A History of Iran

by Michael Axworthy

  34. Ibid., 335–338.

  35. Nikki R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 42–43.

  36. Laurence Kelly, Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran: Alexander Griboyedov and Imperial Russia’s Mission to the Shah of Persia (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2006), 190–194.

  37. Nikki R. Keddie, “The Iranian Power Structure and Social Change 1800–1969: An Overview,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (January 1971): 3–4; The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, 174–181.

  38. Keddie, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan 1796–1925, 17; The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, 174.

  CHAPTER 6—THE CRISIS OF THE QAJAR MONARCHY, THE REVOLUTION OF 1905–1911, AND THE ACCESSION OF THE PAHLAVI DYNASTY

  1. Abbas Amanat, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 252.

  2. Levy, 427.

  3. Ibid., 430.

  4. Haideh Sahim, “Jews of Iran in the Qajar Period: Persecution and Perseverence,” in Religion and Society in Qajar Iran (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 293–310.

  5. Sanasarian, 45–46.

  6. Hasan-e Fasa’i, 256–260.

  7. Amanat, 44, 66.

  8. For a case study of the Qashqai tribe bringing out these points, see Lois Beck, “Women Among Qashqai Nomadic Pastoralists in Iran,” in Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).

  9. Keddie, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan 1796–1925, 26–28; Amanat, 113–117.

  10. The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, 182–183.

  11. Amanat, 428–429; The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, 180.

  12. Ibid., 180.

  13. Ibid., 401–404 (Greaves).

  14. Quoted in Ervand Abrahamian, “The Causes of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 (August 1979): 400.

  15. Nikki R. Keddie, “Sayyid Jamal Al-Din Al-Afghani,” in Pioneers of Islamic Revival (London: Zed Books, 2005), 24 (I drew on Keddie also for the last part of the previous paragraph).

  16. Levy, 397.

  17. The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, 199–200.

  18. Abrahamian, “The Causes of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran,” 404.

  19. Ibid., 408–409.

  20. Levy, 490–491.

  21. Mottahedeh, 221–222; Vanessa Martin, Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), 193–195.

  22. Ibid., 223; Moin, 22.

  23. Levy, 498–507.

  24. The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, 206–207; Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: Islamic Revolution in Iran (London: Oxford University Press, 1988), 46.

  25. Morgan Schuster, The Strangling of Persia (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912), 219.

  26. Ali Ansari, A History of Modern Iran Since 1921: The Pahlavis and After (London: Longman, 2003), 22.

  27. Accessed at http://www.gwpda.org/Dunsterville/Dunsterville_1918.htm.

  28. For the contrary view see Homa Katouzian, “Riza Shah’s Legitimacy and Social Base,” in The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society Under Riza Shah, 1921–1941 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 16–18.

  29. Ansari, A History of Modern Iran Since 1921, 21–22.

  30. Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 165; Arjomand, 60; Keddie, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan 1796–1925, 74.

  31. Wright, 181; Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, 233; also Keddie, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan 1796–1925, 79; Michael Zirinsky, “Imperial Power and Dictatorship: Britain and the Rise of Reza Shah, 1921–1926,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (November 1992): passim.

  32. Arjomand, 62–63.

  CHAPTER 7—THE PAHLAVIS AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1979

  1. Vita Sackville-West, Passenger to Teheran (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 1991; 1st ed., 1926), 100–101; Keddie, Qajar Iran and the Rise of Reza Khan 1796–1925, 79.

  2. Stephanie Cronin, “Paradoxes of Military Modernisation,” in The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society Under Riza Shah, 1921–1941 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 44 and passim.

  3. Issawi, 376.

  4. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 143.

  5. Issawi, 375–379.

  6. Rudolph Matthee, “Education in the Reza Shah Period,” in The Making of Modern Iran (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 140 and passim.

  7. Kamran Talattof, The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 53–62. The story that all Hedayat’s works had been banned by Ahmadinejad was carried in the Guardian in an article by Robert Tait on November 17, 2006, but when I visited Iran in November 2007, I was told that only one of his works had been banned.

  8. Yarshater, Persian Literature, 336–380.

  9. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 143; Katouzian, “Riza Shah’s Legitimacy and Social Base,” 29–30.

  10. Ansari, A History of Modern Iran Since 1921, 56–59.

  11. Ibid., 68.

  12. Katouzian, “Riza Shah’s Legitimacy and Social Base,” 26–32.

  13. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 163 (the shooting) and 158–161; Ansari, A History of Modern Iran Since 1921, 64.

  14. Ibid., 164.

  15. Katouzian, “Riza Shah’s Legitimacy and Social Base,” 32–33.

  16. Levy, 544–546.

  17. Accessed at http://users.sedona.net/~sepa/sardarij.html and www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=253162&ct=285846.

  18. Ansari, A History of Modern Iran Since 1921, 110.

  19. Ibid., 78–85.

  20. Homa Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat: The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 13–14; Katouzian rather dryly suggests that the reorientation would have shifted as easily in the other direction if Axis powers had occupied Iran.

  21. Mottahedeh, 98–105; Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 125–126.

  22. Ibid., 164.

  23. Moin, 105.

  24. Keddie, Modern Iran, 130; Daryiush Bayandor’s researches toward a new book on the coup argue plausibly that the role of the secret services was rather less significant than previously thought and that of the clergy and their bazaari supporters was rather more significant.

  25. Mottahedeh, 287–323; George Morrison, ed., History of Persian Literature from the Beginnings of the Islamic Period to the Present Day (Leiden, UK: Brill Academic Publishers, 1981), 201–202 (Kadkani); for Simin Daneshvar’s revelations, see Talattof, 160.

  26. Ansari, A History of Modern Iran Since 1921, 133.

  27. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 420.

  28. Issawi, 375–382.

  29. Quoted in Ali Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change (London: Chatham House, 2000), 38–39.

  30. Keddie, Modern Iran, 145; Robert Graham, Iran: The Illusion of Power (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 69.

  31. Moin, 107–108.

  32. Ibid., 123.

  33. Ibid., 1–8.

  34. The best account of such an education is Mottahedeh’s brilliant Mantle of the Prophet.

  35. Moin, 42–44.

  36. Ibid., 64.

  37. Keddie, Modern Iran, 147.

  38. Ibid., 152.

  39. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 535–536.

  40. Keddie, Modern Iran, 158.

  41. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 430–431.

  42. James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tregedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 379–382.

  43. Farah Azari, “Sexuality and Women’s Oppression in Iran,” in Women of Iran: The Conflict with Fundamentalist Islam (London: Ithaca Press, 1983), 130–132
and passim, drew attention to the sexual aspect of the revolution in an insightful chapter, and Mottahedeh, 273, makes a similar point.

  44. Mottahedeh, 270–272.

  45. Quoted in Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 419.

  46. Ansari, A History of Modern Iran Since 1921, 173.

  47. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 183–184.

  48. Mottahedeh, 328.

  49. For a vivid picture of the lives of the Jews of Shiraz in this period, see Laurence D. Loeb, Outcaste: Jewish Life in Southern Iran (New York: Routledge, 1977).

  50. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 500–504.

  51. Moin, 152–156.

  52. Momen, 256–260.

  53. Keddie, “Sayyid Jamal Al-Din Al-Afghani”, 236

  54. Ibid., 208–245; Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 464–473.

  55. Moin, 186.

  56. This judgement is based on contributions to the Gulf 2000 Internet forum in the spring of 2007; particularly on a contribution from Ali Sajjadi, who investigated the case for a Radio Farda report.

  57. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 510–513.

  58. Ibid., 519.

  CHAPTER 8—IRAN SINCE THE REVOLUTION: ISLAMIC REVIVAL, WAR, AND CONFRONTATION

  1. Or alternatively, hich ehsasi nadaram—“I have no feelings.”

  2. See Chapter 3.

  3. With the partial exception, in the context of ghuluww rhetoric, of Shah Esma‘il I (see Chapter 4).

  4. I am grateful to Baqer Moin for this quotation, and his thoughts on this subject, and the insights in his book Khomeini.

  5. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 526–529.

  6. Moin, 207–208.

  7. Roy 1994, 173, claims that none of the most senior ayatollahs (the grand ayatollahs) supported the velayat-e faqih in 1981—except Montazeri, Khomeini’s pupil.

  8. Moin, 214.

  9. Momen, 294.

  10. Ansari, A History of Modern Iran Since 1921, 233.

  11. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 1–2.

  12. Moin, 282–283; Chris Rundle, From Colwyn Bay to Kabul: An Unexpected Journey (Stanhope: 2004), 146–150.

  13. Quoted in Moin, 275–276.

  14. Momen, 298–299.

  15. Ansari, A History of Modern Iran Since 1921, 244–245.

  16. For further exposition of Soroush’s ideas on this point, see Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy, 75.

  17. See Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat, 5–6, and Mottahedeh, 383–384.

  18. See the interview published in the Mideast Mirror, January 20, 2000, 15, among other statements.

  19. Moin, 279.

  20. David Menashri, Post-Revolutionary Politics in Iran: Religion, Society and Power (London: Routledge, 2001), 35–38.

  21. See Anoush Ehteshami, After Khomeini: The Iranian Second Republic (London: Routledge, 1995), passim; and Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy, 52–53.

  22. Keddie, Modern Iran, 264.

  23. Ibid., 264–266.

  24. See also Ziba Mir-Hosseini, “Women, Marriage and the Law in Iran,” in Women in the Middle East (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1992).

  25. 2003 figures—Keddie, Modern Iran, 286.

  26. Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), gives thought-provoking analysis on the theme of gender in Iranian history.

  27. Azadeh Kian-Thiébaut, “From Motherhood to Equal Rights Advocates: The Weakening of the Patriarchal Order,” Iranian Studies 38 (March 2005): passim.

  28. Brought out most clearly in the comparative surveys carried out by Mansour Moaddel, which also back up Kian-Thiébaut—for example, 49 percent of Iranians surveyed believed love was more important than parental approval when marrying (41 percent thought the contrary), where in Iraq the split was 71 percent for parental approval and 26 percent for love. In Saudi Arabia, the tallies were 50 percent for parental approval and 48 percent for love. Surveys are accessible at www.psc.isr.umich.edu/research/tmp/moaddel_values_survey.html.

  29. The interview is discussed in detail in Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy, 133–137.

  30. Sanasarian, Religious Minorities in Iran, 47, 47n; 48, 48n. Others have suggested that the number of Jews in 1948 may have been as high as 140,000 to 150,000.

  31. Shirin Ebadi said something very much to this effect—that one revolution is enough—in a speech she gave at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival in May 2006.

  32. For discussion of the crackdown on the free press in the summer of 2000, see Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy, 211–217.

  CHAPTER 9—FROM KHATAMI TO AHMADINEJAD, AND THE IRANIAN PREDICAMENT

  1. For example, 27 percent of Iranians surveyed by Mansour Moaddel took part in religious services once a week or more, compared with 33 percent in Iraq, 42 percent in Egypt, 44 percent in Jordan, and 45 percent in the United States. Fifty-five percent of Iranians thought Western cultural invasion was a very serious problem, compared with 64 percent of Egyptians, 68 percent of Iraqis, 70 percent of Saudis, and 85 percent of Jordanians. Asked whether they were primarily Muslim or country nationalists, 61 percent of Iranians said Muslim and 34 percent said nationalist. In Iraq it was 63 percent Muslim and 23 percent nationalist; in Jordan, 72 percent Muslim and 15 percent nationalist; in Saudi Arabia, 75 percent Muslim and 17 percent nationalist; and in Egypt, 79 percent Muslim and 10 percent nationalist. In Iran 60 percent thought men made better political leaders than women, compared with 72 percent in Saudi Arabia, 84 percent in Egypt, 86 percent in Jordan, 87 percent in Iraq, and 22 percent in the United States. However, other findings suggested that, perhaps because they have had more experience with it, Iranians were less enthusiastic about democracy as the best form of government than others in the region. Accessed at www.psc.isr.umich.edu/research/tmp/moaddel_values_survey.html.

  2. For details of Iranian support against the Taliban, see the report from James Dobbins (leader of the U.S. delegation to the talks in Bonn that set up the coalition), Washington Post, July 22, 2007.

  3. Translated transcript from Mideastwire.com.

  4. Poll by Baztab.com; reported to Gulf 2000 (a Web discussion forum) by Meir Javedanfar.

  5. Katouzian, Iranian History and Politics; see also Mansour Moaddel, Islamic Modernism, Nationalism and Fundamentalism: Episode and Discourse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

  6. For these, and for a brilliant snapshot of the general attitudes of at least some young Iranians, see Nasrin Alavi, We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs (London: Portobello Books, 2005); also R. Varzi, Warring Souls: Youth, Media and Martyrdom in Post-Revolution Iran (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

  7. One of those historical facts that modern Britons, left bereft of their own history by their education system, often forget to remember.

  8. One hundred seventy in the United States and seventeen in Britain. Figures taken from BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6351257.stm, and the Daily Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/25/wirq225.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/25/ixnews.html.

  9. On July 15, 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported, on the strength of comments by (anonymous) senior U.S. military officers, and others, that although the finger had been pointed at Iran and Syria, the largest number (45 percent) of foreign suicide bombers and insurgents in Iraq were from Saudi Arabia (plus 15 percent from Syria and Lebanon, and 10 percent from North Africa—figures for Iran were not given, presumably because they were off the bottom end of the scale). Suicide attacks have systematically killed larger numbers of civilians and soldiers in Iraq than other kinds of attacks, and they have been predominantly, if not entirely, carried out by Sunni insurgents. The same source claimed that 50 percent of all Saudi fighters in Iraq came there as suicide bombers. The article commented: “The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key ally that at best has
not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi civilians and the Shiiteled government in Baghdad.”

  10. In April 2007 the Iranian Supreme Court overturned murder verdicts against a group of Basijis convicted of killing people they regarded as immoral in the southeastern city of Kerman (in 2002). The victims included a couple that were betrothed, who had been abducted while on their way to view a house they had been hoping to live in together after their marriage. The Supreme Court accepted the men’s defense that they believed they had been justified (on the basis of guidance from Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi), after giving warnings, in killing people they regarded as immoral. It was thought that there could have been as many as eighteen such killings in Kerman, and similar murders in Mashhad and Tehran as well (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6557679.stm).

  11. The formula had been used before by Khomeini and others, and had been translated by representatives of the Iranian regime as “wiped off the map.” Some of the dispute that has arisen over what exactly Ahmadinejad meant by it has been rather bogus. When the slogan appeared draped over missiles in military parades the meaning was pretty clear. It was partly to address Ahmadinejad’s remarks, but also because it has often been passed over, that I have paid some moderate attention to the history of Iran’s Jews in this book.

  12. Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History. (London: Black Swan, 1999), 639.

  EPILOGUE

  1. Ben Rhodes, “On Nowruz, President Obama Speaks to the Iranian People,” The White House, http://www.whitehouse.gov/Nowruz/.

  2. Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, “Iran Security Forces Retreat as Huge Numbers of Mourners Gather at Cemetery,” Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2009, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-protests31-2009jul31,0,7400028.story.

  3. Borzou Daraghi, “Iran: Ayatollah Calls Government a ‘Military Regime,’ Calls for Clerical Revolt,” Babylon and Beyond (blog), Los Angeles Times, September 14, 2009, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2009/09/iran-grand-ayatollah-calls-government-a-military-regime.html.

  4. Robert Tait, “Iran Hit by New Clashes as Crowds Protest During Religious Ceremonies,” The Guardian, December 26, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/27/iran-protests-riot-police-shots.