I’d like something that goes over the American interference in the region, debunks myths about the Shah’s government (for example, I’ve seen people here mention that only the wealthy dressed like westerners) and explains how the Iranian revolution happened.
Is Targeting Iran any good? I know Chomsky has some shit takes but he usually does a good job dismantling US narrative & propaganda
All The Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer covers the1953 coup and is pretty good (afaik)
Ervand Abrahamian’s works are the best scholarship on Iran, he contextualizes the revolution and Khomeini in its historical and ideological context as a synthesis of Islam, Marxism, and political structures of Gaullist France. He deconstructs the idea of Iran as a totalitarian theocracy and shows it’s much closer to like, Sukarno’s Indonesia than any other country. I’d recommend A Modern History of Iran and also Essays on the Islamic Republic .
100%! he’s by far the best English language Iranian historian.
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everyone should read this short article Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived
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Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic is a great insight into Khomeini’s ideology and the founding ideology of the state. he refutes the idea of Iran as a fundamentalist theocracy and shows that, in fact, it’s a very practical bourgeois state
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The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations is probably what OP is looking for
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Iran Between Two Revolutions also covers the coup, but describes in-depth the communist Tudeh party (and other leftist movements) and how they were sabotaged by the West
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debunks myths about the Shah’s government
What myths? The Shah was supported by the US and UK. The CIA orchestrated the 1953 coup where they overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh to give power to the Shah. The Shah was then overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
CIA declassified documents which show it was directly responsible for planning and orchestrating the 1953 coup: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/
Raya Dunayevskaya and Marxist-Humanists in general have good takes on the Iranian revolution:
https://newsandletters.org/from-the-writings-of-raya-dunayevskaya-contradictions-in-iranian-revolution/
https://newsandletters.org/from-the-writings-of-raya-dunayevskaya-iran-unfoldment-of-and-contradictions-in-revolution-parts-iii-and-iv/
https://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1979/iran-revolution.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1981/iran.htmspoiler
(Might get flak for this cause Raya/JFT/Marxist-Humanists are “Western Marxists”, but whatever, I like her)
Expanding on the example I gave:
In reddit there’s pictures of Iran before the revolution (see: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4265905) often posted, with the implication being that this was life in Iran. This was my idea as well, even though I’ve left reddit for about a year now, because it’s one of the common historic trivia or info that gets posted there.
However the commenters on lemmygrad say that image is not representative of how Iran was, so if they’re correct that’s one debunked myth (for me). Info like that is what I was looking for.
Thanks for the resources, I’ll check them out.
Not sure when those pictures are from; if I were to venture a guess, I’d say they’re from the post-coup era. Mossadegh’s “crime” was that he dared to nationalise Iran’s oil. This angered the Americans and Brits. I assume that after the coup, the Shah instituted social reforms to appease the well-off Iranians, and to show the Western world how progessive he/they are, while he sold the control of Iran’s natural resources to Western petroleum companies.
Haven’t read a book on Iran yet but /u/SeventyTwoTrillion’s Hexbear reading list has books on the history of various countries and lists these for Iran:
- All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer (2003).
- The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations by Ervand Abrahamian (2013).
- Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism by Ramin Mazaheri (2020).
A section of The Darker Nations by Prashad is about Iran.
It’s a bit lib, but reading Persepolis gave me my first grasp of the history.
Is Targeting Iran any good?
yes. absolutely
I know Chomsky has some shit takes
sectarianism. chomsky is our god. he’s not perfect but he’s a golden god
sectarianism
This is Lemmygrad
Pretty sure they were just joking.
Who would consider Chomsky to be their god? That’d be deeply unserious.
You forget this is lemmygrad
No left unity is on the table…
That being said, I agree, Chomsky could be informative in this pursuit
