Published by IranWire

Iranians marked the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution in 2019. Many an academic conference around the world marked the occasion (including a workshop jointly held by my own New York University and Columbia University), but grand narratives or conclusive accounts of the revolution have been conspicuous in their absence. This is partly explained by the fact that the revolution is a living event, copiously adding to its own history day by day and not yet achieving the distance of a “done” event that makes it a more comfortable topic for historians.

Not one to shy away from such difficulties, Darioush Bayandor, a retired diplomat of Iran from the pre-revolution Pahlavi times, has taken to the topic by penning a book-length study of the revolution. After decades of public service, including post-1979 work within the United Nations system, Baynador has taken to the thorniest issues of Iranian history. In 2010, he wrote a controversial revisionist account of the 1953 coup in Iran, downplaying the United States’ role in the seminal event and emphasizing its domestic leaders (IranWire interviewed him about the book in 2018). Bayandor’s new volume, The Shah, The Islamic Revolution and the United States came out in 2019 and is already receiving its share of praise and criticism (disclaimer: I wrote a scholarly review of the book for the journal Iranian Studies.)

How Did Iran Become an Islamic Republic? [interview with Darioush Bayandor]