Mackey - The Iranians (1996) - Synopsis

UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper : June 26, 2006, 7:00 p.m. Sandra Mackey, The Iranians: Persia, Islam, and the Soul of a Nation (New York: Dutton, 1996). Acknowledgments. W. Scott Harrop (mentioned on title page as “research assistant”) gets “a special note of gratitude” — he and author made five trips to Iran while working on ms. (ix-x). “Inspiration and guiding light” of book: R.K. Ramazani of the Univ. of Virginia (xxi). Author’s Note. Aims at an account of Iran’s history and culture “that elicits perhaps a bit of empathy” (xv). No standard system of transliteration from Farsi exists (xv-xvi). Preface. Geopolitical turmoil in the Persian Gulf (xvii-xx). “Iran constitutes the great strategic prize, or the great strategic peril, of the industrialized West” (xx). Importance of Iran’s oil and gas (xx-xxi). Iran a key to the rivalry with Russia and China (xxi-xxii). Introduction. Tehran’s grand bazaar (12). Iran’s diversity (2-5). Iran’s dual heritage: Persia & Islam (5-7). Arriving in Tehran (7-10). PART I [Pre-modern history of Iran] Ch. 1: The Glory of Persia. No Ruz ceremony (13-14). Zoroastrianism & Persian origins (14-17). Cyrus, Darius; Persepolis (17-31). Seleucids (31-32). Parthians (32-33). Sassanians (33-39). Ch. 2: The Invasion of Islam. Muhammad and Islam (41-45). The Arab conquest of Persia; Ctesiphon falls in 638 (45-48). The succession to Muhammad (49-56). Umayyad dynasty (56-58). New Persian (58-59). Persian-Arab differences expressed in shuubiyah controversy (59). Political fragmentation (60-61). Ferdowsi and the Shahnameh (61-65).

Ch. 3: God and State. Isfahan (6667). Seljuk Turks (67-68). Memory of Mongol invasion of Iran, which wreaked enormous devastation (only in 20th c. did Iran again reach 13th-c. levels of population) deep in Iran’s collective memory (68-72). Creative cultural response: art, poetry (Hafiz, Rumi), Sufism, theology (72-78). Safavids convert Iran to Shiism and bequeath Iran the “bedeviling dichotomy” of king & cleric (78-90). PART II [Fundamentals of Iranian culture] Ch. 4: The Faces of Authority: Father, King, and Cleric. Iranian families highly patriarchal (94-95). The Persian concept of kingship; farr, a sign of favor to one who stands on the side of the good, bestowing charisma (95-102). Shiism’s origins; martyrdom, grief for the human condition (102-06). Twelver Shiism (106-07). Imam Reza, his shrine in Mashhad (107-08). The Mahdi (10810). Concept of taqiyeh, ‘dissimulation of the truth’ (109 n.). Mysticism; “most Iranians seem to be mystics at heart” (111). The clergy (111-14). Qom, education, and the mujtahids, or religiously learned (114-20). PART III [Cultural intrusion of the West] Ch. 5: King and Nation: Iran’s First Revolution. Nadir Shah (d. 1747) (12425). Zands (125). Qajars take Tehran as capital (125-29). Bahai religion (129-30). Years of national humiliation (130-33). Secularist & traditionalist responses to challenge from the West (133-36). The Constitutional Revolution (143-56).

Ch. 6: Reza Shah: To the Glory of the Nation. Train through Alborz mountains to Tehran (157-58). Tehran in 1919 (159-60). Britain, Russia, and oil; British co-opt decadent Qajar dynasty (160-65). Reza Shah (1879-1944), modernizer, founds the Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), modernized, but “lost touch with the Shia aspects of Iranian culture and violated the Persian expectation of just rule” (165-86). Ch. 7: The Shah and the Prime Minister: Iran’s Second Revolution. Shah’s early years in power (187-91). Tudeh, Iranian Communist party; Feb. 4, 1949 assassination attempt on Shah (191-92). Muhammad Mossadeq & the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (193-95). National Front (195-204). 1953 coup overthrows Mossadeq: Operation Ajax (205-08). Unintended consequences of the coup (208-10). Ch. 8: The Shah and the Ayatollah: Persia and Islam. Jalal Al-e Ahmad, literary giant of 1960s, author in 1962 of Gharbzadegi (‘Plagued by the West’) (214-17). Shah’s personal life (217-18). The White Revolution, an exercise in political expediency (220-22). Khomeini and radical clerics damn the White Revolution; Khomeini attacks the Shah, Jun. 3, 1963; rioting (222-27). 1967 coronation of the Shah; death of Ale Ahmad at 46 in 1969 (230-33). 1970: 19 lectures by Khomeini lay out Velayate Faqih, influenced by Aristotle & Plato (233-34). Shah attacks clergy (234-35). 1971 celebration of 2,500th “anniversary of the Iranian nation” (235-38). Ch. 9: The Persian Empire of Muhammad Reza Shah. Shah’s monarchy adopts “the American superpower” as an “engine of modernization” (239-53). The Shah’s person as a factor (254-56). Social strains and inequalities caused by oil boom (256-63). Discontent; Ali Shariati critiques “Westoxification” (263-68).

PART IV [The Revolution and its aftermath] Ch. 10: The Double Revolution. Impressionistic narrative of the Iranian Revolution (271-84). Khomeini’s return, Feb. 1, 1979 (284-86). Development of institutions (286-92). The constitution (292-93). Struggle over the shah; hostage drama (293-99). Khomeini expels Bani-Sadr (299-300). Ch. 11: The Internal and the External: Wars for the Iranian Nation. Mujahedin-e Khalq violent struggle with the regime (303-09; dismissed as a “political option in Iran” [372 n.]). Persian ideal of just society reaching back to Ahura Mazda was the background to Khomeini’s revolution, whose religious militancy lasted about five years, then receded (309-16). IranIraq war, 1980-1988 (316-33). Ch. 12: Islamic Government: Religion, Culture, and Power. Khomeini’s death on Jun. 4, 1989 (33435). Religious zeal immediately following the revolution (335-37). Early economic radicalism moderated (337-43). Hardliners and pragmatists; class differences (344-46). Khomeini’s leadership (34650). Salman Rushdie (350-52). Choice of successor Montazeri revoked (352-54). Ch. 13: The Islamic Republic of Iran: The Failed Quest for Justice. Choosing Khamenei to succeed Khomeini, and elevating him to the rank of ayatollah, showed a victory of pragmatism (356-58). Presidency of Rafsanjani (b. 1934) also pragmatic in nature (358-61). Spring 1992 riots, esp. in Mashhad (361-62). Observations on Iran 1992-1995 (362-70). Society remains inegalitarian (371-32). Regime intolerant of political dissent; has assassinated opposition leaders abroad (372-73). Ali Akbar Saidi Sirjani, intellectual, arrested & dies in prison,

Nov. 1994 (373). Clerics shut others out of government (373-76). Abdul Karim Soroush implicitly attacks velayet e-faqih (376-77). A clerical elite is making same mistake as shah: denying half of Iranian identity “to impose on an essentially cosmopolitan culture its own particular interpretation of Shia Islam (377-80). Epilogue. Dire tone: Iranians “draped in a cloak of tragedy” in “the shambles of the present” (381). Criticizes the U.S. for not having a “realistic policy capable of securing the Persian Gulf” (382). After 1989, Americans, “[p]sychologically needing a new villainous enemy to engage their nation’s moral energies,” focus on Iran (383-84). Self-interested denouncers of Iran use it to justify defense expenditures (384-87). This mirrors attitudes in Iran (387). Iran seeks

security & respect (388). U.S. policy isolates the U.S. and strengthens Iran’s hard-liners (389-90). “[T]he United States policy of containment contravenes its whole reason for being by serving the revolutionary government” (391). As in Vietnam, with Iran “the United States is in danger of creating a monster from an adversary”; because of Shia’s heretical standing in Islam, Iran “cannot lead a unified movement of militant Islam against the West even if it wanted to” (392). Endnotes. 11 pp. Selected Bibliography. 65 books, 27 articles, 8 chapters, 1 poem. Index. 16 pp.