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A RESPONSE TO PEZHMANN DAILAMI'S REVIEW OF FROM QAJAR TO PAHLAVI: IRAN, 1919–1930
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2012
Extract
In his review of From Qajar to Pahlavi: Iran, 1919–1930 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2008) published in the November 2010 issue of IJMES, Pezhmann Dailami denigrates my book for relying on U.S. State Department archives instead of the usual British records, and claims that “Majd's story has an obvious purpose, and that is to justify the deep sense of vulnerability and the violent anti-Western paranoia of the Iranian regime.” First, given that the available British records have been used extensively in other studies, I saw no point in reproducing them yet again. Second, American records have not been used before and provide a fresh perspective. My book uses nearly 800 new documents, one for every five days of the period covered; to call it an attempt “to justify” the policies of the Islamic Republic is absurd. Moreover, Dailami claims, “Evidence that the 1921 coup was a British design is largely circumstantial. Of course, Reza was Britain's perfect man. He could resist the advances of Soviet Russia while remaining friendly to the old imperial power.” But Dailami then contradicts himself in the next paragraph when he writes, “In any case, that Reza got rid of the last remnants of British political influence in Iran does not appear to matter to anyone. It must be admitted that he did so under Soviet pressure.”
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