Revolutionary Iran

Revolutionary Iran PDF Author: Michael Axworthy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199322260
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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

Revolutionary Iran

Revolutionary Iran PDF Author: Michael Axworthy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199322260
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book Here

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

Reconstructed Lives

Reconstructed Lives PDF Author: Haleh Esfandiari
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
ISBN: 9780801856198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
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.

The Iranian Revolution at Forty

The Iranian Revolution at Forty PDF Author: Suzanne Maloney
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815737947
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
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.

Foucault in Iran

Foucault in Iran PDF Author: Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452950563
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Were the thirteen essays Michel Foucault wrote in 1978–1979 endorsing the Iranian Revolution an aberration of his earlier work or an inevitable pitfall of his stance on Enlightenment rationality, as critics have long alleged? Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi argues that the critics are wrong. He declares that Foucault recognized that Iranians were at a threshold and were considering if it were possible to think of dignity, justice, and liberty outside the cognitive maps and principles of the European Enlightenment. Foucault in Iran centers not only on the significance of the great thinker’s writings on the revolution but also on the profound mark the event left on his later lectures on ethics, spirituality, and fearless speech. Contemporary events since 9/11, the War on Terror, and the Arab Uprisings have made Foucault’s essays on the Iranian Revolution more relevant than ever. Ghamari-Tabrizi illustrates how Foucault saw in the revolution an instance of his antiteleological philosophy: here was an event that did not fit into the normative progressive discourses of history. What attracted him to the Iranian Revolution was precisely its ambiguity. Theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, this interdisciplinary work will spark a lively debate in its insistence that what informed Foucault’s writing was not an effort to understand Islamism but, rather, his conviction that Enlightenment rationality has not closed the gate of unknown possibilities for human societies.

Days of God

Days of God PDF Author: James Buchan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416597824
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
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.

The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran

The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran PDF Author: Charles Kurzman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674039834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
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.

Postrevolutionary Iran

Postrevolutionary Iran PDF Author: Mehrzad Boroujerdi
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815635741
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The 1979 revolution fundamentally altered Iran’s political landscape as a generation of inexperienced clerics who did not hail from the ranks of the upper class—and were not tainted by association with the old regime—came to power. The actions and intentions of these truculent new leaders and their lay allies caused major international concern. Meanwhile, Iran’s domestic and foreign policy and its nuclear program have loomed large in daily news coverage. Despite global consternation, however, our knowledge about Iran’s political elite remains skeletal. Nearly four decades after the clergy became the state elite par excellence, there has been no empirical study of the recruitment, composition, and circulation of the Iranian ruling members after 1979. Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook provides the most comprehensive collection of data on political life in postrevolutionary Iran, including coverage of 36 national elections, more than 400 legal and outlawed political organizations, and family ties among the elite. It provides biographical sketches of more than 2,300 political personalities ranging from cabinet ministers and parliament deputies to clerical, judicial, and military leaders, much of this information previously unavailable in English. Providing a cartography of the complex structure of power in postrevolutionary Iran, this volume offers a window not only into the immediate years before and after the Iranian Revolution but also into what has happened during the last four turbulent decades. This volume and the data it contains will be invaluable to policymakers, researchers, and scholars of the Middle East alike.

Foucault and the Iranian Revolution

Foucault and the Iranian Revolution PDF Author: Janet Afary
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226007871
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
In 1978, as the protests against the Shah of Iran reached their zenith, philosopher Michel Foucault was working as a special correspondent for Corriere della Sera and le Nouvel Observateur. During his little-known stint as a journalist, Foucault traveled to Iran, met with leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini, and wrote a series of articles on the revolution. Foucault and the Iranian Revolution is the first book-length analysis of these essays on Iran, the majority of which have never before appeared in English. Accompanying the analysis are annotated translations of the Iran writings in their entirety and the at times blistering responses from such contemporaneous critics as Middle East scholar Maxime Rodinson as well as comments on the revolution by feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. In this important and controversial account, Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson illuminate Foucault's support of the Islamist movement. They also show how Foucault's experiences in Iran contributed to a turning point in his thought, influencing his ideas on the Enlightenment, homosexuality, and his search for political spirituality. Foucault and the Iranian Revolution informs current discussion on the divisions that have reemerged among Western intellectuals over the response to radical Islamism after September 11. Foucault's provocative writings are thus essential for understanding the history and the future of the West's relationship with Iran and, more generally, to political Islam. In their examination of these journalistic pieces, Afary and Anderson offer a surprising glimpse into the mind of a celebrated thinker.

Contesting the Iranian Revolution

Contesting the Iranian Revolution PDF Author: Pouya Alimagham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108475442
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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

An Island of Stability

An Island of Stability PDF Author: Mark Thiessen
Publisher: Sidestone Press
ISBN: 9088900191
Category : Iran
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
In 1979, the world was taken by surprise when the Iranian people revolted against their westernized ruling elite, and traded in the Shah for a radical Islamic republic ruled by the most senior Shiite cleric, ayatollah Khomeini. The Islamic revolution of Iran was a breaking point in history. It was the defining moment for Islam in the twentieth century and fuelled the Islamic confidence that has since then only grown. The roots of the revolution were deeply entrenched in the recent history of Iran, yet in the West, almost no one knew what was happening. The rise of ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic republic seemed to have come out of nowhere. In this book, historian Mark Thiessen tries to answer the most important questions of the Islamic revolution. What happened, and where did it come from? This book explores the background of the revolution, and gives a detailed account of its course. It analyzes the rise of Khomeini, and his ideology. By studying the archives of the Dutch embassy in Tehran, Thiessen finally tries to find out about the way the Dutch mission experienced and interpreted the revolution, at a time when the outcome was not yet clear.