Pahlavi Research Articles

روشنفکران و جنبش‌های اجتماعی در ایران قرن چهاردهم: روایت یک قرن فراز و فرود

This article focuses on the place of intellectuals in the main social movements over the course of a century in Iran. Four social movements have been chosen according to their importance during this period: the post-World War II nationalist movement that gathered around the nationalist government of Mossadegh; the anti-monarchy social movement (1978-79) associated with the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty and the advent of the Islamic Republic in Iran; the Green movement, which organized around electoral integrity in 2009, and the popular revolts of 2017 and 2019, which addressed governmental corruption, democracy, and the future of the country. The article analyzes how the role of intellectuals has evolved through contemporary history in Iran. As such it traces the course from a nationalist social movement (1950-53), in which intellectuals had a significant role, up to more recent popular revolts (2017-19) against poverty, unemployment, and state corruption, in which the effective participation of intellectuals was minimal. The article proposes the following tripartite typology of modern Iranian social movements in relation to intellectuals: the category of social movements with "prophetic" intellectuals; the category of social movements which give birth to their own intellectuals on the spot; the category of social movements which are devoid of intellectuals. The article focuses on the crisis of intellectuals in recent social movements in Iran.

Rereading Clergy’s Stances on the Power Transition from the Qajars to the Pahlavi Dynasty

این بررسی می‌خواهد مواضع روحانیت را در فرآیند انتقال قدرت از قاجاریه به پهلوی بازشناسد. هدف تحقیق کندوکاوی ژرف در باب موجبات درگیری این قشر دیرپا در پهنة سیاست ایران از پیدایش سردار سپه تا برآمدن پادشاهی پهلوی است. پرسش بنیادین چنین است که آیا روحانیت در برکناری سلطنت قاجار اثراتی اساسی و ممتاز داشت؟ در پاسخ، با بهره‌گیری از روش تحلیل تاریخی و بر پایة فرآورده‌های پژوهش، می‌توان گفت رضاخان در روند ریشه‌کن‌سازی قاجارها سه مرحله را از سر گذرانید. در دو مرحلة آغازین، بیشتر کنش‌های روحانیت بی‌طرفانه یا انتقادی بود. ولی از فرجامِ بحران خوزستان، یعنی آغاز واپسین مرحله‌، وضع دگرگون شد. دیدگاه مراجع که بر لزوم تثبیت قدرتی متمرکز برای حفظ کیان مذهب تأکید می‌کرد، غلبه یافت و بهسازی مناسبات با سید حسن مدرس، رضاخان را در موقعیت برتر سیاسی قرار داد. پیوند این ‌هر دو تأثیری شگرف بر کامیابی آتی‌ او بخشید.

Panopticon surveillance on Iranian women during the Pahlavi era, with concentration on the visibility and invisibility paradigms: the case of Dead End by Parviz Sayyad (1977)

ABSTRACT The essay tends to evaluate the surveillance mechanisms regarding the social status of women during the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty and follows its representation in Dead End by Parviz Sayyad as a critical cinematic work. Reaching this objective, initially, the concepts of visibility and invisibility are studied as two main principles in the status of prisoner and guard of the Panopticon idea. Ideas of visibility and invisibility are investigated regarding women’s situation in modern Iran in order to reach an analysis about panopticon function applied by the Pahlavi government on Iranian women. Eventually, concentrating on Dead End, panopticon attitude toward the female protagonist in the film is studied to discover latent impalpable mechanisms of power (SAVAK’s agent). The survey reveals how the Pahlavi government defines a woman, who has become visible through surveillance policies, in the panopticon discipline structure and turns her to a deceived object for the government’s security aims.

Tradition-led regeneration of contemporary neighbourhoods’ spatial structures: A case study of Tehran City, Iran

Over the past decades, modernisation has been viewed by some as one of the greatest dangers to urban life, having altered neighbourhoods dramatically. The most significant problem is the destruction of traditional neighbourhoods. The authors propose that a viable solution to this problem is to regenerate the spatial structure of contemporary neighbourhoods using traditional styles and elements. The transition from traditional to modern society has created numerous styles and challenges in the Iranian urban landscape system; in particular, the city of Tehran is experiencing considerable changes in terms of visual appeal and connection to the environment. In this paper, the principles and models for traditional neighbourhoods in the city of Tehran were studied and grouped into three categories: form, function and meaning, as a guide to regenerate the spatial structure of contemporary neighbourhoods. Three neighbourhoods from different eras were selected: Oudlajan, Shahrara and Shahid Bagheri, from the Qajar period (1789–1925), the Pahlavi era (1925–79) and the modern era, respectively. Spatial models were extracted by analysing the traditional urban design of the city of Tehran in three time periods alongside patterns and principles used in the regeneration process. Following this, criteria and principles were proposed for tradition-led regeneration of the spatial structures of contemporary neighbourhoods by form (physical form system/urban landscape), function (land use system and activity/movement and access system) and meaning/perception (frameworks for public spaces).

A Ghoul at the Gates: Natural Gas Energy and the Environment in Pahlavi Iran, 1960–1979

AbstractIn the 1960s and 1970s, Iranian officials embraced natural gas as a new energy source for their rapidly industrializing society, seeing it as a readily available substitute for the lucrative oil products their country's citizens were consuming in increasing amounts. Reacting to the growing concentrations of smoke and haze in cities, and unable to alter the mountainous terrain and semiarid climate that intensified them, gas seemingly promised to be a technical savior upon which to build an Iran as environmentally sound as it was prosperous, technologically sophisticated, and energy hungry. Pahlavi-era developmental choices were shaped by officials’ concern for deteriorating environmental conditions, the natural factors that compounded the issue, and the interests of private industry. Using archival and published materials collected in Iran, this article focuses on urban air pollution and the fitful efforts to mitigate it through the conversion of industrial facilities to gas.

From Fallen Women to Citizen Mothers: Gendered Carcerality in Pahlavi Iran

Modern carcerality in Iran, with its attendant systems of surveillance, policing, and mass imprisonment, was a gendered project from the outset. In turn, the new modern prisons of the Pahlavi era (1925–79) provoked gendered anxieties about seemingly rising rates of female and child criminality, the deteriorating family unit, and the inherent sin and vice of life in a modern city. In general, it is difficult to overstate the wholesale changes that the modern carceral system has brought to Iran. The establishment of modern prisons, an effort begun in the first decades of the 20th century, has led to an enduring transformation in social worlds for Iranians of all genders. For much of Iran's pre-20th-century history, forced confinement of any kind was a relative rarity, legal practices and norms were diffuse and diverse, and long periods of incarceration were virtually nonexistent. The conceit of prisoner reform central to the modern penitentiary model—wherein centralized modern governments imagine prisons as rehabilitative spaces in which socially undesirable “criminals” can be reformed into good “citizens”— is nowhere found in the archive of Iran's pre-20th-century punishments.

Women’s social movements and the classification of feminism in Iran

This article is devoted to the analysis of the development of women’s social movements in the Islamic Republic of Iran. When we talk about the women’s movement, we are talking about several identities, each of which has its own manifestation. In addition, all women and even men who, in one way or another, consider themselves participants in the women’s movement and adhere to different feminist approaches, have many other identities. The Iranian women’s movement is not exception to this principle and has been formed since the Qajar dynasty (1725-1996). During the Pahlavi era (1925-1978), the women’s movement developed within the framework of the state approach, and after the Islamic Revolution in Iran during the Islamic Republic of Iran (from 1978 to the present), “secular feminism” developed along with Islamic identity and “Islamic feminism”. Iranian society has traditionally been a male (patriarchal) society, and under the influence of religion, patriarchy has grown significantly. Therefore, the women’s social movement in Iran emerged as a movement for equal rights for men and women, primarily for the right to education and the right to vote. The second stage in the development of the women’s movement also focuses on women’s rights and women’s emancipation and actualizes such issues as the right to divorce and opposition to the forced wearing of the hijab (veil), as well as other issues related to the dignity of a woman as a free person. At the same time, a distinctive feature of the development of women’s social movements in Iran was that along with the social dimension of this phenomenon, a political one also emerged, since the Iranian government at different stages opposed the Feminist agenda.

Иранская монархическая эмиграция как критик политического режима Исламской Республики Иран

Introduction. The author analyzes the features of the ideological confrontation and conflict between Iranian emigrant communities and the political elites of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The position of Iranian emigration is analyzed in the context of the activity of the Pahlavi dynasty representatives. The purpose of the article is to analyze the ideo- logical confrontation between the two projects of Iranian political identities in contexts of criticism of the clerical regime of Iran by representatives of the Iranian political emigration of Pahlavi dynasty. Methods. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of analyzing intellectual communities with the elements of the universal method of his- toricism and a comparative approach, which make it possible to identify and systematize the main features of the process of ideological confrontation between the Iranian elites and their critics from the Iranian political monarchist emigration. Scientific novelty of the study. On the one hand, the article analyzes the ideological confrontation between the clerical political regime of Iran and its critics from the communities of monarchical emi- gration as a state of remote or delayed conflict. On the other hand, the author analyzes this ideological controversy as a conflict not between society and power, but between two versions of political power: if the Iranian regime controls the political discourse in the country in fact, then its monarchist oppo- nents in exile attribute to it symbolic legitimacy and continuity with the tradition of Iranian statehood. Results. The main directions and features of criticism of the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran by Iranian political emigrants of a monarchist orientation are analyzed; features of political ideol- ogy are shown; the forecast of the development of the political activity of the Iranian emigration is presented. Conclusions. The author believes that 1) the mo- narchical Iranian emigration is one of the centers of attraction for emigrants from Iran in Western Europe and North America; 2) the ideologists and theorists of the monarchical emigration are consist- ent critics of the political regime established in Iran in 1979; 3) criticism of the clerical, anti-secular and undemocratic regime of Tehran, its accusations of violating human rights and freedoms in in the cen- tre of the political doctrine of the Iranian emigra- tion; 4) the political ideal of emigration is a secular and democratic Iran, where rights and freedoms are respected, and religious minorities have equal rights with the Shiite Iranian majority.

The plans and obstacles of the first Pahlavi government to implement compulsory military service in Fars state(1926-1929)

The plans and obstacles of the first Pahlavi government to implement compulsory military service in Fars state(1926-1929)

WOMEN AS A POLITICAL SYMBOL IN IRAN: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE BETWEEN PAHLAVI REGIME AND ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

Iranian women have been one of the most important topics of the socio-political discussions after the Iranian Islamic revolution. This article adopts a comparative perspective through focusing on the Shah regime and the post-revolution era in order to figure out what has been changed in Iranian women rights after the Islamic Revolution. It is argued that in both periods, women were used as a political symbol by the regimes; a symbol of modernity during the Pahlavi regime and a symbol of Islam after the Revolution. It is considered that women's rights discussions, which focus only on the outward appearance of women, lead to the neglect of many important issues. It is also demonstrated in the study that the leaders who have ruled the country since the Iranian revolution have different attitudes towards women's rights. After the Islamic revolution of Iran, women's rights have gone back and forth depending on the visions of the presidents on women issues.

The Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and its Global Entanglements, ed. Roham Alvandi

Iran under the Pahlavi regime has often been examined through the prism of national concerns and interests, even when its relationships with the outside world are studied. Roham Alvandi’s aim as editor of this book is to write Iran into global history; in other words, to examine the history of the Pahlavi regime within the transnational context, considering that Iran under the Pahlavis was, according to Alvandi, for the first time experiencing what he calls ‘global interconnectedness’. The major modernisation projects, developments and events under the Shah, until his toppling by the 1979 Revolution, are examined by the contributors to the volume from this perspective. In his rich and engaging essay, Ramin Nassehi offers a detailed examination of the ‘developmentalist’ project of ministers who were influenced by schemes of economic development at work in Latin America and East Asia. Nassehi also touches upon the very important point of the impact...

Police Force in the Formation of the Modern State: Development and Transformation of the Police Force in Iran

Public security was unable to achieve any systematic order until the start of urbanization. With the formation of modern cities, the need to ensure the security of people and their living spaces were met primarily by city administrators and then by regular internal security organizations. This article discusses Iran’s security system as it existed in the pre-modern period and the internal security strategies that transformed in line with the modern understanding of the state. The concept of internal security in Iran has gone through the following four main phases: (1) military methods that had been applied by the senior administrators of the states that had ruled the region before the Qajar Dynasty, (2) the first professionalization that saw the Nazmiyya Organization established in the Qajar Dynasty through efforts to separate policing from military service, (3) the re-militarization of internal security services and focus on intelligence activities during the Pahlavi Dynasty that had been established after the Rıza Han coup, and (4) the ideological appearance of the police organization accompanied by the theo-political orientation that emerged after the 1979 Revolution. This text discusses these four phases in detail.

Bushehr Etemadieh Factory and its Impact on the Socio-economic Structure of Bushehr in the Pahlavi Era

Bushehr Etemadieh Factory and its Impact on the Socio-economic Structure of Bushehr in the Pahlavi Era

The Role of the Mojahedin Khalq Before and After the Islamic Revolution of Iran

The Mojahedin Khalq Organization was formed in 1965 with an organizational and religious approach and was one of the political groups that fought against both the Pahlavi regime and the Islamic Republic. The main purpose of this group was to oppose the government and their armed methods. In 1971, after the execution of the organization's main leaders, members of the organization came to the conclusion that Islam did not meet the organization's goals for guerrilla and armed operations, and that Marxism could replace Islamic ideology, which were divided into Marxist and religious branches. The religious groups of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization joined Imam Khomeini in 1975, but the Marxist branch, led by Rajavi, fought against the revolution with the idea of seeking supremacy. The main question of this research is how the Mojahedin Khalq Organization has changed its ideological positions and approach to Marxism. In response to this question, it is hypothesized that the Marxist course of the members of the organization gradually began from September 1941 onwards and finally this organization took on a Marxist form and content. This article examines the principles of thought of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization, the process of ideological deviation of the organization and the reason for the failure of the organization and the strategy and performance of this organization after the revolution. The present research has been done using the method of interviews, library and documents in an analytical-descriptive method.

Iranian Women and Gender in the Iran-Iraq War

Iranian Women and Gender in the Iran-Iraq War

The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran

In 1946, the entertainer and activist Paul Robeson pondered America's intentions in Iran. In what was to become one of the first major crises of the Cold War, Iran was fighting a Soviet aggressor that did not want to leave. Robeson posed the question, “Is our State Department concerned with protecting the rights of Iran and the welfare of the Iranian people, or is it concerned with protecting Anglo-American oil in that country and the Middle East in general?” This was a loaded question. The US was pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops after its occupation of the country during World War II. Robeson wondered why America cared so much about Soviet forces in Iranian territory, when it made no mention of Anglo-American troops “in countries far removed from the United States or Great Britain.” An editorial writer for a Black journal in St. Louis posed a different variant of the question: Why did the American secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, concern himself with elections in Iran, Arabia or Azerbaijan and yet not “interfere in his home state, South Carolina, which has not had a free election since Reconstruction?”

Dynamic Quietism and the Consolidation of the ḥawza ʿilmīyya of Qum during the Pahlavi Era

ABSTRACT Reza Shah’s attempt in the latter part of his autocracy (1935–1941) to implement formal education for the clergy continues to be one of the most understudied periods of Iran’s modern history. The primary aim of this paper is to investigate the ḥawza’s strategic response to Reza Shah’s envisaged secularism and to assess the contribution made by Ayatollah Muhammad Hojjat Kuh Kamari (1892–1952), the religious authority leading the ḥawza ʿilmīyya of Qum during this crucial phase. At a time, when the political establishment actively attempted to change the cultural identity of Iran through its promotion of modernization with Western connotations, he viewed this as a new challenge that endangered the Islamic fabric of Iranian society and placed an emphasis on a socio-cultural response by Shia clerics. By drawing on a range of primary sources not consulted before, this study aims at understanding how the institutional and intellectual development of this critical transition period led to the breathing period for ḥawza ʿilmīyya of Qum and the quasi-democratic phase of Iran (1941–1953). Additionally, this paper will analyse the approach of dynamic quietism that prioritized the engagement of the ‘ulamāʾ with education and society as the crucial factor in ensuring their socio-cultural influence in Iran.

The Politics of Calendars: State Appropriations of the Contested Iranian Past

This paper seeks to investigate how commemorative practices, rituals, and holidays are invented, deployed, and recast for political and ideological purposes, to reinforce and sustain a particular narrative of national identity. It argues that the choice of particular moments of a country’s past to be commemorated in calendars as national holidays and the way in which the collective past is preserved and remembered both reflect and articulate a country’s vision of its present essence, of who its people are. Recognizing the link between the collective memory and national identity, the Iranian states before and after the 1979 revolution made a special effort to articulate their narrative of the past by commemorating a particular set of holidays and rituals. Viewing the calendar as a political artifact, this paper compares changes in the Iranian national calendars in the Pahlavi era (1925–1979) and the Islamic Republic (1979–2018). It examines the inclusion of new religious holidays and the removal of national days associated with the monarchy as well as the assignment of new meanings and celebratory practices to the old ones as the signifiers of a political maneuver to articulate a new shared public memory and narrative of identity since the 1979 revolution. It then examines two nationwide celebrations before and after the 1979 revolution, representing two state-sponsored, competing narratives of Iranian identity: firstly, the 2500-year celebration of the Persian Empire in 1953, and, secondly, the Ashura commemoration, a religious gathering dedicated to the remembrance of Shia Imams. These commemorations provided the state a unique political opportunity to present its own appraisal of the past and, in turn, national identity.

Social Organization of Iran in the Second Pahlavi Era Based on the Depiction of the Myths of the Mehr Religion

جامعۀ ایران در عصر پهلوی دوم در نتیجۀ کودتای 28 مرداد 1332 دچار سرشکستگی و انفعال در عرصۀ فعالیت­های سیاسی، حزبی و نشاط اجتماعی شد و حاکمیت پهلوی نیز دچار بحران مشروعیت گردید. بنابراین، محمدرضا شاه برای مشروعیت بخشیدن به حکومت خود و چاره­ جویی برای رفع شکاف­های اجتماعی و نجات جامعه از بحران ­هایی که طی تحولات داخلی و جهانی در فرایند نوسازی گرفتار آن شده بود، درصدد استفاده از الگویی برآمد که بر رویکرد باستان­گرایی استوار بود. آنچه این پژوهش را ضروری می­سازد، شناخت این الگو و کارکرد آن در عصر پهلوی دوم است. این پژوهش بر آن است تا با روش تحلیل تاریخی که مبتنی بر توصیف و تحلیل داده­هاست و با تکیه بر منابع به این پرسش پاسخ دهد که نمادهای آیین مهر چگونه در سازماندهی اجتماعی سیاست پهلوی مؤثر بودند؟ یافته ­های پژوهش نشان می­دهد که محمدرضا شاه با الگوبرداری از برخی از نمادهای آیین مهر از قبیل شکست ­ناپذیری، نجات­بخشی و توزیع عادلانة رفاه و ثروت کوشید سازماندهی اجتماعی نوینی را در ایران ایجاد کند و به حاکمیت خود مشروعیت بخشد. اما این تلاش کاملاً موفقیت ­آمیز نبود و تنها توانست به صورت مقطعی در ایجاد همدلی اجتماعی و مقابله با بحران­ها و کسب مشروعیت مفید واقع شود.

The support of the Kurdish tribes to the Emir (Abu al-Fath Mirza Salar al-Dawla) in his movements to claim the Qajar throne 1906-1912 A.D. A historical analysis of the causes and consequences

The rulers of Qajar in Iran were known of their cruelty and tyranny, whether they were kings of Tehran or dynasts in the states. However, their rudeness and cruelty associated with the citizens in another disrepute greediness to gain money and wealth, looting people and exceeding their rights. Perhaps the serious danger of all that is the existence of suspicious links of corrupted Qajar rulers with influential foreigners in the country (Russian and English ) that made Iran a region of conflict between both sides for a long time which required reaching to an agreement to divide areas of influence between them according to the treaty of 1907. While the situation in the capital was escalating towards being worse due to the repercussions of the constitutional revolution 1906-1907, and the separating the Iranian people between supporters and opponents of this revolution. This division occurred as a result of the positions of some of the Qajar princes regarding the revolution and its repercussions. The tribal chiefs in the Kurdish region stood by the Salar Al-Dawla, who had an ambition to be a Shah of Iran, and his movements caused great obstacles for the government and the Iranian court together during the years that followed the constitutional revolution.