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Notes -
Thank you, that was a fascinating listen, and I ended up doing some more reading.
It's always interesting to me to hear how regimes that fell to revolution just blatantly fucked up. Of course, you rarely hear much about failed revolutions; it seems it's very much the incumbent's game to lose. If the Shah were a tenth the tyrant the revolutionaries believed he was -- a hundredth the tyrants they would prove to be -- he'd have shut it down easily. Khomeini? He was arrested for sedition twice... And, both times, they just let him go. He set up in Iraq and fomented revolution from exile. Saddam Hussein reportedly offered to kill the guy as a favor, and the Shah refused!
Lenin was known to the Tsar's security forces for years and years before the Russian Revolution, and several other major figures (including Trotsky) had previously been arrested one or more times. It's odd to think of these oppressive regimes -- and they were that, to at least some extent -- as being far too merciful, but you have to wonder how different the world would look if they just executed these would-be revolutionaries, people who would go on to cause unbelievable amounts of suffering and death. Of course, it's not obvious before the revolution which would-be revolutionaries are worth worrying about. Still, at least in the Russian case, they couldn't possibly have done more damage by cracking down on the communists than the communists would go on to do. The Bolsheviks certainly didn't make that mistake: they ended the Tsar's bloodline and executed his doctor too for some reason. The Shah managed to flee before capture, but not for lack of trying on the revolutionaries' part. (The hostage crisis was instigated in response to his brief visit to America for cancer treatment.)
It's darkly hilarious to hear about the revolutionaries' wailing and gnashing of teeth over the protestors the Shah's regime killed... totaling maybe a few hundred. The entire death toll on the revolutionary side was less than 3k; that is, less than a tenth the number of protestors the Islamic Republic gunned down in the street just this year. (Er, probably? There's a very large range in reported numbers here -- no clue how all these organizations could reach such different conclusions; aren't they all working from the same evidence? But even by their own admission it was more than 3k.)
Also interesting to note a couple other absurdities: Yes, the Iranians were already utterly obsessed with Israel, to the point that they invented a story that the Shah was using Israeli troops against them -- total fiction. Another striking story: there was an Islamist terror attack on a movie theater, a symbol of Westernization. They barred the doors and burned the place down, killing hundreds. The revolutionaries didn't blink: they immediately declared it a false flag and used it to further spur the revolution. Iran still pretends that's what happened. Who is it again "who cries out in pain even as he strikes you?"
For fairness's sake, I recall a couple people blaming the recent US bombing of the Iranian girl's school on Iran. (Then again, I recall more people blaming it on Israel.) But so far as I know not even the Trump admin, famously uninterested in the truth, ever actually pushed that claim. It is a uniquely infuriating sort of lie; mere blood libel merely hurts you, it doesn't also exonerate your enemies of their crimes.
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