The contours of the coup of August 1953 are well known, but, in the light of recently released documentary evidence, most notably the volume published in June 2017 containing many CIA documents, our knowledge of its details continue to evolve.Footnote ¹ The coup was the culmination of a long process of systematic destabilization of the government of Mohammad Mosaddeq, a government which defied the royalists and refused to relent in its oil nationalization objective or embrace an anti-communist zeal. The British, and later the US government, together with their local collaborators, including the shah and his civilian, military and clerical supporters, left no stone unturned in seeking to end Mosaddeq’s premiership. They took full advantage of the existing constitutional and legal arrangements and liberties to which Mosaddeq’s government was committed, while at the same time exploiting the fact that Mosaddeq was never firmly in control of the military and the police. Mosaddeq’s government enjoyed extensive public support but was as structurally fragile and vulnerable as any non-western democratically oriented government of the time. Long exhausted by a relentless war of attrition, the government was ill-equipped and unable to confront the plotters with resolve.

The crucial role of the CIA in the coup has long been established, and the 2017 documents confirm that the American government was never reconciled with Mosaddeq. The CIA, already engaged in countering the Tudeh Party in Iran, actively joined the anti-Mosaddeq operations in early 1953. By then the groundwork had been laid by the British. Elaborate subterfuges, employed by the British to camouflage the eventual overthrow by giving it a domestic Iranian flavor, as well as constitutional and popular trappings, were fully resurrected by the operational plan code named AJAX to overthrow the government of Mosaddeq. What was added to the earlier schemes was a covert military component designed to ensure the effectiveness of the quasi-constitutional and popular elements. In seeking to unseat Mosaddeq the British alone, in my calculation, spent some £2.2 million. Little documentary evidence has, however, surfaced regarding the full details of how and to what specific ends British pounds, and later American dollars, were spent, and how many of the actual or putative opponents of Mosaddeq were the recipients.

The British archival sources and American documents have yielded much new information regarding the overthrow of Mosaddeq and the respective roles of foreign and local agents, and the military officers, politicians, journalists and clerics who collaborated with them. But even the newly published CIA documents are frustratingly sparing on sensitive details such as the names of Iranian operatives, and how the events of 19 August were actually staged. In the absence of unfettered access to MI6 and CIA documents or the improbable discovery of primary Iranian sources, it is unlikely that we can ascertain the full details of what transpired with reasonable certainty. Ali Rahnema has, however, shown himself less hesitant, believing that on the basis of available evidence we can “construct a detailed micro-history” of the vexing events that culminated in the overthrow of Mosaddeq’s government. An assessment of this contention requires an examination of his new work, its heuristic framework, and its approach to sources.

Rahnema is an energetic and engaging scholar of unusual range and skills, a professor of economics who writes lucidly on historical topics and has written provocatively on the trajectories of Islamism, Islamic reform and aspects of Iranian intellectual history. In his new book he has taken up the task of unraveling the minutiae of Mosaddeq’s overthrow. His aim is to demonstrate that the overthrow of Mosaddeq’s government was not a spontaneous uprising but a coup “parented by foreigners” even though its “midwives” were Iranian (p. 297).

It is curious that Rahnema has felt that there is such a need, given that the idea of the “spontaneity” of Mosaddeq’s overthrow has had few credible adherents; it has been espoused primarily by diehard royalists and now by a neo-royalist fringe. Debunking the myth of the coup’s “spontaneity” may not do much to sway its emotionally invested protagonists. The “national uprising of 28 Mordad” became a regularly commemorated foundational myth of the Pahlavi dynasty, integral to its projected self-image. Nor can today’s Pahlavists be expected to appear readily responsive to historical evidence. Rahnema, however, considers it a worthwhile attempt to seek to persuade them. His purpose is not to furnish a fresh explanatory or interpretive perspective but to piece together the existing scattered evidence into a coherent narrative, a feat of historical bricolage that would demolish the “theory” of the coup’s spontaneity or provoke at least some of its “decomplexé” adherents to rethink. In the light of the 2017 documents, the spontaneity “theory” should be laid to rest for good, but it will surely resurface in a mutated form.

In pursuing his aim, Rahnema traces the genesis of the idea of the coup and, following a familiar survey of events, proceeds to the more promising core of his project, which is a dissection of how the coup was conceived, who initiated and implemented it and how it unfolded in the crucial days culminating in the Mosaddeq government’s ouster. Developments leading to the coup have been previously explored by others and the role of key foreign and domestic protagonist delineated. Since the 1980s, the Mosaddeq period has received more scholarly attention than most other periods in recent Iranian history. Ignoring all such work and focusing on the final stage of Mosaddeq’s overthrow, Rahnema fails to place his work in the broader historiographical context or in any sense engage it. Such an approach entails the hazards of unwittingly reproducing ideas and arguments previously made.

The general contours of what Rahnema seeks to establish regarding the events of 19 August 1953 (28 Mordad) are previously concurred upon by other scholars in the light of a variety of hitherto available evidence. That certain hired mob leaders were instrumental in manufacturing a clamorous and virulent club-wielding crowd of lumpen elements there is no doubt; that they acted in league with those closely associated with Operation AJAX is also hardly in question. Covert planning, extensive collusion or connivance, discreet expenditure of large sums of money, and perseverance, along with widespread psychological warfare, were intrinsic to the operations resorted to. The engineered crowd created a cover for the military perpetrators of the coup—whose earlier attempt had been foiled—to step in. Ensuring that the coup had a quasi-constitutional and quasi-popular cover was integral to the project of Mosaddeq’s ouster. The hired crowds did not emerge to protest but to test the ground and pave the way for pro-Zahedi segments of the armed forces, put together through the CIA/SIS scheme, to enter the scene. Rahnema reiterates how these events were planned and implemented and provides much detail about their dramatic course.

In explaining the overthrow of Mosaddeq’s government, an account of the role and attitude of certain members of the armed forces, of how various segments of the manufactured crowd came together, how and to what extent they were coordinated, what they actually did, and how effective they were, is important. But equally significant, if not more so, is the record of the protracted antagonisms preceding the final stage of the coup, which accounted for the relative ease of its success on 19 August. Mosaddeq’s government was rendered vulnerable by the institutional fragility intrinsic to the existing Iranian political arrangements, by its adherence to laws and processes, and its aversion to violence. It was, however, prolonged exposure to systematic destabilization strategies that ultimately incapacitated it. Disoriented by the shock of the first stage of the coup (16 August) and the repercussions of the shah’s flight from the country, and overwhelmed by the fluidity of the situation and the preemptive shock of combined mob and military action, the government failed to act with the agility and resolve demanded by the situation. A richly contextualized historical account of the overthrow of Mosaddeq’s government has to be attentive to the relentless, sabotage-minded opposition that it faced almost since its inception. More significantly, and at a deeper level, what transpired in August 1953 signified the structural, but also politically induced, impasse of the project of experimenting with democratic constitutionalism in Iran. An account of the coup has to be fully mindful of this indispensable and substantive background.

Given the nature of available sources and constraints on our knowledge, a “detailed micro- history” or full reconstruction of events, particularly of 19 August, inevitably involves the imposition of a degree of coherence and order on events, which they perhaps intrinsically resist. Events involving a manufactured crowd can assume dimensions that cannot lend themselves to neat narrative reconstructions even where ample documentary evidence might be available. All accounts of the past are reductionist and those involving certain occurrences or developments are more likely to be so. An accurate narrative of what transpired on 19 August, given the fluidity of the situation, the impact of contingency, and paucity of reliable sources, remains a challenging task. Disinformation, propaganda, embellished, boastful, justificatory or apologetic narratives have become inextricably intertwined with the coup itself and cannot be easily demarcated from accurate or plausible claims and statements.

Indeed, most subsequent claims by the coup’s Iranian participants, as they exist, have to be seen as part of the process of apportioning credit or blame in expectation of reward and recognition. They have often been colored by perceptions or projections of shame and honor; sometimes they have been expiatory. The narratives of such claims have to be seen as bent by the heavy weight of self-interest. Distortion, deception and self-deception are inevitably woven into their very fabric; they are rarely motivated by introspection, but serve justificatory purposes. Politically slanted claims and selective remembering, even retrospectively, become a form of action in favor of or against that event. Memory becomes embroiled with emotions, self-images and imaginary deeds. This does not mean that claims are uniformly tainted or equally worthless; what is needed is their careful contextualization, critical scrutiny and full interrogation for any glimmer of light they might shed. In the absence of corroboration by other evidence, they must always be treated with measured skepticism.

Unraveling, in the micro-historical sense, the complex of interests, incentives, calculations, emotions, desires and beliefs that motivate action in specific historical conjunctures such as the coup of August 1953 requires a body of documentary evidence far more extensive and reliable than we currently possess—or are ever likely to possess. Even a work with the more limited objective of seeking to reconstruct the main details of what transpired at a particularly crucial juncture would ideally require painstaking efforts in search of reliable evidence and field work in Tehran, involving retrieval of documents and memories and searching for people linked with participants in the event. Presumably brushing aside such reservations, and without unearthing any original primary sources, Rahnema has made good use of a selection of British archival documents and the available American and Iranian published sources, to probe the genesis of the project of overthrowing Mosaddeq and the roles of its protagonists, particularly its Iranian collaborators. He is not the first to do so, but he is first to focus on the events of August 19 and the days preceding it, and to take seriously the maddeningly diverse, scattered and often inconsistent Iranian sources relating to those events. In sifting through an assortment of published, if sometimes ignored, material, he extracts useful information from them to construct his narrative. Such constructions, are, however, notoriously difficult even in the best of circumstances and more so when the reliability of many of the sources and sustainability of the claims they contain are in doubt.

Rahnema consistently ensures that for every claim or contention a reference is dutifully provided, but the source and its quality and reliability are rarely doubted. Such a charitable attitude to sources is likely to cast a cognitive shadow over inferences and conclusions. If Rahnema’s verdict that “the historiography of the Mosaddeq era … is in its infancy” (p. ix) has any plausibility, the imperative of unequivocal rigor and exacting vigilance regarding sources becomes even more urgent. A benign and blanket trust in the information supplied by the sources, displaying confidence in the results of their undifferentiated aggregation, rarely helps to lift any historiography beyond infancy. A fundamental characteristic of historical thinking and enquiry, constitutive of the very practice of historical scholarship, is a scrupulously critical attitude to sources; sources cannot be treated as though they are of inherent reliability or guaranteed cognitive value.

Rather than assembling facts or quasi-facts, a historian’s task is to examine and assess them, relying on those which can be corroborated and have sound evidential basis and credibility. A lax attitude to claims allows them to enter into the repository of seemingly verified data that may be endlessly recycled. More significantly, amassing citations or claims is valuable for the historian’s craft only if ample room has been allowed for their adequate assessment and analysis. Of course, in the absence of reliable sources, historians may have no choice but to try to work with what they have. In this case they must show heightened vigilance and awareness of the contingency of their conclusions. Constructing a coherent narrative should not involve overlooking the real limitations of making plausible inferences from problematic sources. It is in the critical activity of discerning the plausible from the implausible that the crucial skills of the historian become paramount.

The Persian sources Rahnema has used are various and mixed, including a number of published police reports as well as published documents of the state security and intelligence organization SAVAK (established in 1957), such as the three volumes on the Rashidian brothers. But these documents primarily cover the events after 1953. Reading them backwards is creative but also problematic. In using such documents, the direct observations by SAVAK agents, the reports of informants, rumors, etc. have to be distinguished and reflected in the citations. Rahnema has made good use of writing by authors such as Abbas Manzarpour and Sina Mirza’i, which are suggestive but impressionistic, whimsical and nostalgic. They furnish some useful information and “color” but as historical evidence need careful scrutiny and corroboration. Mahmud Torbati-ye-Sanjabi’s book Kudetasazan is a slim journalistic account that contains interesting pieces of information which are nonetheless difficult to verify. Torbati-ye-Sanjabi himself points out in his introduction that “readers must not assume” that what has been recounted to him is considered by him as “incontrovertible evidence” (pp. 11–12).

Curiously, non-scholarly, and mostly journalistic, Iranian sources, such as the writings of Gholamreza Nejati, Baqer Aqeli, Mohammad-Ali Safari, Nour-Mohammad Askari, Mohammad Ja’far Mohammadi, F. M. Javanshir, etc. are quoted, sometimes extensively, and are relied upon, together with Ahmad Bani-Ahmad’s Panj Rooz Rastakhiz-e mellat-e Iran (co-authored with Mansour-Ali Atabaki) and writings by Ardeshir Zahedi, which both seek to glorify the coup or base it on political and military segments of Iranian society. However, works by Abrahamian, Katouzian, Elm, Diba and Movahhed, among others, are not referred to, with the exception of Movahhed’s, which is mentioned once in a footnote. An early book by Nejati is referred to, but not a later, more elaborate two-volume account which provides more up-to-date material on the military components of the coup. The important memoire by Colonel Hoseynqoli Sarreshteh is absent, as is the work of Brigadier-General Mir-Hoseyn Yekrangian, inter alia.

Among other sources relied upon are post-eventum journalistic accounts in lowbrow gossipy weeklies, such as Ettela’at Haftegi and Ashofteh, or the bi-weekly Khandaniha. The material that they published on the coup was highly tendentious and colored by the political climate and exigencies prevailing after the coup, and fully palatable to the post-coup regime, when the coup was being branded as a national uprising with local roots. These accounts were intended essentially to embellish the records of those who were being presented as the leading popular or military protagonists of the coup. Over-reliance on such sources results in unwittingly making more of the role of the mob or their leaders in the actual success of the coup than is warranted. Indiscriminate reliance on these and a plethora of similar Persian sources might also give readers unfamiliar with them the impression that they are primary, authoritative or invariably reliable.

Citing rumors serves no purpose unless it can be shown that they mattered. Based on the magazine Ashofteh, we are twice told that “rumour had it” (p. 58) and again “it was strongly rumoured” (p. 200) that Mozaffar Baqa’i’s Toilers Party was “founded at the behest” of the British. A claim attributed to someone should be distinguished from one directly made. Often what is said to be directly stated is no more than an attributed report. Throughout the book, many sentences involve unattributed claims or contain constructions such as “it was said” or “it is said”: it is unclear what purpose these serve if their veracity or plausibility cannot be explored. Many claims, and their truth-content, are left unexamined and they are implicitly used to make a point. In some cases they seem plausible while in others they don’t. There are also instances of citations that are ill-fitted to the texture of the narrative and are therefore gratuitous. Two instances will suffice: “According to Tayyeb, on the morning of 16 August 1953 (25 Mordad), Gholamhoseyn Mosaddeq, the Prime Minister’s son, sent for Tayyeb and sought to appease him. Tayyeb claims to have refused Gholamhoseyn Mosaddeq’s offer of 50,000 Tomans in return for remaining politically neutral in the days to come” (p. 159). The source for this is Ashofteh, 11 Azar 1333/2 December 1954. Again from the same source of 18 Azar 1333/9 December 1954, Rahnema writes: “After having finished his prison sentence, Ramezoun Yakhi recalled having been recruited by Hasibi and Zirakzadeh of Mosaddeq’s National Front to campaign for their candidates to the Majles in Tudeh strongholds” (p. 161).

It is unclear why the veracity of such claims, given the source and the timing (1333/1954), should be taken for granted. Assuming that they were made in the first place, and accurately reported, such claims, and the motives behind them, must be scrutinized. Merely quoting them serves no purpose other than giving them undeserved credence. It is plausible to assume that if Tayyeb indeed made the claim attributed to him, he wished to underline his public influence, and dedicated royalism, in the expectation of continuous recognition from the regime. Accepting claims at face value is not limited to Iranian sources; Rahnema sometimes forgets that Kermit Roosevelt’s capacity for flamboyance (amply exhibited in his Counter-coup) renders it imperative that his statements in that text be treated with the same caution as those made by Ardeshir Zahedi.

As far as I can ascertain Rahnema has been careful in his use of British and American sources. Occasional lapses are, however, inevitable. From a report by the US ambassador, Henderson, “spontaneity” has been italicized although it is not so in the original (p. 7). Rahnema refers to a British memorandum of 2 September 1953 which, in the original, begins “it is widely believed that the success of the coup … ” but makes it more categorical by writing that the memorandum “clearly stated that … ” (p. 267). In referring to Foreign Office documents he supplies only the file number and date (e.g. FO 416/105, 6 August 1952). It is often crucial to know what kind of document is being referred to, who was the sender and who the recipient. Not all Foreign Office documents are of equal significance.

Similarly, and against established standards, in referring to Iranian periodicals he has only given a bare minimum of reference, with no author name or title of article, even when available. Examples include: “Tarikh-e Moaser-e Iran, Sal-e Haftom, Shomareh 26, Tabestan 1382, pp. 320, 322” and “Negaheno, Mordad 1387” (in this case even page numbers are missing). In referring to the Persian press or periodicals he has not cared to convert the dates or provide any guidance for readers unfamiliar with Persian or with those sources. This is unhelpful for a book written in English, and part of the blame is to be shouldered by the publisher, who is also responsible for occasional awkwardness of the prose, and inconsistent transliteration and the spellings of names, for example Tayyeb and Tayeb. Sometimes only surnames of individuals are given without first names or any distinguishing details, even when readily available. A typical sentence: “The Offices of Piyadehro are also said to have been used by Miss Lambton for her meetings with some of Iran’s notable politicians such as Hajir, Movarekhodoleh [sic] Sepehr, Taheri, Malekmadani and Gholamhoseyn Ebtehaj” (p. 171). It is astonishing that Cambridge University Press has overlooked so many editorial issues pertaining to the technical–scholarly apparatus of this book.

In looking through Anglo-American documentary sources, Rahnema has focused on spotting any and every reference to a “coup”. He has thus missed much discussion dealing with the issue of removing Mosaddeq without the use of such a term, and nor has he detected every instance of the use of the term. The first Iranian who explicitly spoke of the need for a coup was not the shah (in late December 1951) or the veteran anglophile Sayyed Ziaeddin Tabataba’i (in January 1952), as Rahnema contends, but Amir Amir-Kayvan. In June 1951, less than two months after Mosaddeq’s assumption of the premiership, Amir-Kayvan, a self-proclaimed labor leader in Isfahan, meeting in Geneva with the British minister of labour, provided a detailed blueprint for a possible coup against Mosaddeq and even suggested Zahedi as the person to carry it out. Amir-Kayvan was followed by the British ambassador, Sir Francis Shepherd, who on 11 September 1951 spoke of a coup becoming “inevitable” due to the “Persian political character.”Footnote ²

Rahnema makes a number of other questionable or untenable claims, of which a few examples will suffice: he contends that if Sayyed Zia “had paved the way for Reza Khan, a military figure, to take over power in 1921, he and ‘Ala were to play a somewhat similar role in bringing Fazlollah Zahedi to power” (pp. 21–2). This is overstated if not farfetched. He twice contends that Kashani’s support for Mosaddeq during the events of 30 Tir (21 July 1952) “was instrumental” in bringing Mosaddeq back to power (pp. 238, 305), but provides no evidence to support this. He states that following the rupture between Kashani and Mosaddeq, “Kashani had no option but to move into the pro-Shah, pro-Zahedi and pro-British camp” (p. 238). It is not clear why this was the case. He refers to the Kashani-Behbahani axis, but considers Kashani a “reluctant accomplice whose pride and temperamental disposition had pushed him into an uncomfortable alliance with partners whom he loathed on principle” (p. 240); evidence Rahnema himself provides tempers this judgment. Why is it that Kashani did not reflect on the clearly deleterious impact of his conduct on the national objectives he still claimed to support, thus helping to scupper them?

According to Rahnema, “What made Mosaddeq special as a politician was a stubbornness rooted in his sense of self-righteousness. In the political realm this quality was both a virtue and a vice. His inflexibility did alienate many of his friends, but it also gave him the aura of a resolute quixotic national hero in search of Iran’s independence” (p. 264). As Rahnema himself writes elsewhere in this book, there was certainly much more to Mosaddeq’s distinctiveness than this, and it is unclear why he should have been seen as “quixotic”. Rahnema writes that “Navvab Safavi desisted from joining forces with the anti-Mosaddeq religious collaborationists” (p. 248). If this was the case, then what explains the statement the Fada’iyan-e Islam published one week after the coup welcoming and strongly endorsing it, or the very close relations that the Zahedi government and the group and its leader enjoyed for some time after the coup? Rahnema does not explore the symbiotic relationship between the Pahlavi monarchy and the armed forces and the broadly royalist predispositions of higher ranking officers, and nor does he adequately discuss the diverse constraints affecting the conduct of officers who acted ambiguously. Rahnema explains the conduct of officers such as Colonel Hoseynqoli Ashrafi primarily in terms of collusion with the coup’s plotters. But we need reliable evidence and also an answer to why it was that Ashrafi—contrary to what Rahnema tells us (p. 152)—spent fifteen month in prison for supporting Mosaddeq. The treatment of several other topics is also inadequate or imprecise. These include the reasons for Mosaddeq’s appointment of General Taqi Riyahi, instead of General Mahmud Amini, as chief of staff of the armed forces, as well as the details of how Mosaddeq learnt of troop movements on the night of 15 August and of the defense of his residence on 19 August.

Examining every contention and assumption made in this book or enumerating its errors and inaccuracies goes beyond the scope of this review. Of the omissions I will mention a few. In a detailed book such as this, while “the enigmatic and beautiful Malekeh E’tezadi who was an exceptional woman of her time” (p. 52), is duly recognized, along with the foibles of many of the likes of Naser Jigaraki, no mention is made of several key players. These include influential courtiers such as Ernest Perron, the shah’s Swiss confidant and private secretary who worked tirelessly against Mosaddeq and the National Front in a tangled web of liaisons involving the court, British agents such as Robin Zaehner, and other opponents of Mosaddeq. Other significant figures missing are Shapoor Reporter, who worked for British intelligence and joined the US embassy when Anglo-Iranian relations were broken off and who was close to the shah. Absent political brokers include Mohammad-Ali Mas’udi, Ahmad Human, Bahram Shahrokh and Esfandiyar Bozorgmehr, among others. Rahnema refers to Abdol-Hoseyn Meftah, deputy foreign minister under Hoseyn Fatemi and his successor, simply as “mysterious” (p. 270). Most noticeably, there is no discussion of Qashqa’i leaders whose continued support for Mosaddeq threatened to jeopardize the coup.

Rahnema seems to view history primarily as the outcome of the decisions and deeds or misdeeds of individuals. He is not sufficiently cognizant of structures constraining the actions and options of individual actors. He is aware that what ultimately mattered was the realization in London and Washington that no oil agreement satisfactory to the West would be possible under Mosaddeq, but lingers over the differences between Truman and Eisenhower in regard to Iran. Truman was as deeply concerned as Eisenhower about the consequences for US interests of allowing the Iranians to get away with nationalizing their oil industry, and in this he was in agreement with Churchill. Ultimately, in the sphere of national interest, differences of personalities or party affiliations were of little consequence. For some time during the presidency of Truman, the US attitude towards Iran and regarding the oil dispute with Britain was charitably presented as “benevolent neutrality.” Echoing this, Rahnema writes that “the US sought to resolve the oil dispute by playing the role of an objective trustworthy intermediary”; he blames the diminution of this role on British pressure, adding that “the US shift to the British position of overthrowing Mosaddeq happened in the second half of March” 1953 (pp. 293–4). This is at odds with events on the ground and the conduct of Henderson, who more than a year before August 1953 supported British measures to bring down Mosaddeq. Furthermore, what is needed is an explication of what “resolving the oil dispute” meant to US officials. The US documents released in 2017 confirm the extent to which the US regarded the Mosaddeq government with alarm. Only two weeks after the start of his premiership, the CIA expressed willingness to help the shah oust him and establish an authoritarian government. Given their complex oil and imperial strategic interests and their aversion to the unpalatable ramifications of third world democratic nationalism, neither the British nor the Americans could tolerate a Mosaddeq in Iran when governments such as his could be relatively easily overthrown with little immediately tangible backlash.

There are pertinent questions to be raised regarding what micro-history is, what distinguishes it from journalism, what kind of documentary evidence it requires, and what level of immersion in the subject matter it demands. Moreover, forays into “micro-history” of the kind Rahnema has attempted provoke a number of theoretical questions. How far should its practitioners be mindful of the sociological underpinnings of patronage, clientage and other strategic networks or forms of asymmetrical reciprocity, in addition to their political functions and ramifications? To what extent must such micro-historians treat the assumptions, expectations, mentalities, self-perceptions and indeed agency of street leaders and lumpen elements with the same degree of rigor and charity afforded other historical subjects? Addressing such questions in the broader context of the coup would have been rewarding.

This is a work freighted with details and names, some of which crop up with little or no introduction. Rahnema has not, however, allowed the events, dates and obscure names he has marshaled to overwhelm the flow of the narrative or mar its approachable tone and straightforward explanations of actions and reactions, rifts and rivalries, alliances and envies which are primarily rendered intelligible in terms of personal proclivities and emotions. Echoing the kinds of sources he has relied upon, he has eschewed a treatment of the exigencies of the political and civic culture and institutions. This book will appeal primarily to those with some familiarity with the threads of the story. The Persian speaking and reading audiences of a certain age and patience will find it easier to go through and might wish that it had been written in Persian.

Rahnema has made a bold attempt to shed light on a significant episode in modern Iranian history. He has overlooked the broader context, the impact of currents preceding the coup, and its crucial after-effects, but has provided an intricate version of a familiar narrative with many interesting, if perhaps inevitably tentative, details. He has furnished useful illustrative maps and made pertinent observations; for instance: “The photographs of the mob during 28 Mordad confirm the fact that a good number of the demonstrators were equipped with standardized long sticks or clubs that must have been issued from a single source” (p. 165). Even those who might not find much of substance in this work which has not been said before will still find it instructive. This book provokes new questions and new lines of enquiry to be pursued by others. If the spirit of inquisitiveness and dedication that he has displayed in bringing together disparate information and filling gaps in the story had been more noticeably extended to the exegesis of the sources, we would have had a more rewarding work. The author has not sought to write a partisan narrative of treachery but to recount events as they actually happened. Many historians generally aspire in some sense to live up to the spirit of Ranke, but they are rarely served by the tools and (re)sources they possess.

The rapid, at times gripping tempo of this book would have perhaps been lost if it had gone through a greater period of gestation and refinement. Undoubtedly too exacting an attitude to sources, or to the demands of historical cognition, might deter many from the craft of history, to the detriment of the growth of historical knowledge and the critical spirit that it nourishes. Had Rahnema dwelt too much on the constraints of historical epistemology, or pursued a less audacious approach to sources, we would either have no book by him on this topic or perhaps a less intriguing one. The “curious” for whom he says he has written his book will surely treat it with the critical appreciation that it deserves and the probing attitude that is expected from them.