🇮🇷 The History Of Iran

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:01]Let's make history.

[00:00:05]Iran goes back over 5,000 years.

[00:00:12]It was Elam at first and it was launched by people in that same area where Iran is today.

[00:00:24]Then later down the line, you had the Medes which were a powerful people who consolidated the tribes the various tribes over Iran under one banner and it was then called Media.

[00:00:43]Spelled like how we say media.

[00:00:47]And they didn't have a written history, but other historians wrote of them such as the famous Greek historian Herodotus said they were a very powerful people.

[00:01:00]And uh they helped uh defeat the Assyrians.

[00:01:07]And it was one of the famous most famous Iranians, Cyrus the Great who defeated the last Median king and then went on to launch the Achaemenid Empire.

[00:01:27]Which is kind of what Iran is mostly known for throughout its history among other things.

[00:01:38]And then they were conquered by Alexander the Great and you saw Iran begin to absorb much Greek influence.

[00:01:48]You had several other over the years over the centuries, I should say uh factions who came to dominate Iran.

[00:02:01]You know, such as the Parthians and even more famously the Sassanids.

[00:02:08]And it was under them that the state religion of Iran became Zoroastrianism.

[00:02:18]And that lasted, of course, until the 600s CE when the Arab the Arabs came about and established Islam.

[00:02:33]That was in the 600s.

[00:02:36]And it became an Islamic country ever since.

[00:02:42]Reza Shah, military personnel, launched the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925 and sought to westernize and modernize Iran. However, the US and saw in Britain in in invaded Iran. They invaded Iran in 1941 for that oil, ousted Reza Shah, put his son to replace him. They stayed in the country for 6 years.

[00:03:11]Then they skedaddled. And it's wild because uh Iran didn't even know that it had its most valuable asset until the early 20th century, which is oil. The oil in Iran wasn't discovered until the 20th century hit. You got a revolution Pardon me.

[00:03:31]You got a revolution in 1906.

[00:03:34]And Iran really First as I stated, first it was called Elam, then it was Media.

[00:03:41]But aside from that, Iran has always been known as Iran. Persia is a name that outsiders gave it.

[00:03:49]Because, see, Persia was the little area in southwestern around where Cyrus the Great was based out of. So, they just called the whole country Persia.

[00:03:59]So, that's how it became known as Persia. And after a while, it gained so much influence internationally, that name Persia, that when Reza Shah changed the name officially to Iran in 1935, they still condoned the use of the name Persia because it was already established around the world. When it was first officially changed to Iran, a lot of other countries had trouble like, "What Iran? Where is that? What what Where is this? What?" They They weren't sure like what it was, if it was a whole new country or not.

[00:04:32]So, though they officially changed it to Iran, they still allowed the name of Persia.

[00:04:36]You can use them interchangeably, but just know that it was always called Iran, and it was the outsiders who called it Persia.

[00:04:45]Meanwhile, you had the Ayatollah who was exiled because he was getting uh people to follow him.

[00:04:53]He was getting a hell of a coalition.

[00:04:54]So, you had him in exile in Paris, still sending his speeches out to Iran via cassette tape.

[00:05:05]Then in '51, you had a charismatic nationalist type named Mosaddegh who the Iranian people loved.

[00:05:14]He became prime minister, and right away, he's like, "Wait a minute.

[00:05:18]Iranian oil is enriching all these other foreign nations. That should be enriching Iran. That should be what we're using to modernize the country."

[00:05:28]And so, he nationalized the oil, and you know the USSR and Britain had a fit.

[00:05:35]So, they they ousted him.

[00:05:38]But then the people the civil unrest was crazy, so they brought him back in, and then ousted him again. That gave gave Shah even more power, which he took advantage of, crowned himself emperor of Iran and his wife empress.

[00:05:54]It was just a sad situation, and Ayatollah fed off of that.

[00:06:00]So, things got so bad that the Shah wind up leaving the country, and the Ayatollah swooped down in, took control, and rebranded and remade Iran, reestablished it rather, as an Islamic Republic, which it is to this very day.