Expert Lecture: Revolutionary Iran and the Modern Middle East

Almost forty years later, the aftershocks of the 1979 Iranian Revolution are still felt throughout the Middle East and beyond. The Iranian upheaval, like the French and Russian revolutions, was a truly global event. It reshaped the world around us and challenged many traditional assumptions about Islam, democracy and western-style modernization.

In recent years many younger Iranians, disillusioned with the Islamic Republic, have expressed nostalgia for life under the Pahlavi dynasty. Historians, too, are taking a second look at the revolution in Iran, uncovering new documents and evidence that challenge the conventional narrative of what happened and why.

Our guest for tonight, Dr. Andrew Scott Cooper’s research and writings on Iran in the 1970s have stirred enormous interest and debate inside Iran and within the Iranian exiled community. In this presentation, he will talk about Iran, the Islamic Revolution and the future of Western engagement with a country that has always shown an enormous capacity for change and evolution.

Dr. Andrew Scott Cooper is the author of The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran (2016) and The Oil Kings: How the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East (2011). He has written for publications including the New York Times, Guardian and Foreign Policy, and been interviewed by news outlets such as BBC, ARTE and MSNBC. Dr. Cooper holds a PhD in the history of US-Iran relations from the University of Aberdeen and masters’ degrees in journalism and strategic studies from Columbia University, where he was also a professor of international relations. He currently lives in Brussels.