Columbia University Seminar on Iranian Studies

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEMINARS

SEMINAR ON IRANIAN STUDIES

FALL 2011 PROGRAM

Ervand Abrahamian: September 15 | Mehdad Amanat: October 13 | Ahmad Ashraf: November 17 | Fereshteh Daftari: December 15

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PROF. ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN

Distinguished Prof. of History
Baruch College and CUNY Graduate Center

September 15, 2011
“MOSADDEQ ERA REVISITED”

Summary

Much has been written on the oil nationalization crisis of 1951-53. Much has also been written on the coup of 1953. Why revisit these two subjects? Conventional wisdom for the last sixty years has claimed that the US—as an “honest broker”--offered reasonable compromises, but Mossadeq, because of intransigence and maybe “martyrdom complex,” refused to accept. In other words, the fault lay entirely with Mossadeq. Conventional wisdom also argues that the coup had little or nothing to do about oil but much to do about the Cold War—fear of the Tudeh and the Soviet Union. Both aspects of conventional wisdom can be challenged by a close reading of the internal documents of the Foreign Office, State Department, and British Petroleum.

Bio-Notice

Prof. Abrahamian (M.A., Oxford University; Ph.D., Columbia University), an Armenian born in Iran and raised in England, is well qualified by education and experience to teach world and Middle East history. He has published Iran Between Two Revolutions, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic, and Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, and he co-authored Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran, And Syria. His most recent book is A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and he is currently working on The CIA Coup in Iran. He teaches at the CUNY Graduate Center and has taught at Princeton, New York University, and Oxford University.

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