Rise of Modern Despotism in Iran

Ali Rahnema is Professor of Economics at the American University of Paris. He is the author of An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shari‘ati, Behind the 1953 Coup in Iran and Call to Arms: Iran’s Marxist Revolutionaries, which is also published by Oneworld.

‘As creative and sensitive in his interpretations as he is meticulous in his research, Rahnema offers a forensic analysis of the history of the last shah of Iran’s drift into dictatorship, guiding us skilfully through Iran’s political history, from the aftermath of the 1953 royalist coup d’état to the shah’s triumphant, Napoleonic coronation ceremony in 1968. Chronicles of the late monarch’s steady consolidation of power in his own hands and the stifling of dissent are now legion, of course. But rarely has detail been marshalled so effectively in demonstrating these points… Rahnema has written an important and insightful treatment of Iranian political history in the 1950s and 1960s, a period that is often glossed over superficially in the rush to connect the 1953 coup to the shah’s autocracy in the 1970s, but which actually marks a critical moment of transition for Iran.’