Soroosh Akef’s Reviews > King of Kings: The Fall of the Shah, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Unmaking of the Modern Middle East > Status Update

"Like economics, revolution is often a matter of faith, a test of the human capacity to believe. Convince enough people that an American dollar or Indian rupee has value, and it does. Convince enough people that a seemingly omnipotent dictator can fall, and he just might."

"In an ironic twist, a few years earlier the shah had insisted France end its visa requirement for Iranian citizens, and his enemies were now taking advantage of this change to fly to Paris unhindered."

"The ayatollah’s litany of syllogisms quickly fell apart if put to reason, but August 1978 was not a reasoned time in Iran."

"One reason diplomatic overtures between nations normally advance in small steps is that a concession, once granted, is almost impossible to withdraw or scale back without giving offense."

"In search of a literary reference that might parallel the rise and fall of the shah, biographers inevitably turn to one Greek myth in particular. It is the story of Icarus, of course, the fable of the brash young man who, given waxen wings, flies too close to the sun and is destroyed."

"[The British and the Soviets] also looked for a suitably pliant figurehead to take the deposed shah’s place. Their first choice was a pampered Qajar princeling living in London, but a complication there was that the man didn’t actually speak the native language."

Imagine that! The course of history would have gone a different direction if one man had bothered to learn his heritage language!