Bonus Sample: Oil, Power, and Theocracy

Conspirituality

Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

Social Sciences, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.0 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2026

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1953 the CIA and MI6 participated in a coup d’etat in Iran. That true sentence (and what usually follows) can create an oversimplified distortion of history—and present. But Iran is in the news again with the biggest protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution bringing millions to the streets. The regime unsurprisingly cracked down hard: at least 2,700 protesters have been killed and 18,000 arrested. Though the initial impetus was economic, these are the latest in a wave of growing uprisings in Iran against the far-right theocratic authoritarian government—especially its treatment of women. How did we get here? What happened in 1953? Isn’t this all just about oil anyway? Was the 1979 revolution really about religion? Weren’t there Communists involved? Does all the turmoil in this region trace back to Western colonial imperialism? Julian explores the tangled threads of oil, empire, and religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:07.3	In 1953, the CIA and Britain's MI6 participated in a coup in Iran.
1:12.1	That true sentence and what usually follows in most accounts of those events can create an oversimplified and distorted picture of the history, though, and how it leads us to the present
1:17.0	situation. We'll unpack why soon, but Iran is in the news again, with the biggest protest
1:22.2	since the 1979 revolution bringing millions to the streets over the last two to three weeks.
1:31.0	There have been large protests several times in the last decade or so,
1:35.3	centered most recently on the woman life freedom movement in the wake of the killing of Masa Jina Amini in the custody of morality police,
1:38.9	after having been arrested for having hair showing from under her headscarf in 2022.
1:44.3	The current wave started as unrest over economic hardship and currency devaluation and then
1:49.0	grew into a mass uprising calling for an end to the regime, death to the dictator.
1:54.4	And it seems even the return of the overthrown monarchy with growing popular support for
2:00.1	the son of former autocratic Shah Reza
	...

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