Iran: Dictatorship and Development

by Fred Halliday, Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi (Foreword)

The classic, prescient study that anticipated the Iranian Revolution of 1979

It is quite possible that before too long the Iranian people will chase the Pahlavi dictator and his associates from power…

So wrote historian Fred Halliday in the conclusion to this prescient work on Iran in the twentieth century. Just months later the revolution of 1979 saw Shah Reza Pahlavi ousted and an Islamic theocracy established under Ayatollah Khomeini.

Following a contextual study of the origins of the Iranian state, Halliday focuses on the period from the early 1960s to 1978, when protests swept the nation for the first time in fifteen years. Through an interdisciplinary approach, he assesses the prevailing economic, social and political conditions, taking in the nation’s uneven capitalist development, opposition movements and state repression, and the alliance between the Shah and the United States. Even three decades on, this classic study – unique in its proximity to the revolution – offers many insights into why and how the Shah’s reign came to an end.

Genres: Iran, History, Middle East

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Simon Frederick Peter Halliday, FBA (22 February 1946 in Dublin, Ireland – 26 April 2010 in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain) was an Irish writer and academic specialising in International Relations and the Middle East, with particular reference to the Cold War, Iran, and the Arabian peninsula.

Reviews

[Nicholas Woode-Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stopped reading half-way through. Halliday seems to have a decentish knowledge of pre-1979 Iran, but destroys any knowledge he has with twisted analysis based in a fanatical and unbalanced framework. He fundamentally tries to paint Iran in pure class conflict terms, while ignoring religion and culture as a relevant factor. Beyond naive. The book doesn't satisfactorily explain anything that other sources can't explain better.