Irans Revolutionary Upheaval

In Revolutionary Iran, Michael Axworthy offers a richly textured and authoritative history of Iran from the 1979 revolution to the present.

A myth-busting insider’s account of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that destroyed US influence in the country and transformed the politics of the Middle East and the world. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran was one of the seminal events of our time. It inaugurated more than thirty years of war in the Middle East and fostered an Islamic radicalism that shapes foreign policy in the United States and Europe to this day. Drawing on his lifetime of engagement with Iran, James Buchan explains the history that gave rise to the Revolution, in which Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters displaced the Shah with little diffi­culty. Mystifyingly to outsiders, the people of Iran turned their backs on a successful Westernized government for an amateurish religious regime. Buchan dispels myths about the Iranian Revolution and instead assesses the historical forces to which it responded. He puts the extremism of the Islamic regime in perspective: a truly radical revolution, it can be compared to the French or Russian Revolu­tions. Using recently declassified diplomatic papers and Persian-language news reports, diaries, memoirs, interviews, and theological tracts, Buchan illumi­nates both Khomeini and the Shah. His writing is always clear, dispassionate, and informative. The Iranian Revolution was a turning point in modern history, and James Buchan’s Days of God is, as London’s Independent put it, “a compelling, beautifully written history” of that event.

Examines the last forty years of Iranian and Middle-Eastern history through the prism of the Green Uprisings of 2009.

Iranian women tell in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. The Islamic revolution of 1979 transformed all areas of Iranian life. For women, the consequences were extensive and profound, as the state set out to reverse legal and social rights women had won and to dictate many aspects of women's lives, including what they could study and how they must dress and relate to men. Reconstructed Lives presents Iranian women telling in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. Through a series of interviews with professional and working women in Iran—doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, secretaries, businesswomen—Haleh Esfandiari gathers dramatic accounts of what has happened to their lives as women in an Islamic society. She and her informants describe the strategies by which women try to and sometimes succeed in subverting the state's agenda. Esfandiari also provides historical background on the women's movement in Iran. She finds evidence in Iran's experience that even women from "traditional" and working classes do not easily surrender rights or access they have gained to education, career opportunities, and a public role.

Outside of Shiraz in the Fars Province of southwestern Iran lies "Aliabad." Mary Hegland arrived in this then-small agricultural village of several thousand people in the summer of 1978, unaware of the momentous changes that would sweep this town and this country in the months ahead. She became the only American researcher to witness the Islamic Revolution firsthand over her eighteen-month stay. Days of Revolution offers an insider's view of how regular people were drawn into, experienced, and influenced the 1979 Revolution and its aftermath. Conventional wisdom assumes Shi'a religious ideology fueled the revolutionary movement. But Hegland counters that the Revolution spread through much more pragmatic concerns: growing inequality, lack of development and employment opportunities, government corruption. Local expectations of leaders and the political process—expectations developed from their experience with traditional kinship-based factions—guided local villagers' attitudes and decision-making, and they often adopted the religious justifications for Revolution only after joining the uprising. Sharing stories of conflict and revolution alongside in-depth interviews, the book sheds new light on this critical historical moment. Returning to Aliabad decades later, Days of Revolution closes with a view of the village and revolution thirty years on. Over the course of several visits between 2003 and 2008, Mary Hegland investigates the lasting effects of the Revolution on the local political factions and in individual lives. As Iran remains front-page news, this intimate look at the country's recent history and its people has never been more timely or critical for understanding the critical interplay of local and global politics in Iran.

Examines how the Iranian Revolution became a showdown between the ideas and values of Islam and those of the West and how it recast the face of the Middle East.

Observers of Iran have often ascribed the main cause of the revolution to economic problems under the Shah’s regime. This book, first published in 1990, on the other hand focuses on the political and social factors which contributed of the Pahlavi dynasty. Mehran Kamrava looks at the revolution in detail as a political phenomenon, making use of extensive interviews with former revolutionary leaders, cabinet ministers and diplomats to show the central role of the political collapse of the regime in bringing about the revolution. He concentrates on the internal and the international developments leading to this collapse, and the social environment in which the revolution’s leaders emerged.

Since the turn of the century Iran has experienced three major political upheavals in the struggle to democratize her political systems. The last revolution inaugurated an era of unprecedented turmoil and instead of fulfilling its democratic aim, paved the way for an even more despotic theocracy. To put the revolution in a proper perspective, some attempt is made to explain the reasons for Khomeini’s success in acquiring first, the symbolic leadership of the anti-Shah revolution, and then, the monopolistic control of power in Iran. How and why the other claimants to power were shunted aside and later brutally repressed is a further theme for discussion. The domestic and external ramifications of the revolution are examined in detail; in particular the rise of the anti-American feeling which culminated in the hostage crisis. In conclusion, an analysis is offered of the instrumentalities of power available to the Islamic Republic, and several scenarios are explored in which Iran’s competing forces may converge to determine whether this third revolution will finally succeed in subordinating political authority to popular democratic consent.

Investigates the emerging, new sexual culture of Iranian youth, in which sexuality represents freedom and engaging in sex can be considered political activism.