Ali Rahnema

On 8 February 1971, Marxist revolutionaries attacked the gendarmerie outpost at the village of Siyahkal in Iran’s Gilan Province. Barely two months later, the Iranian People’s Fada’i Guerrillas officially announced their existence and began a long, drawn-out urban guerrilla war against the Shah’s regime. In Call to Arms, Ali Rahnema provides an exhaustive history of the Fada’is, beginning by asking...

In 1953, Iran was at loggerheads with the US and UK, after Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalised Iran’s oil reserves. By 1968, under the autocratic rule of the Shah, Iran was a booming export economy, benefiting from high oil prices and consumer demand. It had unambiguously become a modern industrial economy. Sifting through primary and secondary sources, Ali Rahnema charts Iran’s...