Cain incident. This is the
end. Reza Shah has summoned his commanders. He's
found out that the army has just dissolved and
that they're preparing to surrender Tehran without
a fight. He's meeting with General Nakhchavan,
his minister of war. The man responsible for
the defense of the nation. And Reza Shah just
loses control. He starts screaming. He physically
attacks the general. He beats him with his heavy
walking cane over and over again. And he rips
the epaulets off his uniform with his own hands.
He ordered him to be dragged away and court -martialed
for treason. It's the rage of a man watching
his entire legacy turn to dust in front of his
eyes. He realized in that moment that the modern
army was a facade. It looked good on parade.
But it had no soul, no will to fight. So the
Allies are marching on Tehran. The British and
Soviets send a final message. Abdicate or we
will abolish the monarchy entirely and occupy
the country. They wanted him gone. He was too
close to the Germans, too stubborn, too unpredictable.
And Reza Shah realized that if he stayed, the
Pahlavi dynasty would end with him after just
16 years. So to save the throne for his son,
Muhammad Reza. He agreed to step down. On September
16th, 1941, he signs the abdication papers. And
then comes the final humiliation of exile. The
British took him into custody. They didn't even
let him choose where he would go. They put him
on a ship. He thought he was going to India.
Then, mid -journey, they told him, no, you're
going to Mauritius. A tiny island in the middle
of the Indian Ocean. Then they moved him to Durban
in South Africa. Then to Johannesburg. He spent
his final years as a broken man, staring at the
ocean thousands of miles from the mountains of
Savadku where he was born. He died in Johannesburg
in 1944. But the controversies didn't die with
him. We have to talk about the wealth, because
this is a man who started as a private with nothing.
When he left Iran, what did he have? He was,
by all accounts, the richest man in Iran. He
had personally acquired over 3 million acres
of prime agricultural land. He had millions of
pounds sterling in foreign bank accounts. How
does one acquire 3 million acres? Well, often
through forced sales and confiscations. If he
liked a piece of property, the owner would receive
an offer they couldn't possibly refuse. Literally.
So critics call it a massive land grab. They
call it looting the nation. His defenders say
he was consolidating the land to develop modern,
large -scale agriculture, but the optics, at
the very least, were terrible. And his story
has one final, truly bizarre chapter. The Wandering
Body. It's like a ghost story. It really is.
His body was embalmed in Egypt, then brought
back to Iran years after his death and buried
in this grand, towering mausoleum near Tehran.
It became a site of pilgrimage for royalists.
Then comes 1979, the Islamic Revolution, and
the new regime hates everything Reza Shah stood
for. Ayatollah Qalqali, the infamous hanging
judge, led a mob to the mausoleum. They used
jackhammers and dynamite. They completely leveled
the structure. They wanted to erase him from
the earth. And for decades, everyone just assumed
the body had been destroyed or lost in the rubble.
Until 2018. Until 2018. Construction workers
were digging at the site of the former mausoleum,
expanding a nearby shrine. An excavator hit something
hard. They uncovered a concrete sarcophagus.
And inside was a mummified body, remarkably well
preserved. No. Wearing the same military coat
and boots that Reza Shah was buried in. He literally
resurfaced from the grave. He did. And it happened
at this moment when many Iranians were frustrated
with the economic situation and the strict religious
rules. Suddenly, you had video circulating on
social media of crowds chanting, Reza Shah, bless
your soul. The man who beat the clerics was being
cheered 40 years after the clerics took over.
It just shows you that history is never dead.
It's not even past. His legacy is still the central
debate in Iranian identity. So let's try to synthesize
this. If we look at the final ledger of his life,
what do we see? On one side, you absolutely have
the state builder. Before him, Iran was a geographical
expression. It was a failed state. He built the
roads, the schools, the army, the factories.
He forged the modern nation state of Iran. He
preserved its territorial integrity when it very
easily could have been sliced up and absorbed
by its neighbors. And on the other side of the
ledger, you have the authoritarian, the despot.
He destroyed political freedom. He crushed the
nascent democracy that was forming in the Magsleys.
And he alienated the religious masses so deeply
that they eventually rose up in a massive revolution
and overthrew his son. He proved that you can
build factories, but if you don't build trust
with your people, the foundation is weak. It's
the classic tragedy of modernization from above,
isn't it? He treated the country like a barracks.
He gave orders and he expected the nation to
just march in lockstep. But a country isn't a
regiment. Exactly. And I think that's the provocative
thought we need to leave you with. Just look
at the outcome. He tried to force secularism
on Iran by ripping veils off of women. And 40
years later, the backlash to his policies. created
a state that forces veils onto women. It's a
pendulum that swung to the other extreme. It
raises that fundamental question. Can you force
a civilization to change its core identity overnight?
Or does that intense pressure just create an
even bigger explosion down the line? That is
the question. For everyone listening, I highly
recommend you look up the photos of the Trans
-Iranian railway construction. It's just epic.
And look up the photos from the unveiling. You
can see the fear and the defiance in the faces
of the people. The visual history tells the story
better than we ever could. Thanks for joining
us on this deep dive into the soldier from Savadku.
What a wild ride. We'll see you on the next one.