Iranian politics has been marked by sharp ideological divisions and infighting. These divides, kept largely out of public view until the 1990s, came to greater light with the contested 2009 presidential elections. To explain the diverse and complex forces that led to this event and that animate Iran’s current fractured society and polity, author Shireen T. Hunter looks beyond the battle between the forces of reform and reaction, democracy and dictatorship, and considers the historic forces that created the conditions faced by Iran since the revolution. Iran Divided: The Historic Roots of Iranian Debates on Identity, Culture, and Governance in the 21st Century explains historical and political factors and their relevance to Iran today, shedding light on the forces behind Iranian politics and society. This book discusses: historical roots of Iran’s current divisions and debates; Iran versus Islam; secularism versus religion; constitutionalism versus Islamic government; fundamental issues of identity, culture, and governance; aging of the revolutionary coalition; development of new elites; experiences of the Islamic republic; and new international conditions moving the country beyond old divides and ideological rifts toward a new national consensus. A comprehensive survey, the book will be an indispensable tool to any student seeking to understand the Islamic Republic of Iran and its standing in the world today.

Acclaimed poet Nilofar Shidmehr’s debut story collection is an unflinching look at the lives of women in post-revolutionary Iran and the contemporary diaspora in Canada. The stories begin in 1978, the year before the Iranian Revolution. In a neighbourhood in Tehran, a group of affluent girls play a Cinderella game with unexpected consequences. In the mid 1980s, women help their husbands and brothers survive war and political upheaval. In the early 1990s in Vancouver, Canada, a single-mother refugee is harassed by the men she meets on a telephone dating platform. And in 2003, a Canadian woman working for an international aid organization is dispatched to her hometown of Bam to assist in the wake of a devastating earthquake. At once powerful and profound, Divided Loyalties depicts the rich lives of Iranian women and girls in post-revolutionary Iran and the contemporary diaspora in Canada; the enduring complexity of the expectations forced upon them; and the resilience of a community experiencing the turmoil of war, revolution, and migration.

Completed in 1938, the Trans-Iranian Railway connected Tehran to Iran's two major bodies of water: the Caspian Sea in the north and the Persian Gulf in the south. Iran's first national railway, it produced and disrupted various kinds of movement—voluntary and forced, intended and unintended, on different scales and in different directions—among Iranian diplomats, tribesmen, migrant laborers, technocrats, railway workers, tourists and pilgrims, as well as European imperial officials alike. Iran in Motion tells the hitherto unexplored stories of these individuals as they experienced new levels of mobility. Drawing on newspapers, industry publications, travelogues, and memoirs, as well as American, British, Danish, and Iranian archival materials, Mikiya Koyagi traces contested imaginations and practices of mobility from the conception of a trans-Iranian railway project during the nineteenth-century global transport revolution to its early years of operation on the eve of Iran's oil nationalization movement in the 1950s. Weaving together various individual experiences, this book considers how the infrastructural megaproject reoriented the flows of people and goods. In so doing, the railway project simultaneously brought the provinces closer to Tehran and pulled them away from it, thereby constantly reshaping local, national, and transnational experiences of space among mobile individuals.

This updated resource provides a more comprehensive history, including: Iran's Persian imperial past, the spread of Islam, and the Iran-Iraq War The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) emphasizes an asymetric doctrine to ensure national security in the Persian Gulf against regional neighbors and foreign presence. The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN) employs a more conventional doctrine and focuses on forward presence and naval diplomacy. Both navies have considerable equities and are well positioned to influence and leverage the Strait of Hormuz; a vital chokepoint for the flow of resources and international commerce. Illustrated with organizational charts, and photos of key Iranian leaders, including commanders within the Navy Command and Control Leadership, as well as rank insignia graphics, maps, ships, aircrafts, missile images, and more. Check out ourMiddle East resources collection for more resources on this topic. You may also be interested in ourForeign Military History collection Other products produced by theUnited States Navy

"A history of the relationship between Iran and America from the 1700s through the current day"--

I.B.Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire has been acclaimed as one of the most intellectually exciting books about late antique Persia to have been published for years. It proposes a convincing contemporary answer to an age-old mystery and conundrum: why, in the seventh century ce, did the seemingly powerful and secure Sasanian empire of Persia succumb so quickly and disastrously to the all-conquering armies of Islam? In her bold solution to this enigma, Parvaneh Pourshariati explains that the decentralized dynastic system of the Sasanian ruling hierarchy in fact contained the seeds of its own destruction. This confederacy, whose powerbase relied on patronage and preferment, eventually became unstable, and its degeneration sealed the fate of a doomed dynasty.

The Azerbaijani people have been divided between Iran and the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan for more than 150 years, yet they have retained their ethnic identity. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of an independent Azerbaijan have only served to reinforce their collective identity. In Borders and Brethren, Brenda Shaffer examines trends in Azerbaijani collective identity from the period of the Islamic Revolution in Iran through the Soviet breakup and the beginnings of the Republic of Azerbaijan (1979-2000). Challenging the mainstream view in contemporary Iranian studies, Shaffer argues that a distinctive Azerbaijani identity exists in Iran and that Azerbaijani ethnicity must be a part of studies of Iranian society and assessments of regime stability in Iran. She analyzes how Azerbaijanis have maintained their identity and how that identity has assumed different forms in the former Soviet Union and Iran. In addition to contributing to the study of ethnic identity, the book reveals the dilemmas of ethnic politics in Iran.

The Iranian revolution of 1978–1979 uprooted and globally dispersed an enormous number of Iranians from all walks of life. Bitter political relations between Iran and the West have since caused those immigrants to be stigmatized, marginalized, and politicized, which, in turn, has discredited and distorted Iranian migrants’ social identity; subjected them to various subtle and overt forms of prejudice, discrimination, and social injustice; and pushed them to the edges of their host societies. The Iranian Diaspora presents the first global overview of Iranian migrants’ experiences since the revolution, highlighting the similarities and differences in their experiences of adjustment and integration in North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. Written by leading scholars of the Iranian diaspora, the original essays in this volume seek to understand and describe how Iranians in diaspora (re)define and maintain their ethno-national identity and (re)construct and preserve Iranian culture. They also explore the integration challenges the Iranian immigrants experience in a very negative context of reception. Combining theory and case studies, as well as a variety of methodological strategies and disciplinary perspectives, the essays offer needed insights into some of the most urgent and consequential issues and problem areas of immigration studies, including national, ethnic, and racial identity construction; dual citizenship and dual nationality maintenance; familial and religious transformation; politics of citizenship; integration; ethnic and cultural maintenance in diaspora; and the link between politics and the integration of immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants.