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Radio War Nerd EP #549 — Iran, pt. 1: From Cyrus to The Shah, feat. Mohsen Milani (Patreon)

Published:
2025-09-16 01:37:01
Imported:
2025-09
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Guest: Mohsen MilaniRecorded: September 15, 2025

We talk to Iran scholar Mohsen Milani about his book Iran's Rise and Rivalry with the US in the Middle East. In part 1 of our 2-part interview, we begin at the beginning with the Achaemenid Empire, and take it up through Iran's 1979 Revolution and the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Buy Mohsen's new book Iran's Rise and Rivalry with the US in the Middle East. Follow Mohsen on Twitter.

Total time: 1:21:57Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

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YES

GC

Absolutely stoked for this

Jane Allred

The university Robinson went to for a semester was Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Logan's not a huge city, and USU built its reputation as an agricultural college, but at least back in my time (Well over decade ago), it was also one option for utah high schoolers who don't necessarily want to go to BYU. i'm sure there's some counter-culture there, but i imagine its somewhere comperable to where I grew up (Utah Valley), where Salt Lake is close enough to largely overshadow it. I get a sick pleasure that more people get to experience the dweebishness of our governor. We call him Governor Caillou. He initially made a brand out of himself by being anti-MAGA, and Atlantic type liberals love to fawn over him, but he caved to Trump pretty quickly once it was clear he was making a comeback. He's also a hobbyist alfalfa farmer, which is the major crop sucking up water from the great salt lakes supply, and his response to the dying lake was to sell out utah's water to private banks, tell Utahns to pray for rain, and call it solved.

GoyBulletStopper

Best Utah ex Mormon is definitely Jimmy Falun Gong, it sucks he stopped doing his show it was the best podcast id ever heard. I still go back and listen to it

a clash of purple

Well, if Utah becomes an uninhabitable desert, maybe you can become the Fremen? I don't know much about wildlife in Utah, but probably there's a species that can be your equivalent of the sandworm.

Jane Allred

The obvious candidate is the brineshrimp, there's a classic short film from SLC about a giant brineshrimp attacking the mormon temple. But we could perhaps betray the memory of our ancestors and the miracle of the gulls and side with the mormon cricket.

electradescending

I lived in Utah in the late '90s, which I had to ask myself "wtf, what is UVU? Then I found it was the old Utah Valley State College, But yeah it was a third choice school for non-mormons if you couldn't get in to Utah State , U of U or Weber State, it's a upjumped commuter college. I doubt there is much "counter-culture" going on there.

Benjamin Glover

"good" students dropping out of university in the early 2020s is not a surprise. I've heard more than one account of people ditching university because the campus covid protocols (which were a joke on their own) meant kids were spending obscene amounts of money to do... well, nothing at all except sit in dorms waiting for terrible zoom lessons and no socializing whatsoever (i.e. almost the complete opposite of what we think is a typical student experience).

Ander Pierce

Lol I have been subscribed whenever my cashflows permit since your episodes were in the double digits. If Weiss gets appointed as czar of Patreon I'll happily follow you to your next platform. Anecdotally, two coworkers who have never called out sick each took a day off to mourn. One is an old greek lady who hates immigrants (ironically) and wears a white lives matter pin, the other is the store manager.

T

I-ran straight to the comments to tell you how excited I am for this series. *dead silence* thanks folks, I’ll be here all week. Tip the wait staff!

teh_drewski

Whatever else the Kirk shooter turns out to be, he's also a massive internet edgelord. The graffiti adorning his ammunition is chan culture memes, video game references, and streaming in-jokes. He is probably the first brainrot assassin. I would caution reading too much into anything that are claimed as his motivations, given he'll probably claim to have done it for the lulz. Absolutely fantastic interview and I can't wait for part 2.

Fivey

I appreciate the subtly pointed question from John at around the 37 minute mark, about why average Iranians weren't so big on the Shah's claims to continuity with ancient Persian empires, which I imagine was aimed at deflating this guy's kinda annoying nationalism.

Robert Geroux

Hi Mark and John. I just started the 15 Sept show, and I must confess that I was out front and skeptical about Tyler R having *anything* to do with trans/LGBT issues. I thought he was simply one of the Fuentes groypers. I do believe that the nihilist/chaotic/O9A attacks are in fact a form of fascism and not "apolitical," but he doesn't seem to fit that description; there's a new Ken Klippenstein substack on his motive which in fact seems to confirm the discussion that opened this episode of your show. Here's the link: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-leaked-messages-from-charlie

Robert Geroux

Ken uses the term NVE (Nihilist Violent Extremist); this is the first time I've heard this. Again, NVE is (in my analysis) just a new iteration of fascism. For what it's worth, TR doesn't seem to be NVE.

Sean Enright

Kindle edition 99 cents right now. Would be interested if Mr Milani still gets the same take.

Joe S.

I think that term is FBI lingo. He had another report on that a while back.

Marit

The book to read right now is Simulacra And Simulation

Aidan Coffey

As a labor organizer who spend some time in SLC I can testify their lefty sub cultures are pretty hardcore. Even the liberal types seem made of sterner stuff. From my anecdotal experience the shooter seems typical of a lot of the younger generation of Mormons. Conservative family and whatnot but just doesn't have the same vitriol/hate for LGBTQ that the older generation is expected to have.

Rasha H2G2

Al Khwarizmi's name is the root of the term "algorithm," not algebra. Al Khwarizmi wrote a book entitled Al-Jabr, which was latinized to "algebra."

Sarah S

Bari Weiss and Patreon rumor?

Mark Ames

Saw that, thanks. Ken as always getting the goods.

Christopher Small

A little elaboration seems worthwhile on the causes of the Iranian Revolution. Because the revolution didn't happen IN SPITE OF the economic and cultural developments of the 70s, but very much because of them. While Iran did see a substantial increase in wealth from the oil shock, like with other commodity booms it also had a substantial dislocating affect. A large trade surplus in oil also meant appreciating the currency and raising production prices for everything else, crowding out domestic industries who lost out to cheaper foreign imports. Exacerbating this, the Pahlavi dynasty also used their oil windfall to support set piece economic champions in heavy industries, automobile manufacturing, etc, and naturally the largesse for this went to the politically well connected. As Misagh Parsa lays out in The Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution, all this put tremendous pressure on the bazaari’s and craftsman of the traditional middle class, who saw the well connected urban elite prospering at their expense. Moreover, all this had a cultural dimension. Part of this, of course, was traditional and anti-imperialist resentment towards western influences. But it was more than that. The Iranian nationalism of the Pahlavi dynasty had a certain europhile character to it. As descendants of steppe Aryans, Iranians were often framed as culturally and racially closer to Europeans, while Arab influences, which could include Islam, were denigrated. So all those foreign luxuries and Neo-Persian exhibitions had a rather insidious subtext to those outside the elite bubble. And the ensuing backlash, again, came disproportionately from that traditional middle class. All of this has carried over into Iran today. You can understand most of Iran’s politics in terms of the regime's push and pull between cooperating with the cosmopolitan urban elite, who are still needed to staff the civil service, and their periodic attempts to cultivate replacements from the middle class through the IRGC and other post revolutionary organs of state.

JoR

Thanks for the insight. I bet you thought you would never give this anecdotal perspective on the show for anything this major, huh? Haha

JoR

I didn’t listen yet but I’m glad John constantly has this perspective because it’s 100% correct. I feel like it’s a given that the average Iranian, unless they’re hyper educated and also just naturally contrarian, that they wouldn’t want to larp as ancient Iranians. This is solely going off stuff like garbage YouTube comments lol but there’s always this inclination that “70s Iran was soooo much better”. I can understand the sentiment, but what cultural force is gonna win out? The shah and an Iranian nationalism from 2500 freaking years ago? Or Shia Islam which has been the cultural backbone for like 1000 years lol

teh_drewski

It's a great get by Ken but the nature of Discord is that you can show each server the face you want - Tyler not talking like a groyper on his school mates server doesn't *necessarily* mean anything more than that he's not stupid enough to not context shift.

aqueous_steve

I agree, though the trade off is that in the context of what hes talking about which is basically 100 years of meddling by western powers, I can’t really begrudge anyone trying to find points of pride in their society.

JJ

The Shah from 1945-53 was still the commander in chief of the Iranian military and he leveraged that for all it was worth as a base of power from which to ultimately reclaim autocratic powers. He would personally scrutinize the officer promotions for middle officers and up for loyalty to the monarchy. He didn’t have a separate political army like the Pasdaran because the officer corps of the regular military was supposed to play that role.

Doug Cartel

Iran has been conquered so many times that it's often referred to as 'the Poland of the middle easy' by war nerds (well, one of them anyways) Also I found an old ass military thriller called 'the crash of '79' (published 1976) where the Shah invades Saudi Arabia Pretty funny premise in retrospect

Mark Ames

Got the year right, just not the crisis

William

OK, I am a fan of Cyrus, but are we really calling him the great now

Avtomatt

Society of the Spectacle is another book relevant for our time.

Michael S. Judge

Algebra, from al-jabr, "bone-setting"! You move around the variables and numbers till the bones all fit together.

Michael S. Judge

John, you might be interested to know that Firdusi, or Ferdowsi, or Firdush in early not-so-great translations, was a major fixation for and huge influence upon Basil Bunting (Ezra Pound had a story about Bunting learning just enough Perso-Arabic script to paint Ferdowsi's name on the lintel of his apartment door, like he lived there). And I'd never heard this till today, but Ferdowsi's giant epic poem SHAHNAMEH (fifty thousand couplets!) divided the chronology of the Persian empire, c. 1000 AD, into exactly the same 3-epoch schematic – the Mythical, the Heroic, and the Historical – as Giambattista Vico did, 725 years later, in his SCIENZA NUOVA, which in turn became the major structural principle employed by a funny little Irishman in a funny big book called FINNEGANS WAKE. It's astonishing, not least in its reliability: whatever Europe has achieved since its "Renaissance" onward, nearly all of it was done first (in whole or in principal) by a Muslim in present-day Iraq or Iran during the Abbasid caliphate, especially ≈800-1000 AD. Whatever they didn't figure out back then remains unfigured-out.

Nora

THANK YOU! Excellent episode with such a knowledgeable expert!

Michael Salmon

What exactly is Iran’s interest in curbing Israel? Israel poses a direct threat to actors that Iran doesn’t necessarily want empowered, like Egypt and other major Arab states. Is it just the fact that the Shi’a of Lebanon are right on the border? Does Iran really fundamentally care about the plight of the Palestinians? I mean at the end of the day they’re a bunch of majority Sunni Arabs whose major organizations have more connections to either the western left or the Muslim brotherhood movement than anything related to Persian Shi’ism

radiowarnerd

Thanks for this! I keep approaching Shahnemeh and falling back, like McClellan. But by god I'll engage it one of these days.