A History of Iran
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2026
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How does Iran's history underpin today's unrest? Dan traces more than 2,500 years of Iran's story — from the first Persian empires through conquest, dynasties, and revolution — to understand how power, identity, and sovereignty have shaped the country. He's joined by Ali Ansari, Professor of Iranian History at the University of St Andrews, to explore key turning points over the centuries from the Arab conquest to the 1953 overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and the 1979 Revolution.
A version of this podcast was first released back in 2019.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. Right now, as I'm recording this, Iran is once again at the |
| 0:11.1 | centre of global attention. For more than a month, protests have spread across the country from major |
| 0:18.3 | cities to smaller towns and communities. Initially, these protests |
| 0:23.5 | seem to have been provoked by economic hardship. So Iran's currencies collapsed in value, food |
| 0:28.4 | prices have surged. And for many families, daily life has become unaffordable. But as so often |
| 0:34.5 | protests that began about prices have turned into something broader and more strategic, |
| 0:39.6 | they are openly challenging the extremist, the authoritarian political system in Tehran. |
| 0:45.9 | That government's response has been severe, as you might expect, and authorities have turned off the internet. |
| 0:51.4 | It's very difficult, therefore, for Iranians to communicate, to organise with one another or communicate with the outside world. The government's security |
| 0:57.1 | forces have attacked protesters in the streets. Human rights groups have reported mass arrests |
| 1:03.2 | and mass casualty events. It's believed now that thousands of protesters have been killed, |
| 1:10.4 | but the exact figures remain hard to |
| 1:11.9 | confirm. Supreme Leader Harmony has backed the crackdown, and despite the scale of the unrest, |
| 1:18.7 | it does look for the moment like the Iranian state is still in control. In this podcast, |
| 1:24.2 | folks, we're going to try and understand why Iran is experiencing another |
| 1:28.7 | moment of convulsion. We've seen these protests and these crackdowns so many times over |
| 1:35.3 | the last four decades. We're going to ask on this podcast, what are the causes of this instability, |
| 1:41.5 | of this protest? And we're going to go back into the country's history. |
| 1:45.0 | Over the last century, Iran's political life really has been shaped by this repeated |
| 1:49.8 | struggle over sovereignty and dignity and basically who's in charge, the nature of Iran, |
| 1:54.4 | and who gets to make the decisions there. |
| 1:56.6 | We're going to talk about a key turning point in 1953, |
... |
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