At AP headquarters, nothing brings holiday cheer quite like oil, so Danny and Derek are back with Gregory Brew, analyst at Eurasia Group in energy and Iran, to discuss Iran’s postwar “petro-state” period. They get into the country’s trajectory leading up to the 1953 coup, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his relationship with the U.S., the 1963 White Revolution, how oil revenue supported industrialization, middle class growth, and state expansion, the rise of the clerical opposition to Pahlavi’s reign, and more.
Check out Gregory’s book Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War.
E127 - The Pahlavi Petro-State w/ Gregory Brew