The Iranian Revolution Updated Edition

In Revolutionary Iran, Michael Axworthy guides us through recent Iranian history from shortly before the 1979 Islamic revolution through the summer of 2009, when Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran by the hundreds of thousands, demanding free, democratic government. Axworthy explains how that outpouring of support for an end to tyranny in Iran paused and then moved on to other areas in the region like Egypt and Libya, leaving Iran's leadership unchanged. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was a defining moment of the modern era. Its success unleashed a wave of Islamist fervor across the Middle East and signaled a sharp decline in the appeal of Western ideologies in the Islamic world. Axworthy takes readers through the major periods in Iranian history over the last thirty years: the overthrow of the old regime and the creation of the new one; the Iran-Iraq war; the reconstruction era following the war; the reformist wave led by Mohammed Khatami; and the present day, in which reactionaries have re-established control. Throughout, he emphasizes that the Iranian revolution was centrally important in modern history because it provided the world with a clear model of development that was not rooted in Western ideologies. Whereas the world's major revolutions of the previous two centuries had been fuelled by Western, secular ideologies, the Iranian Revolution drew its inspiration from Islam. Revolutionary Iran is both richly textured and from one of the leading authorities on the region; combining an expansive scope with the most accessible and definitive account of this epoch in all its humanity.

This book traces the origins of the Iranian Revolution, from the beginnings of the Pahlavi dynasty through the post Khomeini years.

On January 16, 1979, the shah of Iran left the country he had ruled for more than 37 years. The streets of Tehran, Iran's capital, filled with celebration as the news spread that the hated monarchy had been overthrown. The revolution in Iran, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was sparked by many factors, including a widening gap between the different classes of Iranian society, an aggressive campaign of modernization, an ambitious program of land reform, and the brutality of the shah's oppressive regime. Illustrated with full-color and black-and-white photographs, and accompanied by a chronology, bibliography, and further resources, The Iranian Revolution, Updated Edition explains how the revolution's role in propelling Iran from a monarchy to a theocracy dramatically altered life in Iran, and how its aftermath continues to shape the politics of the Middle East today. Historical spotlights and excerpts from primary source documents are also included.

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.

In this Second Edition of Inside the Iranian Revolution, first published in 1981, author John Stempel describes his experience and insight as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in Tehran from 1975-1979. He then continues with an updated chapters to describe what we can draw from the experiences of three decades ago and apply to the current diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and Iran. "John Stempel is a Foreign Service officer who was stationed in Tehran through the early stages of the Iranian revolution; he left four months before the hostages were taken. Mr. Stempel explains the strength and weaknesses that accumulated through the Shah's reign. Among the latter, he says, was the Shah's alternating between attempts to build genuine political support for his regime and reliance on the repressive tactics of his secret police. Mr. Stempel's concluding chapters are effective. He suggests that the Shah might have survived by being simultaneously more liberal and more ruthless-by offering more than a token of political participation to opposition groups, but then punishing those who would not support the liberalized regime. On the American side, Mr. Stempel points out the slowness to develop intelligence sources among opposition groups and the contradictory signals sent to the Shah. Mr. Stempel also implies that, once the hostage situation reached deadlock, the United States should have come more quickly to the recognition that military force was necessary." -- Amazon.com.

FULLY UPDATED THIRD EDITION, NOW WITH NEW POSTSCRIPT BY ALI ANSARI 'If you were to read only one book on present-day Iran you could not do better than this' Ervand Abrahamian, Times Higher Education For some 40 years the Islamic Republic has resisted widespread condemnation, sanctions, and sustained attacks by Iraq in an eight-year war. Many policy-makers today share a weary wish that Iran would somehow just disappear as a problem. But with Iran's continuing commitment to a nuclear programme and its reputation as a trouble-maker in Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere, this is unlikely any time soon. An unending stream of assertions about the revolution's finally running down continue to be defied by events, and Iran's institutions are still formidable. This is the definitive history of this subject, from one of the world's principal experts.

How Iran—and the world around it—have changed in the four decades since a revolutionary theocracy took power Iran's 1979 revolution is one of the most important events of the late twentieth century. The overthrow of the Western-leaning Shah and the emergence of a unique religious government reshaped Iran, dramatically shifted the balance of power in the Middle East and generated serious challenges to the global geopolitical order—challenges that continue to this day. The seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran later that same year and the ensuing hostage crisis resulted in an acrimonious breach between America and Iran that remains unresolved to this day. The revolution also precipitated a calamitous war between Iran and Iraq and an expansion of the U.S. military's role in maintaining security in and around the Persian Gulf. Forty years after the revolution, more than two dozen experts look back on the rise of the Islamic Republic and explore what the startling events of 1979 continue to mean for the volatile Middle East as well as the rest of the world. The authors explore the events of the revolution itself; whether its promises have been kept or broken; the impact of clerical rule on ordinary Iranians, especially women; the continuing antagonism with the United States; and the repercussions not only for Iran's immediate neighborhood but also for the broader Middle East. Complete with a helpful timeline and suggestions for further reading, this book helps put the Iranian revolution in historical and geopolitical perspective, both for experts who have long studied the Middle East and for curious readers interested in fallout from the intense turmoil of four decades ago.

Misagh Parsa develops a structural theory of the causes and outcomes of revolution, applying the theory in particular to Iran. He focuses on the ends and means of various groups of Iranians before, during, and after the revolution. For Parsa, revolution is not a direct result of ideologies, which may be less important than structural factors such as the nature of the state and the economy, as well as each group's interests, capacity for mobilization, autonomy, and solidarity structures. Existing theories of revolution explain earlier revolutions better than the Iranian revolution. In Iran most of the protest was in urban areas, the peasants never played a major role, and power was transferred to the clergy, not to an intelligentsia. In the 1970s, oil revenues increased, the economy developed rapidly but unevenly, and the state's expanded intervention undermined market forces and politicized capital accumulation. Systematic repression of workers, aid to the upper class, and attacks on secular and religious opposition showed that the state was serving the interests of particular groups. When the state tried to check high inflation by imposing price controls on bazaaris (merchants, shopkeepers, artisans), their protests forced the state to introduce reforms, providing an opportunity for industrial workers, white-collar workers, intellectuals, and the clergy to mobilize against the state. Thus, structural features rendered the state vulnerable to challenge and attack. Parsa's thorough explanation of the collective actions of each major group in Iran in the three decades prior to the revolution shows how a coalition of classes and groups, using mosques as safe gathering places and led by a segment of the clergy, brought down the monarch of 1979. In the years since the revolution, the conflicts that existed before the revolution seem to be reemerging, in slightly altered form. The clergy now has control, and the state has become centrally and powerfully involved in the economy of the country.