Ravayat-haye az khak Barkhaste-ye enghelab

The Iranian Revolution (1979) is one of the most significant events in Iran’s modern history. This political rupture amounted to the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty and put an end to millennia-old monarchy in Iran. The Revolution was the outcome of decades-long struggle of different political forces and social actors, representing diverging worldviews, political ideals and socio-economic interests. Still, the official master narrative, propagated by the current rulers in Iran, reduces this historic event to the clergy’s perspective and political ambitions, who aimed at establishing a theocratic regime in Iran. Accordingly, this master narrative disregards the perspective of other revolutionaries and political actors that were soon to be repressed by the Islamic Republic.

The aim of this edited collection is to represent the accounts of opposition leaders and resistance fighters who played a significant role during and after the Iranian Revolution. This collection includes interviews with Shapour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister under the Shah, Abolhasan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), Abdolrahman Ghassemlou, the leader of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), Shaikh Ezzedin Hosseini, a Kurdish religious leader, Sadeq Khalkhali, Shia cleric and judge, Shokrollah Paknejad, prominent political prisoner and co-founder of the National Democratic Front (NDF), Manouchehr Hezarkhani, a member of the Writer’s Association of Iran, and Hedayat Matin-Daftari, the leader of the National Democratic Front (NDF). These interviews were first conducted by Fred Halliday in the early 80’s as part of a research project supported and published by The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).