MER Article From the Editors (January/February 1989) As President-elect George Bush sits down to lunch with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in early December 1988 to discuss the modalities of Detente II, we wonder what the prospects are for any similar sort of US rapprochement with the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It took 16 years, from The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran Asef Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers’ Control (London: Zed Press, 1987.) The participation of workers in the anti-shah struggle, the rise of factory councils in 1979 and 1980, and their battles with the new Islamic state over workers’ control and other Val Moghadam • 1 min read
MER Article Dorman and Farhang, The US Press and Iran William Dorman and Mansour Farhang, The US Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987). Ervand Abrahamian • 4 min read
MER Article An Islamic State? How applicable are the classic concepts of “state” and “politics” to the world of Islam? The current prominence of Islamic politics and the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iran poses this question anew. Sami Zubaida • 13 min read
MER Article Cover-up and Blowback The House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran and Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair. (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1 Jonathan Marshall • 10 min read
MER Article Reagan's Iran Despite its reputation for having inflexible ideological positions on all foreign policy issues, the Reagan administration actually came to office in January 1981 without a coherent policy for dealing with Iran. At first the new administration was content to let Iran fade from the spotlight of natio Eric Hooglund • 8 min read
MER Article Hiro, Iran Under the Ayatollahs Dilip Hiro, Iran Under the Ayatollahs (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985). Although this book is thin on analysis, it is filled with valuable details about political and economic developments during the first five years of the Islamic Republic. It is thus a good source book for information abo Eric Hooglund • 1 min read
MER Article Beck, The Qashqa'i of Iran Lois Beck, The Qashqa’i of Iran (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986). The Qashqa’is are a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes dispersed in the three southwestern Iranian provinces of Fars, Isfahan, and Bushehr. Historically, they have been one of the most important tribal groups in the Bahman Abdollahi • 2 min read
MER Article Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran Habib Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985). Over the past few years we have witnessed a welcome development in new books on Iran. Instead of general histories, spanning centuries and big events, a number of books attempt to reconstruct small Afsaneh Najmabadi • 4 min read
MER Article Iran's New Grand Strategy The controversy over US-Iranian relations has implications as drastic for the government in Tehran as for that in Washington. The disputed character of the opening to Washington forced Majlis Speaker Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani to go public about the talks in early November. Even Ayatollah Khomeini him Fred Halliday • 5 min read
MER Article The Search for Iran's "Moderates" Revelations about secret talks and arms deals between the United States and Iran have focused attention on the internal politics of the Islamic Republic. The Reagan administration justifies its policy as an 18-month effort to reach out to “moderate elements” in the Iranian government. Eric Hooglund • 7 min read
MER Article Images of Iran Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Learning and Power in Modern Iran (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1985). Donne Raffat, The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi: A Literary Odyssey (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985). Haleh Afshar, editor, Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil (Albany, NY: SUNY Pres Fred Halliday • 10 min read
