Nick Fountain

So friendly that the U.S.

engineered a coup to reinstall him as the Shah in 1953.

Western influence was also very pronounced in Iran's economy.

The U.S.

and Iran were tied together by oil.

At the time, American companies had a deal where they owned 40% of Iran's oil shares, and U.K.

companies owned another 40%.

The U.K.

and the U.S.

were constantly interfering in Iranian politics.

So she focused her research on Iran, ended up writing a whole book about it.

Ivaleh started to understand this way back when she was semi-following in the footsteps of her economist dad getting a PhD.

She is a political economist.

And at the outset, she wanted to understand how the politics of the moment led Iran to set up its economy in the years after the revolution.

To start the research for her PhD, Eva Leila flies to Tehran.

She wants to go to the National Archives to dig into what media coverage of the country's founding looked like, to see what people were actually saying at the time.

So she needs to request access to those archives.

Like, hey, do you mind if I come dig through your history a bit?

Like a year's worth of newspapers all bounded to one huge book.

But as she is reading the news clips and then the official transcripts, she finds her way to the heart of this big debate among Iran's new leaders.