Intelligence professional and Substack author Sharon Bibee joins us to begin our new series on the complicated history of U.S.-Iran relations. We travel back to Qajar Persia, where Iran was caught between the competing ambitions of the British and Russian Empires.

Along the way, we meet two Americans who played surprising roles in Iran's Constitutional Revolution: missionary and teacher Howard Baskerville, remembered as Iran's "American Lafayette," and lawyer William Shuster, whose efforts to reform Iran's finances brought him into conflict with the foreign powers dominating the country. We also examine the devastating famine of 1918-1919 and the forces that shaped Iran's relationship with the West.

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