Iran
Keddie, Religion and Politics in Iran
Nikki Keddie, Religion and Politics in Iran: Shiism from Quietism to Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983).
Rafsanjani Discusses Timing of Next Iranian Offensive
Excerpts from the Friday prayer speech of Hojjat-ol-Islam Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the Imam’s representative to the Supreme Defense Council, and Speaker of the Majles, broadcast on Tehran radio, July 6, 1984.
Chronicle of the Gulf War
The war between Iran and Iraq is approaching its fourth anniversary. In its duration, large numbers of casualties and physical damage, this war already ranks as one of the most serious armed conflicts since World War II. Several Iranian cities and numerous towns have been destroyed, and the city of Basra, Iraq’s second largest, has been under serious threat for a year or more. Both countries have extensive industrial and oil exporting facilities in the war zone which have been heavily damaged in the fighting. Economic losses in both countries are calculated in many tens of billions of dollars. Iran claimed in May 1983 that it had suffered $90 billion in economic damages.
Keddie and Hooglund, The Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic
Nikki R. Keddie and Eric Hooglund, eds., The Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1982).
Book Notes (March/April 1983)
Sepehr Zabih, The Mossadegh Era: Roots of the Iranian Revolution (Chicago: Lakeview Press, 1982).
A sympathetic narrative of Mossadeq’s tenure as prime minister from April 1951 to August 1953, to the point of being unable to criticize some of the National Front’s more serious blunders. Zabih also exhibits a marked hostility to the Tudeh Party. While a number of useful factual details are provided, there is no insight into the social bases of Mossadeq’s support and no apparent understanding of the socioeconomic conditions which led to both the successes and failures of the National Front.
—Eric Hooglund
Keddie, Roots of Revolution
Nikki R. Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (with a section by Yann Richard) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981).
Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions
Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).
A major lesson of the Iranian revolution was how poorly students of the Middle East understood the social and political forces there. This was a country which had been the object of more official and academic study than perhaps any other state in the region except Israel. Yet even four years after the revolution, the dearth of first-rate studies of Iranian society remains apparent.
Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran
Eric Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.)
Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran
Eric Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).
Mossadeq’s Legacy in Iran Today
Hedayat Matin-Daftari, a lawyer who prominently defended human rights in Iran under the Shah, participated actively in the revolution. Matin-Daftari, widely known in Iran as the grandson and political heir of former Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, is a founder and leader of the National Democratic Front, which includes many independent Iranian socialists. Fred Halliday spoke with him in London in late 1981 and the summer of 1982.
Was the clerical dictatorship inevitable?
Workers’ Control After the Revolution
In the months preceeding the February armed insurrection which led to the downfall of the Pahlavi regime, the term shura (council) appeared frequently in the speeches and literature of various political tendencies ranging from the Islamic right to the leftist organizations. The most ardent advocates of the shuras were the left organizations, including the Mojahedin, with an emphasis on workers’ shuras. Now, four years into the Islamic Republic, it is clear that repression was not the only cause of failure of these shuras. The question is to what extent the workers could manage to exert control within an overall framework of social relations.
Bazaar and Mosque in Iran’s Revolution
Ahmad Ashraf is a sociologist who studied and later taught at Tehran University and the New School in New York City. Ashraf is the author of “Historical Obstacles to the Development of the Bourgeoisie in Iran,” Iranian Studies 2/1-2 (Spring and Summer 1969). Ervand Abrahamian spoke with him in New York City in February 1983.
Of the many classes and groups that participated in the Iranian revolution, which have won the fruits of victory?
The Reconstruction Crusade and Class Conflict in Iran
The Islamic Republic’s revolutionary credentials are, apart from foreign policy, largely based on the activities of the so-called revolutionary organizations created shortly after the February 1979 uprising. Operating through these popular organizations, the regime signaled a new beginning for millions of Iranians, especially the young, who had been deprived of meaningful social and political activity. In the last three years, these organizations have been the main channel of upward social mobility for clergy and lay people alike. Much of the course of the Iranian revolution and the social basis of the present regime can be discerned in the records of these new institutions.
“A Dictatorship Under the Name of Islam”
The following interview was conducted with Sheikh Izzedin Husseini during a visit he made to Paris in October 1982. This was the sheikh’s first trip outside Iran, and he had taken advantage of his stay in the French capital to go out and have a look at the city—“unlike Khomeini, when he was here,” the sheikh remarked. Later in 1982, Sheikh Izzedin returned to Iranian Kurdistan, as heavy fighting between the Kurdish peshmergas and government forces continued. —Fred Halliday
What is your view of relations between the Kurds and the central government since the revolution?
Year IV of the Islamic Republic
The fourth year of the Iranian revolution at first sight contained less surprises and reverses of political trend than the three which preceded it. The leading personalities of the regime remained constant, without major divisions or assassinations. Khomeini himself, although apparently physically weaker, continued to exert a strong dominance over those in official positions. There were no major institutional developments, and little progress towards the strengthening of the Islamic Republican Party. Bloody repression and a reign of terror continued, but the opposition sustained its fight against the regime in the main cities and especially in Kurdistan. The war with Iraq dragged on, with immense loss of life on the Iranian side but no great breakthroughs.
Letters (June 1982)
To the editors: This letter is in regard to your most recent issue on Iran, “Khomeini and the Opposition” (MERIP Reports 104). It includes interviews with representatives of the right opposition (Bakhtiar) as well as the left opposition. The latter, we learn, includes the Islamic left (Mojahedin’s Rajavi), independent socialists (Hezarkani) and liberals (Bani-Sadr and Nobari) — all of whom, we know, are affiliated with the National Council of Resistance. Are MERIP readers to assume that Khomeini’s left-wing opposition consists solely of the above? Or is MERIP suggesting that the above comprise the only “significant” opposition?
Letter
To the Editors: I would like to give a correct version of the interview I had with Fred Halliday in March 1980, published in MERIP Reports 98 (July-August 1981). Our conversation was not recorded. Halliday occasionally took notes, and errors and inaccuracies have therefore crept into the interview as published.
“The Only Serious Obstacle Is Khomeini Himself”
I conducted this interview with Manuchehr Hezarkani after his departure from Iran in October 1981. He is a medical doctor trained in France, and has been among the founders of three important Iranian political forces: the Confederation of Iranian Students, which led the opposition in Europe to the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s, the Writers’ Association of Iran, and the National Democratic Front, an independent socialist coalition established immediately after the revolution and driven underground in August 1979 after organizing protests against the imposition of censorship. Since this interview was given, the NDF has officially associated itself with the National Council of Resistance set up by Bani-Sadr and the Mojahedin.
—Fred Halliday
“We Are Living Between Two Tides”
Shokrallah Paknejad, one of the most prominent and far-sighted of modern Iranian socialists, was executed in Evin prison, Tehran, during December 1981. Although his death was not officially announced, his family was given a number for his grave in the cemetery of Behesht-e Zahra, and the prison authorities confirmed the news early in the following month. His death, like that of the Mojahedin leader Mohammad Reza Saadati, and of the Fedayi (Minority) leader Said Sultanpour, came after Paknejad had spent several months in jail without trial or formal charges. He was held as a political hostage and shot in retaliation for opposition activities.
“All the People Who Are Opposed to Our Solution Must Die”
Sadeq Khalkhali is the representative from Qom in the Majles. Although not himself a leading element in the Islamic Republican Party, he has a small following among the extreme right-wing clergy. He wielded considerable influence within the regime, particularly in its formative period, and consistently criticized successive IRP governments as “too soft” toward “counter-revolutionaries.” He was interviewed by an Iranian journalist in the summer of 1980.
Could you tell us when and where you were born, and what kind of Islamic training you have?
I was born in 1926 in Khalkhal, a small town in northwest Iran and I’ve gained the title of Hojjat-ol-Islam.
