>>24158I'd recommend Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi's books. He was Marxist activist during the revolution and a political prisoner under Khomeini's rule. He's very even handed, has a good insight into both leftists and Islamist activism in the 70s and 80s, he even shared a cell with Khamaeini once. He has a regular column in Counterpunch and his book Remembering Akbar is very good. I'd also recommend the book Critical Introduction to Khomeini edited by Adib-Moghaddam.
The problem with a lot of Iranian history is it was written by the losers, people who fled Iran during the 80s. There are all kinds of specious narratives about the Iranian revolution that diaspora Iranians (including academic historians) like to spread around. One common stereotype in Middle East history is a grand narrative that you have this traditional Islamic bad culture vs secular progressive forces trying to overcome that culture and the entire history of the region is just a culture war between these two factions and you'll see this pop up all the time. Tabrizi sees this as an example of secular fundamentalism and it appears in the books of many Iranian historians too.
>>24158>the Revolution was hijacked by Islamists and turned Iran into a theocratic dystopiaThis is a myth that was promoted by leftists who fled Iran in the 80s. Pretty much everyone in Iran in the 70s and in 1979 was 1. Pro-Khomeini 2. Believed in the importance of Islam or that Islam should have some role in government etc. What that role should be and what role Khomeini should play was where people disagreed. Even the avowedly atheist leftists in Iran had to bend to the overwhelming Islamic sentiment. They often had an attitude of "there is no God but unlike Christianity Islam is a revolutionary religion" etc. and then a good chunk of leftists were devout Muslims or at least sympathetic to Qutb and Shariati. A good chunk of Islamists also had leftist sympathies, especially Ayatollahs Taleghani and Behishti, Ali Shariati etc. there was a whole Islamic left that's been suppressed in Iran since the 80s. Mir Hossein Mousavi and the Green Movement fall into this Islamic left socialist camp.
A good amount of people assume that Islamists and leftists were at each others throats when there was a lot of overlap and cooperation between them and the line was often blurry.
>>24161I've always found Abrahamian's focus on the Tudeh party strange, like he's trying to salvage the revolution by highlighting Tudeh's role. There's just one problem with this. Tudeh was a minor player in the actual revolution in 1979. The Soviets actually quit funding them because they thought they were a useless non-entity with little actual influence in Iran.