The KGB Double Agent Who Stopped Armageddon with Ben McIntyre
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Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to history and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William Conquered England. What it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyit.com slash subscribe. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Some stories are so wild that So far fetched that They can scarcely be believed. And that's what I love about history. You get to be blown away.
By the strangest, most unlikely and bizarre things that have ever happened on this planet. And those are exactly the kinds of tales that Ben McIntyre writes about. He is the celebrated historian, the writer who so brilliantly finds these stories. And then tells them to us. And every time he does so he comes right here on the podcast with a glint in his eye, assuring me that yet again he's got a yarn more extraordinary and consequential. Than the last. And he's always right. Because folks, this is the craziest I've ever heard. What you're about to hear is a story that's never been told before. The story of a double agent who prevented Armageddon at the height of the Cold War. A Soviet double agent working for the KGB after the Iranian Revolution.
He was in Tehran. And he knew that the Soviets were working with the Iranian Communist Party, the Two-Day Party, to overthrow the fledgling Ayatollah's regime. In nineteen eighty one. In a plot that, if successful, would have almost certainly resulted in Soviet forces moving into Iran to support this new communist government as they had in Afghanistan, which in turn was a nightmare scenario for the Americans. And a contingency for which They were planning to deploy nuclear weapons. This is the story of how this spy cracked open the KGB. For British intelligence, risking everything. And in doing so, change the course of history. Now what makes this even more? Extraordinary. Is his reason for doing so. A deeply personal reason that had consequences far beyond himself.
This is the story of one man's courage. Of a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of a global conflict? Of betrayal. Of loyalty and of how far a man will go for his marriage. This is a wild ride. It's the story of Vladimir. Kuzichkin. Agent Redwood Right here. on Dan Snow's history here.
Ben McIntyre, great to have you on. What's going on? What's going on but I mean nineteen eighty one, it's the forgotten little mini freeze at the end of the
Cold War, isn't it? Well, it's actually one of the coldest periods of the Cold War. I mean, we are closer to nuclear confrontation in nineteen eighty one than we are at any other point, really. I mean, barring the Cuban Missile Crisis. But Tehran, Iran, is a particularly fascinating moment in that story because the Ayatollah has come to power. But he doesn't have full control. There are different parties vying for power inside Iran, including the Communist Party, which was then still quite powerful. So while the IRGC is clamping down, you've got the nationalists, you've got the Liberals, you've got the Communists, and you've got the Islamists. Into this sort of boiling espionage cauldron walk the CIA, MI6, and the KGB.
And it's that old great game story really of Russia and the West competing for power in Iran. Who's going to be up and who's going to be down? And It's by no means a done deal. It's not clear that this new regime in Iran is going to be as undemocratic, as brutal, as ruthless as it turns out to be and as we are seeing today. And this story is absolutely central to that development.
Yeah, because Ben, the vast protest against the Shah w had obviously Islamists among them, but also lots of very secular kind of urban intellectuals, students, vast numbers of students, men and women. I mean, it was a a much more broad-based coalition.
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