The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Iran with Marcus Furious

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Brokonomics. Now in this episode I'm very lucky to be joined by my good

00:00:17.420 friend and YouTube historian Marcus Furious. Marcus, hello, pleasure. Remind me of your

00:00:24.380 new Twitter handle because it's changed. Yes, at Renovati of Furious. Right, okay, and you've

00:00:29.160 been um you've been popping up on the in the sphere for some time giving these sort of um

00:00:35.940 detailed historical analysis that sits behind modern conflicts all right so yeah i was gonna

00:00:41.680 say that kind of happened a lot with aa back in the day yes obviously we're on uo once or twice

00:00:45.880 together so that kind of yeah really sort of started with in terms of like me being on youtube

00:00:50.340 is being apostolic majesty's co-host i mean we have he's very good isn't he he's actually in

00:00:56.720 fact one of the most impressive people i've ever met regarding history i mean i often say this to

00:01:00.720 people that in most occasions in my life i've walked into a room and been the history guy and

00:01:05.220 then i walk into a room with am and i'm not the history guy so yes he's a young chap as well but

00:01:09.840 he's he's bloody good at a couple years my junior but exceptional and uh yeah i had the the good

00:01:14.620 fortune and the honor of being his co-host for almost three years so yes we have thousands of

00:01:19.400 hours on his channel check it out apostolic majesty on youtube excellent stuff i contribute a little

00:01:23.800 bit you know here and there and yeah so we obviously have canvas a lot of you know history

00:01:28.360 basically going all the way back to the bronze age up until you know modern history essentially

00:01:32.680 like almost the modern days so that kind of perspective gives us a lot of um shall I say

00:01:38.960 information and a lot of uh context for our conversation for today yes and one of the things

00:01:44.080 I like about your stuff is you're very keen to not not just stay in the historical it's to move

00:01:48.940 into okay what are the implications for this for for current conflicts um and i suppose naturally

00:01:54.500 there's sort of two to talk about the uh the iran conflict and the and the russian one unless you

00:01:59.480 can think of anything else that's going on at the moment that's particularly lively but i mean

00:02:03.260 venezuela but you know yeah i might skip that one i'll skip that one um so so iran yeah um i mean

00:02:10.120 what i mean what's going on where do you start your analysis with iran then i'm going to sound

00:02:14.180 like you know when we're talking to putin and and putin began his discussion we're going to go to

00:02:18.340 where we're like oh like you know back in 830 AD yada yada yada I I won't quite do that to you but

00:02:24.460 in essence in essence you know I suppose Persia is and as I have to like make an admission here

00:02:32.440 it's not a country I've studied extensively not to the same degree that I've studied so like you

00:02:36.280 know Byzantium or Rome or those being my wheelhouses however a lot of people do underestimate

00:02:42.920 just how old the culture of Persia is.

00:02:46.360 And the idea that Cyrus the Great is considered the first

00:02:50.760 of the Persian kings, the first king of kings, the first Shah,

00:02:54.560 when he sort of topples the Babylonians

00:02:56.800 and becomes basically the rule of most of the Near East.

00:03:03.820 When is this roughly?

00:03:04.940 Well, this is generations before Alexander's time,

00:03:06.880 so you're sort of talking like 6th, 7th century BC.

00:03:09.560 Right.

00:03:09.840 So basically 6th, 700 years before Christ.

00:03:12.920 in that context you're talking like you know a long time ago and that's the kind of culture that

00:03:18.660 sort of makes the romans look old it even makes the greeks look old to it to it to you know to 0.94

00:03:23.560 an extent and the persians are i like to say that the persians are so old as a culture they even

00:03:29.200 have a culture before the persian empire so for instance the the persians are themselves predated

00:03:34.140 by a an empire called the medean empire medea or media being a part of like basically a regional

00:03:39.840 geographical part of persia who predate the persians the persians themselves are a group of

00:03:43.900 iranian peoples from a place called persis that's where the etymology comes from they come from a

00:03:47.780 place called persis which is actually ironically what neighbors the gulf in the sort of the

00:03:52.800 southwest of the country they end up conquering these medean peoples and they sort of unify the

00:03:58.000 iranian peoples and begin what we know as the persian empire you know basically coming out of

00:04:03.440 the the bronze age and this is presumably a function of geography because that fertile

00:04:07.640 crescent is well just it's very attractive land that somebody is going to want to gravitate to

00:04:13.240 and it's it's an attractive climate i mean i don't know what else what it's got well it's got oil

00:04:17.220 going for it but they didn't know at the time but it's got everything you need that the early

00:04:20.880 peoples would have wanted to gravitate there and is naturally going to produce a civilization

00:04:24.640 well perhaps not so much persis or if you read the bible they previously previously that they

00:04:30.080 call it elamas but it's the same branch the same area not so much that area but those areas did

00:04:35.180 breed hardy people, very warlike people, and they would end up pushing north up into the Tigris

00:04:39.800 Euphrates in what we understand to be modern day Iraq, which was a, you mentioned the Fertile Crescent

00:04:44.760 was a more fertile and prosperous part of the world, you know, two, two and a half, 3000 years

00:04:49.360 ago. And so Cyrus consolidates this sort of empire in this part of the world. And I suppose to cut a

00:04:55.820 long story short, we have much to talk today. You know, this ends up being a large and sprawling

00:05:00.000 empire. I mean, by the time Alexander or even prior to Alexander, you know, prior to the rise

00:05:06.060 of the Macedonians and the Greeks, for instance, the, um, you know, we all know about the famous

00:05:11.840 battle of Thermopylae, the standard, the Spartans in Greece. I watched the movie anyway. Many of us

00:05:16.980 did. Um, you know, the empire that Xerxes controls when he marches his army across the Northern

00:05:23.200 Aegean and into Greece, this is an empire that stretches all the way from the Indus Valley up

00:05:27.960 until like modern day Bulgaria and that's a very very large expanse of geography did Xerxes have

00:05:32.740 his his capital anywhere near modern Tehran is it um that comparable well well the the the Persians

00:05:41.860 at that time would have well they had their original city of what they called Passagade

00:05:45.140 but they essentially built a capital which we know through the Greek translation of Persepolis

00:05:51.000 basically the city of the Persians which is called their large their large capital they're their main

00:05:55.320 capital. But what the Persians did do, and they did do this in the Achaemenid period, which is

00:05:59.440 this period I'm talking about, and they also did this later in the Roman period, is they would

00:06:03.300 often have a summer capital because the Iranian plateau would be almost inhospitable at the peak

00:06:07.120 of summer. So they would actually have a secondary capital further to the west in what is modern day

00:06:11.160 Iraq. And that would oscillate between a place called Susa and a place called Ctesiphon, which

00:06:17.700 we now know as Baghdad. Why didn't they just have it there all the time? I suppose if I was to give

00:06:23.760 you a brief answer because i don't actually know the answer i would say part of it is

00:06:27.660 cultural and from a like a standpoint tradition and the other point would also be because of the

00:06:33.500 vast eastern territories persepolis was further east and closer to like the royal road network

00:06:37.720 and therefore they would have had better communication trade from the east but that's

00:06:42.120 just a guess yes okay so that makes sense so you've got this sort of long-standing civilization

00:06:48.580 and at what point would modern Persians

00:06:52.300 would point back to and say,

00:06:54.280 yes, this is continuously us?

00:06:55.980 Is it as far back as that? 0.92

00:06:58.720 Certainly for those who consider themselves

00:07:00.960 ethnic Persians,

00:07:01.800 because one thing we have to understand 0.97

00:07:02.880 is that Iran is a bit of a patchwork

00:07:04.800 of different ethnicities,

00:07:06.080 of which they are mostly related people.

00:07:08.260 Probably not too dissimilar to say,

00:07:09.420 you know, for instance,

00:07:11.140 as someone would say,

00:07:12.420 Italian heritage myself,

00:07:13.420 like in the end is a Tuscan

00:07:15.200 and a Calabrian and a Lombard,

00:07:16.840 much the same.

00:07:17.460 Yes, they're different,

00:07:18.000 but essentially we speak the same language, have a similar culture.

00:07:20.500 Iran probably is a little different in the end.

00:07:22.400 I mean, Iran is made up of, you know, Persians themselves, 0.97

00:07:25.920 of, you know, Balushis, of Dalamites. 0.76

00:07:31.420 And then there's sort of like this periphery

00:07:32.780 that are sort of a bit more Arabic to the west.

00:07:34.920 You have Azeris to the north,

00:07:36.080 Azeris being sort of like a mix of Iranic and Turkic people.

00:07:39.500 Hence, I mean, mostly made up of the population of Azerbaijan.

00:07:44.080 and there's a little region between Turkey and Armenia called Nakhishavan and they're made up

00:07:50.600 of Azuris. So, you know, and then in the east, you've got sort of other population groups that

00:07:55.900 are more intermixed with, you know, you know, you know, those countries, sort of the southern part

00:07:59.440 of the USSR, like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, they're sort of like their own groups. There's

00:08:03.080 elements of them in sort of northeastern Persia as well. So it's a patchwork of people who broadly

00:08:08.160 identify sort of iranic peoples give or take okay and i suppose bringing this a bit more to the

00:08:15.160 present when when with the a bit more to the present the um introduction of islam when that

00:08:21.440 comes in and they go down the the shia camp but i'm just trying to figure out how this works with

00:08:28.740 their their sort of surrounding neighbors and other sort of ethnicities that they got in there

00:08:32.440 i mean i mean i'm just getting a sense of the continuation of a single peoplehood through this

00:08:38.060 and how that interacts with the religion element?

00:08:40.560 Well, just if we can slightly just turn that back ever so slightly,

00:08:44.200 because this does have an important point regarding the modern-day issues with Iran

00:08:49.220 and even the modern-day campaign is that, I mean,

00:08:51.840 there are influxes of people who arrive into the Iranian plateau from the east,

00:08:55.360 much like has happened with Russia.

00:08:56.980 It's happened sort of time and again throughout the history.

00:09:00.360 But normally they are an influx of, say, sort of step warrior people.

00:09:04.900 They assert their ascendancy.

00:09:06.120 they might ransack a few cities take a few slaves and then within two or three generations it 0.97

00:09:10.140 fragments and it's not really a thing or in the case of the turks they push on to a different

00:09:14.060 geography um which occurred in the sort of 10th century thereabouts but iran has only ever been

00:09:21.360 decisively invaded and conquered from the west twice once was under alexander and for the case

00:09:27.460 of the persians it was the case it was merely an instance of having to encounter one of the

00:09:32.380 greatest generals of history at a time of greek unification which greatly strengthened their

00:09:38.300 ability to mobilize the strength of not just the kingdom of macedon and this army that alexander's

00:09:44.140 father philip ii basically built from the ground up um sort of what we know as the macedonian

00:09:49.900 you know phalanx more or less and as sort of associated support networks um and a cadre of

00:09:56.140 excellent generals and the support of the greek states which at that point were sort of subservient

00:10:00.420 to macedon more or less and in three decisive battles they being at granicus and issus and

00:10:08.900 gorgamela alexander vanquishes king derius the third eventually derius is killed um by a subordinate

00:10:17.540 of his bessus on the outskirts of like the very northeastern sort of frontiers of iran or persia

00:10:24.100 as was and you know alexander completes the conquest he actually pushes further east

00:10:29.220 and we have this macedonian empire but probably one of the things that allows the macedonians to

00:10:34.700 sort of survive as a people with a a an intact sense of identity is two factors one unlike a lot

00:10:42.000 of sort of people or nations in that context alexander favors a policy of basically integration

00:10:49.160 he essentially has an intentional policy of miscegenation there's an event actually called

00:10:53.600 the susa weddings where each of his leading generals is forced to take a persian wife as an

00:10:57.380 example and but this policy basically doesn't outlast alexander alexander dies at 33 on his

00:11:04.080 deathbed he was apophical but he says in the may my empire end up with the strongest and then his

00:11:10.040 general squabble for 200 and their descendants squabble for 200 odd years and the romans pick

00:11:14.080 up the pieces more or less you know that's the short version um but what actually happens is

00:11:18.560 that with the crumbling of his the the holdings of his eastern generals that hold the eastern part

00:11:24.520 of this Macedonian Empire is that the Persians,

00:11:28.320 under the guise of a group called the Parthians,

00:11:30.360 essentially reassert themselves.

00:11:31.620 Now, the Parthians aren't Persian, but they are an Iranic people.

00:11:34.960 They are related to the Persians.

00:11:36.580 And so they sort of sweep down from the east of the Caspian Sea. 0.83

00:11:39.880 They pick up or reconstitute these sort of fragmented territories

00:11:43.700 in the east and establish their own entity known as the Parthian Empire.

00:11:48.080 And the Parthians and the Romans eventually come into contact

00:11:50.280 with each other around the time of the sort of first century BC.

00:11:53.240 and they have their squabbles they have a number of wars with each other very famously one of the

00:11:59.000 triumvirate from rome you have caesar pompey and marcus crassus marcus crassus actually loses an

00:12:04.160 entire almost an entire roman army at the battle of caro as an example and then if we sort of fast

00:12:09.180 forward a little bit further because you've just mentioned islam and what have you um but the

00:12:13.560 parthians themselves as a dynasty collapse in about the third century and they are they are

00:12:19.680 overthrown again from this province called Persis by a general, a satraite, by the name of Ardashir,

00:12:25.880 Ardashir I. And he's actually like an ethnic Persian, and he claims descent from the old 0.90

00:12:31.540 monarchy. But he sort of re-establishes what we call the new Persian empire, overthrowing the

00:12:37.980 Parthian. And they referred themselves as the Sassanid. This is the Sassanid period. And there's

00:12:43.420 a re-association of old Persian tradition, old Persian religion, what they call Zoroastrianism,

00:12:48.900 which is their own religion.

00:12:51.080 And they... 0.99

00:12:51.380 That's the original Persian... 0.85

00:12:53.340 Okay. 0.94

00:12:54.560 So basically, I mean, 1.00

00:12:56.200 I hope the Zoroastrians watching 0.99

00:12:57.540 don't shoot me down too much, 0.99

00:12:58.680 but basically, essentially,

00:13:00.160 it's a belief between a sort of cosmic struggle

00:13:01.840 between good and evil.

00:13:03.180 And they have essentially a deity,

00:13:05.220 a chief deity called Uhura Master.

00:13:07.880 And Zoroastrian was essentially the prophet

00:13:11.160 of this religion.

00:13:12.020 Hence, we call it Zoroastrianism.

00:13:13.600 So, I mean, it doesn't get a lot of airtime 0.93

00:13:15.220 these days, Zoroastrians. 1.00

00:13:16.360 I just remember that Freddie Mercury was one. 1.00

00:13:18.200 Correct.

00:13:18.900 Yeah. They're actually quite like a, where they do pop up,

00:13:21.740 there's a strong minority of them.

00:13:23.040 And in fact, there are Persians who have,

00:13:26.240 in terms of families and communities, 0.75

00:13:27.420 that have kept their Zerashianism alive.

00:13:29.080 But particularly in like the post-revolution period,

00:13:32.820 as in post-79, the downfall for Lasha,

00:13:35.860 they've had to keep a bit of a low profile.

00:13:37.380 But there has been something from what I'm told

00:13:39.400 and what I'm aware of, there's been something of resurgence

00:13:41.280 of Zerashianism sort of on the back of people repudiating Islam.

00:13:45.440 How much truth that there is, I don't know necessarily.

00:13:47.620 but also there are other groups so for instance there are groups of zoroastrians who have kept

00:13:52.700 their sort of faith and traditions alive in places such as such as afghanistan yes in parts of pakistan

00:13:58.440 parts of india so so so alexander being the first and what was the parthian the second or no no no

00:14:04.020 so so so there's the parthians and they they're one of these like countless people that invade

00:14:07.940 from the east right but they are still iranic peoples then you have the sassanid period but

00:14:12.560 with the sassanid period with this formalization and an increasing a vastly increasing military

00:14:17.220 capacity of the, of the, this sort of Sassanid period. And you have this, you know, Rome at a

00:14:23.460 zenith or sort of roaming, you know, particularly around Constantinople in the East, sort of,

00:14:29.860 I suppose, modernizing in some ways, or, you know, especially in the context of having lost

00:14:34.380 the Western half of the empire to the Germanic barbarians, Constantinople is its own capital

00:14:38.180 and is in the sort of, quote unquote, a bit of a death struggle with the Persians. 0.72

00:14:42.780 What actually happens with them is that there's a bit of a tragedy that occurs,

00:14:45.820 dynastically speaking within rome and one emperor maurice or maurikios as they say in greek was

00:14:52.580 allied to kosrao and maurikios is um overthrown by a general and his entire family is wiped out

00:14:59.560 and kosrao declares war on rome constantinople and there's a essentially what turns out to be a

00:15:06.520 an apocalyptic war between them that lasts almost 20 years to the point where a roman general is

00:15:14.060 sent from Carthage, which is North Africa. North Africa at this time is very Romanized and very

00:15:18.040 Christian, actually. One, Heraclius, Heraclius, how you want to call him, overthrows the general 0.90

00:15:23.920 that overthrew Maurice, and he conducts a massive counterattack, a huge campaign, one through Armenia,

00:15:30.120 through the Caucasus Mountains, another one through Syria, eventually pushing back the path,

00:15:34.520 the Persian armies, and ransacks their western capital of Ctesiphon. But this war is gargantuan,

00:15:41.820 like it's huge the casualties are huge on both sides to the point where persian armies have

00:15:46.520 surrounded and besieged constantinople for instance right um then this is very very early

00:15:52.720 in the 600s or late 500s into the early 600s and they eventually reach a peace um um heraclius

00:16:00.740 remains emperor of rome and tries to rebuild the nation or the empire in the east cause rails

00:16:06.520 to pose and there's a massive dynastic struggle in persia but what is occurring at the same time is

00:16:12.120 that muhammad arrives muhammad is as has uh at this point achieved power in in what we now call

00:16:20.280 saudi arabia in the arabian peninsula and uh and by the time that this war has finished

00:16:26.440 um and in the aftermath this war the arab tribes are basically unified in after campaign called

00:16:30.760 the ridder wars and so our arabia is newly unified and basically is is sort of under the sort of the 0.55

00:16:41.400 zealous appeal of this new faith which we call islam which we know as islam today and it's very 0.97

00:16:48.280 opportunistic that the arabs basically come out of the desert under the second caliph so mohammed 0.85

00:16:52.920 dies and he's succeeded by a caliph by the name of i think it's abu bakir is the second caliph 0.92

00:16:58.280 and he sort of initially conducts these sort of probing assaults the romans of the byzantines

00:17:02.760 romans and the persians initially push them back but they keep sort of trying with more and more

00:17:08.120 troops and eventually they penetrate the frontiers of both these empires and uh and in the case of

00:17:13.000 rome they suffer cataclysmic losses in fact i cover one of them with uh i did a box with bow

00:17:19.480 last year battle called yarmulke which was fought in 636 and an entire roman army is more or less

00:17:25.240 destroyed um and at this point jerusalem is lost damascus is lost these massive urban centers in

00:17:32.040 the east which were sort of hubs of roman civilization are basically lost the um if not

00:17:37.320 islam but to the sort of the arab culture for for basically up until what the modern day

00:17:42.520 but what actually happens in in in rome is that they lose their eastern territories they lose

00:17:46.600 egypt they lose syria but they the romans hang on to their sort of european or their sort of

00:17:51.560 of near eastern and eastern european core which is where they had the majority of their sort of

00:17:58.600 their population their military structure and infrastructure and their capacity to sort of

00:18:02.920 mobilize and fuel the armies and also their food supply so the romans survived this period

00:18:07.220 despite losing all of north africa and everything else the persians are less lucky they are favored

00:18:13.060 by geography because they're protected by the zagros mountains but much in the same way they

00:18:16.700 were attacked and sort of assailed by the greatest general of the era in terms of alexander the

00:18:21.580 great in the ancient times it's sort of a different problem now that yes the arab generals

00:18:26.880 particularly one khalid bin al-waleed is a fabulous general of his time but what the persians suffer 0.64

00:18:32.880 at this point is immense military exhaustion they've just had an equivalent of a black death

00:18:38.680 because this this uh plague actually happens in the context of the last roman persian war so

00:18:45.000 there's been a Black Death, a cataclysmic war between two empires butting heads against each

00:18:49.300 other to exhaustion, and also then dynastic struggles afterwards. So this empire is already

00:18:54.260 internally exhausted, and the Arabs use that as an opportunity to basically attack relentlessly 1.00

00:18:58.960 time and time again. They basically conduct annual campaigns into Persia, and eventually 0.97

00:19:03.840 they capture this big city of Ctesiphon, this western capital, and they eventually push up

00:19:08.520 the Tigris, Euphrates, and more and more of these Arab tribes, which were previously allied to both

00:19:12.860 Rome and to Persia, switch sides and join the caliphate. And eventually the Persians are ground 0.92

00:19:19.060 down and their final armies defeated at a place called Nahavand, which I think occurs in, if

00:19:24.880 memory serves me correct, in 642 or 646. And then from that point on, they're overrun. And again,

00:19:32.620 the last Persian Shah is killed at a very similar place to where Darius III was killed all those

00:19:39.220 centuries ago by Bessus. And his son eventually takes refuge in China, funnily enough, through 0.95

00:19:46.320 the Taran Basin, he evacuates to China. And the Persians are technically allied to China,

00:19:51.580 but China's never in a position to be able to send an army to help the Persians. And so at this point,

00:19:58.080 Persia more or less becomes a part of the Islamic world. Although I said that with the caveat that

00:20:03.960 there were holdouts, particularly there's this sort of band of the North called Tabardistan

00:20:08.260 and Dalam.

00:20:09.300 Zoroastrian holdouts. 0.85

00:20:11.540 Exactly. 0.91

00:20:12.020 And actually, there's one famous example,

00:20:14.360 one, I think his name was Rostam I,

00:20:18.040 who was actually a descendant of both the Persian

00:20:20.760 and Parthian royal houses and held out for decades.

00:20:25.040 But eventually, these places are conquered 1.00

00:20:26.680 by the caliphate and the Muslims, 0.99

00:20:28.240 and Iran becomes a very sort of fundamental part

00:20:32.240 of the Muslim world.

00:20:34.660 That's the shortest explanation I could have, sorry. 0.79

00:20:37.360 I mean, I guess what kind of interests me there is that,

00:20:41.380 I mean, we're coming to the current Iran conflict

00:20:43.580 by way of history.

00:20:45.480 And if I were to really reduce everything down that you said,

00:20:49.000 is that the Iranians, the Persians, 1.00

00:20:51.140 have a good reason to think of themselves as a great people.

00:20:54.600 And their own distinct people, yes.

00:20:56.580 Yes, a distinct, great people with a long lineage,

00:21:01.120 although they have been conquered,

00:21:03.100 but I suppose they were conquered in a way

00:21:05.400 that they've adopted it into their identity

00:21:07.560 rather than trying to seek the revival of Zoroastrian

00:21:10.340 at some point.

00:21:12.060 It's just become a part of them.

00:21:13.920 The other thing to say there as well

00:21:15.680 is that in some ways,

00:21:17.180 in much the same way that,

00:21:18.880 you know, for example,

00:21:19.600 like, you know, Christianity sort of 0.60

00:21:20.980 is a product of Constantine 0.58

00:21:22.900 and sort of like the third,

00:21:24.260 fourth century Roman Empire.

00:21:25.540 Yeah, but they didn't have to win wars to spread.

00:21:27.040 No, no, but what I'm sort of saying is like,

00:21:28.380 and in the aftermath of the collapse of West Rome, right,

00:21:30.600 you have a Celtic expression of Christianity,

00:21:33.120 an Anglo-Saxon expression of Christianity.

00:21:34.920 Yes.

00:21:35.140 A Germanic expression of Christianity. 0.81

00:21:36.700 Essentially what sort of happens is you have this Persian expression of Islam 0.61

00:21:39.560 to the point where many of its most famous doctors and scientists,

00:21:44.160 you know, and a lot of the, this is my personal opinion

00:21:47.500 and the opinion of some, of esteem, 0.63

00:21:49.840 that the so-called quote-unquote Islamic golden age is a bit of a nonsense. 0.91

00:21:53.740 But there's a part of it which is also true. 1.00

00:21:55.720 And there is something of an efflorescence of sort of Islamic science 0.96

00:22:00.620 or a, how can I put this?

00:22:05.140 flourishing of of their expression of of because they take in a lot of this knowledge from both

00:22:11.180 the persian and roman states yes and basically digest in their own way that is conducive to

00:22:15.940 islamic religious law and how much of that was them as opposed to just keeping educated slaves

00:22:20.560 but but the point i was going to make was if you look at say for example um well i mean rumi comes

00:22:25.440 later he's a pop but someone's like it's like omar kayoum who's a person who calculates the

00:22:29.980 circumference of the of the earth to oh sorry the the length of of a year in days to like

00:22:35.680 within the within accuracy of about 12 hours right very smart man omar kayyum was an ethnic persian

00:22:42.240 most of these early islamic doctors are actually ethnic or cultural persians rather than being

00:22:47.560 arabs per se which is the point i'm trying to make is that actually it's the persians influencing

00:22:51.320 the arab caliphate and is islam more than the other way around although the persians adopt

00:22:56.780 islam by and large they have a huge almost um unpeered influence on it if that makes sense yeah

00:23:03.340 i don't know where iran sits on the on the on the iq map that you see go around every now and again 1.00

00:23:07.900 but it would surprise me if it's higher on average than certainly it's neighbors i would say so yes

00:23:12.780 yes i mean i mean even look today for example like you know university graduates i mean you

00:23:16.700 know iran has a has a proponents of producing a lot of engineers and doctors and they punch well

00:23:21.420 above their weight and they're very competent in that in that field yes so which is where i think

00:23:28.560 a lot of the west doesn't give iran its rightful dues in that sense if you get what i mean yes

00:23:35.560 so but okay so you've got to convince in case that the the persians are a distinct long-running

00:23:42.480 people with a sense of pride okay they they they've given up largely their zoroastrianism

00:23:47.480 because they've decided to incorporate Islam fine. 0.54

00:23:50.640 And so when they arrive at sort of more modern errors,

00:23:53.540 I mean, is there another step that you would include

00:23:57.260 before we sort of talk about?

00:23:59.020 I mean, as a bit of a footnote,

00:24:02.540 which sort of adds a bit of context,

00:24:03.860 is that you have, for instance,

00:24:05.600 probably the two largest dynasties that exist

00:24:08.100 between sort of the emergence of the Middle Ages

00:24:11.040 and the modern period are probably the Safavid dynasty

00:24:13.140 and the Qajar dynasty.

00:24:15.780 And actually, two of our friends, Apostolic Majesty

00:24:19.100 and one Beat of Britannia, have done some excellent work

00:24:21.240 in this field.

00:24:22.280 Check out their streams.

00:24:23.280 They're magnificent. 1.00

00:24:25.280 However, under the Safavids, they're probably the closest rivals 0.62

00:24:29.580 that the Ottoman Empire has in the east. 0.87

00:24:31.920 And in fact, they wrestle control over Iraq and the Caucasus

00:24:34.900 with each other. 0.76

00:24:35.760 Sort of much in the same way, it's like a replay of kind of like 0.72

00:24:37.840 Rome and the Sassanid period, but instead it's the Ottomans 0.56

00:24:40.080 and the Safavids.

00:24:40.760 uh it's kind of like a bit of an islamic civil war of sorts because they sort of both consider

00:24:46.160 themselves sort of inheritors of the caliphate because at this point the arab caliphate doesn't

00:24:49.600 really exist anymore right in the sort of late medieval period into the renaissance era um and

00:24:55.360 really the safavid dynasty is probably where if persia was going to revert back to say a zoroastrian

00:25:03.660 like culture and religion that was probably the last time it could have happened organically and

00:25:09.680 it didn't um but what it does it does strengthen their sort of identity as being shia as opposed

00:25:14.140 to sunni which much the rest of the islamic world was uh and then the qajr dynasty is interesting

00:25:19.180 um there's a lot more to say about it but for the sake of brevity is probably the last great

00:25:24.440 dynasty where persia is predominant in so far that the persian empire quote unquote is dominion

00:25:33.140 and holds its territories over the vast majority of persians which exist in the region and it's

00:25:39.400 during the Qajar dynasty, which, you know, they are attacked, for instance, by the Russians in 0.98

00:25:43.900 the north, they're attacked by the Ottomans in the west, they're attacked by the British, funnily 0.67

00:25:47.460 enough, from the east, by the Raj. And one interesting thing is, you know, we sort of talk 0.90

00:25:51.220 about, oh, well, not we, but, you know, you hear in the news like, oh, Iranian aggression, yada, yada,

00:25:54.920 yada. This actually is relevant insofar that the last time an Iranian or Persian army was,

00:26:01.820 quote unquote, in foreign territory was, if memory serves me correct, was the siege of Herat, which is

00:26:07.200 the westernmost largest city in Afghanistan,

00:26:10.320 and only because the Raj had taken off the Persians in a previous war

00:26:14.220 and they sought to re-attack it and re-conquer it.

00:26:16.660 What year was that?

00:26:17.780 If memory serves me correct, it was 1836 or 1846.

00:26:21.700 So like mid-1800s, right?

00:26:23.160 So that's a while.

00:26:24.080 A while ago.

00:26:25.040 I mean, it would be a much lower number of years

00:26:28.120 since America has sent troops to foreign soil.

00:26:32.420 Precisely.

00:26:33.120 Yes, which is probably like 30 seconds ago.

00:26:35.500 That's right. Five seconds ago, yes.

00:26:37.840 Or even the British or anything like that.

00:26:40.880 Yeah, I mean...

00:26:41.940 I say that for sake of context.

00:26:43.840 At least we can make a comparison, you know.

00:26:45.240 Yeah, yeah.

00:26:45.860 So, I mean, given that, I mean, well, it might be both.

00:26:51.240 But are you leading us into this because it informs the way

00:26:56.840 that you think about the current conflict?

00:26:58.460 Or are you saying it informs the way that they think about the current conflict?

00:27:01.480 Or I suppose it could be both.

00:27:02.580 Well, I always say to people when this sort of conversation comes up,

00:27:05.300 you know what's one of the best books you've ever read and i i often refer to uh i can't remember

00:27:10.920 the author's name actually but jihad versement world because it's one of those things that

00:27:14.600 and i mean i know slight age difference between us but in the end we probably we both grew up

00:27:19.380 with memories of 9-11 and the aftermath of i mean i was at high school when it happened um but you

00:27:24.560 know we all have very vivid memories of what occurred and you know there's sort of this sort

00:27:28.740 of framing of sort of us and them you know and and like you know why would these you know men in

00:27:34.460 their sort of garb and their sandals and their sort of you know their their sort of funny you

00:27:38.560 know because it hates our freedom but what i was gonna say is like why would they run out of their 0.84

00:27:42.800 caves with kalashnikovs and rpgs and shoot it at an apache when they're gonna die nine times out

00:27:47.500 of ten and it's sort of that book gives you the insight of you know in the end when you actually

00:27:51.460 look at us for who we are and what we've become in the west and what they are fighting to defend

00:27:55.720 so okay you might not like those traditions but their traditions are theirs like that is their

00:28:00.020 land and their culture and their place and i mean i'm not saying that from a sort of a left-wing

00:28:03.760 self-hating angle but i say that from the standpoint of that you know each culture has

00:28:07.660 a sense of belonging to itself and that you know culture and people belong as a sort of a largely

00:28:13.160 inseparable thing cultures and people can adopt certain things from other places that's always

00:28:17.800 happening in human history but if you're asking a people in a culture to completely debase itself

00:28:21.700 and become something it's not that's a different story and in the context of military occupation

00:28:25.840 it's a very sort of it's a stark thing that sometimes we don't reconcile with that well in

00:28:30.300 west and sadly for all of the the vastness of news media that's not a conversation often had

00:28:35.600 right you know maybe fortunately or unfortunately it's more sort of refined circles such as this

00:28:40.280 where those rightful discussions take place yes and so in essence i guess what i'm trying to sort

00:28:47.960 of reply to you sort of in a fitting way is that it is that perspective which sort of informs my

00:28:56.140 view not so much trying to represent them for their like i'm not trying to represent their case

00:29:02.560 for them but rather how can i build my own opinion understanding their perspective of it

00:29:09.180 as a westerner and how can i see this as a as a truthful understanding of the situation

00:29:15.480 bringing all the relevant information together which is geopolitical geostrategic yes you know

00:29:21.200 Economic, historical, cultural, et cetera.

00:29:24.180 Because, again, a lot of people don't have the ability to do that, frankly.

00:29:27.900 Yes.

00:29:28.160 I mean, especially getting out, you know,

00:29:29.360 why don't these people just accept their invasion gracefully?

00:29:34.280 Right.

00:29:34.840 And, you know, I'm not criticizing any Americans

00:29:38.400 because it would apply equally to the British just a couple of centuries removed.

00:29:42.200 But if you had, I don't know, Iraqi troops patrolling as peacekeepers

00:29:47.360 through Miami or Austin or, you know, anything like that,

00:29:52.780 you can well imagine that the locals would be coming out to take pot shots on them.

00:29:56.620 Exactly.

00:29:57.380 If you enjoyed that content, and of course you did because you are a smart person,

00:30:01.880 then why don't you go over to lotuseaters.com

00:30:04.620 where you can watch the whole episode for as little as £5 a month,

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 20, 2026

PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Iran with Marcus Furious

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