In interviews with 170 politically active Iranians, the author reveals that politics in Iran are based on interpersonal relationships marked by insecurity, cyni

The 1979 revolution fundamentally altered Iran’s political landscape as a generation of inexperienced clerics who did not hail from the ranks of the upper cla

The Iranian Islamic revolution brought about a political system based on a combination of state institutions that derive their legitimacy from Islamic law and r

“By a wide margin, this book is the most sophisticated treatment of the internal dynamics and paradoxes of Iranian politics that I know of.” —Nader Hashem

Since the 1979 revolution, scholars and policy makers alike have tended to see Iranian political actors as religiously driven—dedicated to overturning the int