King of Kings

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi - Andreson paints a portrait of a hardworking and intelligent autocrat who is fatally unconnected from his people and their problems. The overriding characteristic of the portrait is one of inaction when it matters. When the stakes got high, the shah ultimatley wilted into in action.

SAVAK - secret police under the shah

• “Iran and the Red and Black Colonialism” in Ettela’at
• Cinema Rex Fire - massive cinema fire resulting in the deaths of hundreds, blamed on SAVAK but likely perpertrated by anti-shah group

James Sullivan - Ambassador to Iran pre-revolution Robert Huyser - General that was making late-stage entreaties with pre-revolution Iranian Generals for a Military coup

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

The “three Viziers”:

• Ebrahim Yazdi
• Abolhassan Bani-Sadr
• Sadegh Ghotbzadeh.

Quote

With all this taken together, it meant that by the mid-1970s the shah was steadily maneuvering himself into a trap, a potentially fatal snare common to autocrats everywhere. First, as his security forces were becoming more repressive, so his opposition was going deeper underground. To combat this required greater surveillance, greater repression, which pushed the most militant opposition even further out of view. Taken to its extreme, the most tyrannical ruler with the most extensive secret police agency ends up having the least sense of what is actually happening in his society. The shah of Iran was hardly the most despotic ruler in the region in the mid-1970s, but by then he probably had a lesser grasp on the concerns of the average Iranian than any taxi driver or street-corner merchant across the breadth of his kingdom. And a trap of an even more intractable nature. Because the autocrat is father of all things, because he insists on taking credit for all good—the land title bestowed, the highway built—so he will also be blamed for all that goes wrong. If in his own mind the shah stood at the threshold of delivering his Great Civilization to his grateful subjects, those subjects also faulted him for the hyperinflation, the failing electricity, the swaggering bullyboys who ran the local city hall. In the personality cult he had fostered, the King of Kings owned Iran’s potholes

But this was merely the most visible manifestation of a

truly astounding development: In Iran, the United States was now pursuing two diametrically opposed policies, with the policy makers in each camp either unaware of or actively undermining the efforts of the other. Ambassador Sullivan had never believed that Shapour Bakhtiar stood a chance, and by mid-January he was quietly meeting with those Khomeini-allied opposition figures, like Mehdi Bazargan, who might hasten Bakhtiar’s fall and usher in an Islamist government. At the same moment, to thwart such a government, Zbigniew Brzezinski was urging on the president that the time for a military coup, Option C, was rapidly drawing near, and none too subtly seeking to hold Carter to the deal they had struck. “If Bakhtiar fails,” Brzezinski wrote to Carter in a top-secret memo on January 13, “we must make a decisive choice and (Huyser’s) ‘C’ will have to be implemented with U.S. backing. I believe that is consistent with your original directive and, with your permission, I would like to communicate that corrective to General Huyser. It is important that he and his Iranian colleagues not entertain any illusions of what may have to be done in the event Bakhtiar falters.” To complete this circle of lunacy, the American official designated to partner with the new prime minister, William Sullivan, was now actively working for his demise, while the American official trying to defend him, Robert Huyser, was barred from having any contact. Further, both rival policymaking camps were pursuing their agendas in the name of forestalling a Cold War doomsday scenario—a communist takeover—that no truly knowledgeable observer of Iran considered even remotely possible.

Cite

1. Anderson, S. King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation. (Doubleday, New York, 2025).

Metadata

Title:: King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation Year:: 2025 Publisher:: Doubleday Location:: New York ISBN:: 978-0-385-54808-3

Abstract

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR NONFICTION • KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER • From the author of the landmark bestseller Lawrence in Arabia comes a stunningly revelatory narrative history of the Iranian Revolution, one of the most momentous events in modern times. This groundbreaking work exposes the jaw-dropping stupidity of the American government and traces the rise of religious nationalism, offering essential insights into today’s global unrest. “A masterful and propulsive account that chronicles a devastatingly transformative series of events whose aftereffects reverberate to this day.” —The Kirkus Prize 2025 Jury “An exceptional and important book. Scrupulous and enterprising reporting rarely combine with such superb storytelling.” —The New York Times Book Review “A masterful and gripping account. Anderson gives us a page-turning history lesson that is more relevant than ever.” —Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a finalist for the National Book AwardOn New Year’s Eve, 1977, on a state visit to Iran, President Jimmy Carter toasted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, Shadow of God on Earth, praising Iran as “an island of stability “ due to “your leadership and the respect and admiration and love which your people give to you.” Iran had the world’s fifth largest army and was awash in billions of dollars in oil revenues. Construction cranes dotted the skyline of its booming capital, Tehran. The regime’s feared secret police force SAVAK had crushed communist opposition, and the Shah had bought off the conservative Muslim clergy inside the country. He seemed invulnerable, and invaluable to the United States as an ally in the Cold War. Fourteen months later the Shah fled Iran into exile, forced from the throne by a volcanic religious revolution led by a fiery cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini. The ensuing hostage crisis forever damaged America’s standing in the world. How could the United States, which had one of the largest CIA stations in the world and thousands of military personnel in Iran, have been so blind?The spellbinding story Scott Anderson weaves is one of a dictator blind to the disdain of his subjects and a superpower blundering into disaster. Scott Anderson tells this astonishing tale with the narrative brio, mordant wit, and keen analysis that made his bestselling Lawrence of Arabia one of the key texts in understanding the modern Middle East. The Iranian Revolution, Anderson convincingly argues, was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions. In the Middle East, in India, in Southeast Asia, in Europe, and now in the United States, the hatred of economically-marginalized, religiously-fervent masses for a wealthy secular elite has led to violence and upheaval – and Iran was the template. King of Kings is a bravura work of history, and a warning. .