Author: Misagh Parsa
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 1989
Total Pages: 372
ISBN-13: 9780813514123
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
Author: Charles Kurzman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2005-09-06
Total Pages: 318
ISBN-13: 9780674039834
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, would remain on the throne for the foreseeable future: This was the firm conclusion of a top-secret CIA analysis issued in October 1978. One hundred days later the shah--despite his massive military, fearsome security police, and superpower support was overthrown by a popular and largely peaceful revolution. But the CIA was not alone in its myopia, as Charles Kurzman reveals in this penetrating work; Iranians themselves, except for a tiny minority, considered a revolution inconceivable until it actually occurred. Revisiting the circumstances surrounding the fall of the shah, Kurzman offers rare insight into the nature and evolution of the Iranian revolution and into the ultimate unpredictability of protest movements in general. As one Iranian recalls, The future was up in the air. Through interviews and eyewitness accounts, declassified security documents and underground pamphlets, Kurzman documents the overwhelming sense of confusion that gripped pre-revolutionary Iran, and that characterizes major protest movements. His book provides a striking picture of the chaotic conditions under which Iranians acted, participating in protest only when they expected others to do so too, the process approaching critical mass in unforeseen and unforeseeable ways. Only when large numbers of Iranians began to think the unthinkable, in the words of the U.S. ambassador, did revolutionary expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A corrective to 20-20 hindsight, this book reveals shortcomings of analyses that make the Iranian revolution or any major protest movement seem inevitable in retrospect.
Author: Heather Wagner
Publisher: Infobase Holdings, Inc
Published: 2021-09-01
Total Pages: 98
ISBN-13: 1646936655
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
Author: John D. Stempel
Publisher:
Published: 2009-09-01
Total Pages: 381
ISBN-13: 9780982505700
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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 chapter 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 att empts 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." New York Times Book Review
Author: Brendan January
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
Published: 2008-01-01
Total Pages: 164
ISBN-13: 0822575213
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
Author: Sepehr Zabir
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2012-04-27
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 1136833005
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
Author: Mehran Kamrava
Publisher:
Published: 2017-01-16
Total Pages: 186
ISBN-13: 9781138223516
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Socio-cultural grievances -- Khomeini's leadership -- 6 Conclusion -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Author: Pouya Alimagham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2020-03-19
Total Pages: 335
ISBN-13: 1108475442
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Examines the last forty years of Iranian and Middle-Eastern history through the prism of the Green Uprisings of 2009.