When the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini received Western media in a small French village in 1978, he sat cross-legged in his robes and black turban under an apple tree in the garden. They described him as “on another planet,” with “eyes of steel,” and compared him to an Eastern sage or ascetic guru.

French philosopher Michel Foucault, most famous for his penetrating analysis of power, knowledge (and punitive coercion) was there as well. He called the holy man “an old saint in exile” who had no personal political ambitions. Visiting Iran during the revolution, the philosopher was captivated by what he called a new form of “spiritual politics” that he saw as “advancing toward a luminous and distant point.” Foucault dismissed Iranian feminists who warned of the true dangers of an Islamic state being established once the autocratic king—the Shah—had been overthrown.

Today, as the reckless and destructive American and Israeli war against the Iranian regime continues, Julian revisits the political history of Iran and the complex regional power struggles between nationalists, monarchists, communists, and Islamists that played out on the Cold War stage. He examines the connections between the controversial 1953 CIA coup d’etat and the hugely popular 1979 Islamic Revolution, which led to the one-party totalitarian theocracy that dominates the Iranian people to this day.

How did so many within Iran and in the West, including the most influential radical philosopher of his time, misperceive Khomeini and his ruthless intentions?

Show Notes

Foucault: What Are The Iranian’s Dreaming About

Did Foucault Disregard Iranian Feminists?

Dr. Taimur Rahman’s Red Star Lectures

The CIA Coup That Never Was

Iran’s Decade of Assassinations

Bayandor: Iran and The CIA

Foucault’s Iranian Folly

Foucault and the Question of Orientalism

The Shah, by Abbas Milani

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices