Faculty Book: Ervand Abrahamian
The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations
(The New Press, 2013)
Abrahamian has written a new and revealing history of the August 1953 CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader and its consequences. When the 1979 Iranian Revolution deposed Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and replaced his puppet government with a radical Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the shift reverberated throughout the Middle East and the world. Drawing from the hitherto closed archives of British Petroleum, the Foreign Office, and the U.S. State Department, as well as from Iranian memoirs and published interviews, the author uncovers little-known documents that challenge conventional interpretations, and sheds new light on how the American role in the coup influenced U.S.-Iranian relations, both past and present. Ervand Abrahamian (Baruch) is a distinguished professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at the Graduate Center.
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Submitted on: SEP 20, 2013
Category: Faculty Books, History, Middle Eastern Studies