It is quite possible that before too long the Iranian people will chase the Pahlavi dictator and his associates from power...

So wrote historian Fred Halliday in the conclusion to this prescient work on Iran in the twentieth century. Just months later the revolution of 1979 saw Shah Reza Pahlavi ousted and an Islamic theocracy established under Ayatollah Khomeini.

Following a contextual study of the origins of the Iranian state, Halliday focuses on the period from the early 1960s to 1978, when protests swept the nation for the first time in fifteen years. Through an interdisciplinary approach, he assesses the economic, social and political conditions, taking in the nation's uneven capitalist development, opposition movements and state repression, and the alliance between the Shah and the United States. Even three decades on, this classic study - unique in its proximity to the revolution - offers many insights into why and how the Shah's reign came to an end.