The shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, would remain on the throne
for the foreseeable future: This was the firm conclusion of a
top-secret CIA analysis issued in October 1978. One hundred days
later the shah--despite his massive military, fearsome security
police, and superpower support was overthrown by a popular and
largely peaceful revolution. But the CIA was not alone in its
myopia, as Charles Kurzman reveals in this penetrating work;
Iranians themselves, except for a tiny minority, considered a
revolution inconceivable until it actually occurred. Revisiting the
circumstances surrounding the fall of the shah, Kurzman offers rare
insight into the nature and evolution of the Iranian revolution and
into the ultimate unpredictability of protest movements in general.
As one Iranian recalls, "The future was up in the air." Through
interviews and eyewitness accounts, declassified security documents
and underground pamphlets, Kurzman documents the overwhelming sense
of confusion that gripped pre-revolutionary Iran, and that
characterizes major protest movements. His book provides a striking
picture of the chaotic conditions under which Iranians acted,
participating in protest only when they expected others to do so
too, the process approaching critical mass in unforeseen and
unforeseeable ways. Only when large numbers of Iranians began to
"think the unthinkable," in the words of the U.S. ambassador, did
revolutionary expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A
corrective to 20-20 hindsight, this book reveals shortcomings of
analyses that make the Iranian revolution or any major protest
movement seem inevitable in retrospect.
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