Iran -- from Palace to Prison: Inside the Iranian Revolution by Ehsan Naraghi and Translated by Nilou Mobasser
1995; Middle East Institute; Volume: 49; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1940-3461
Autores Tópico(s)Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
ResumoFrom Palace to Prison: Inside the Iranian Revolution, by Ehsan Naraghi. Tr. by Nilou Mobasser. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994. ix + 270 pages. Chron. to p. 276. Index to p. 283. $28.95. Our library of books about Iran and the Iranian Revolution continues to expand as hundreds of scholars, journalists, politicians, and other observers record their interpretations for posterity. Generally, there are two categories of writing: serious scholarly analyses and personal recollections and reminiscences. These two categories can be further divided those books of little value and those of serious quality. The former include superficial, biased apologias and studies that repeat the tired old conventional wisdom about Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and post-revolutionary Iran. Unfortunately, the books that deform and mislead outnumber the volumes that inform and enlighten by factor of five to one. Fortunately, Ehsan Naraghi's From Palace to Prison is personal account that belongs to the minority category. It provides number of profound observations that go far to explain the revolution and subsequent events in Iran. Ehsan Naraghi is French-educated, fiercely independent scholar-observer who knew how to survive in the Pahlavi political pressure cooker while at the same time sharply criticizing the system from within. He was at his best when he directed Tehran University's Institute for Social Studies and Research in the 1960s. At the Institute, he provided an academic protective umbrella for dozens of bright. young Iranian social scientists who produced important, documented studies of the ills of Iranian society. If these studies had been seriously heeded by the shah's government, Iran's explosive political history of the past two decades might possibly have been different. If the US government had known of these studies (all published in Persian), the subsequent tragedy of US-Iran relations might have been averted. Although distrusted by the shah's secret police (SAVAK), Naraghi had access to Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda, to Queen Farah, and, at the very end, to the shah himself. The first part of From Palace to Prison is an account of Naraghi's eight audiences with the shah during the last hundred days of Pahlavi rule. It is in these reconstructed interviews that Naraghi provides his cogent analysis of the shah's Iran. According to Naraghi, the three major causes of the Iranian revolution were gross inequality, corruption and economic nepotism, and regime brutality. Such problems generated a host of grievances which trickle[d] river swollen by numerous small streams of discontent that eventually overflowed into an ocean of bitterness (p. 12). In framing his argument, Naraghi provides much valuable material about the Pahlavi Foundation, SAVAK, the financial shenanigans of the shah's brothers and sisters, and the courageous, but futile, attempts by Queen Farah to stem the corruption and to moderate the oppression. Naraghi blames the shah for unleashing the religious opposition that provided the political momentum that led to the Revolution. He traces this anticlerical action to 1962 when the shah abusively and abrasively attacked the religious leaders in the holy shrine in Qom. Although this reviewer would identify the catalyzing event to be the regime's brutal murder of Ayatollah Saidi in 1970, the basic argument is sound. …
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