Volume 50, Number 14 · September 25, 2003
The Iran Conspiracy
By H.D.S. Greenway
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
by Stephen Kinzer
Wiley, 258 pp., $24.95
In August of 1976, while working as a reporter for The Washington Post, I found myself in Tehran during what would turn out to be the final years of the Iranian monarchy. It was clear then that Mohammad Reza Shah, only the second and the last of the Pahlavi dynasty, was in difficulty. His so-called 'White Revolution,' which tried to modernize Iran quickly, was meeting resistance from a deeply conservative public. Religious leaders, secular democrats, and students were restless under his monarchical dictatorship. His secret police, the Savak, were jailing and torturing dissidents. What was not clear then was that the ally the US had installed in order to hold power in the Persian Gulf was about to collapse. It happened so quickly that even the forces that brought the Shah down were taken by surprise.
Review, 4255 words
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