Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Violence as a political option?
- Demonizing the armed opposition
- Why resort to political violence?
- The four Iranian Marxist theoreticians of armed struggle
2 Hasan Zia-Zarifi's account of why armed struggle
- The culprit: Absolutist despotic monarchism
- Reflections from prison
3 Amir-Parviz Pouyan's account of why armed struggle
- Literature in the service of politics
- Armed struggle: Rational or irrational? A necessary theoretical digression
- Pouyan on the necessity of armed struggle as a rational choice
- Refutation of the theory of survival
- Pouyan's incisive impact
4 Mas'oud Ahmadzadeh's accounts of why armed struggle
- Demystifying classical notions of how and when to take up arms
- The fruitful retreat
- The Debray factor: From Havana to Tehran via Mashhad
- Learning from the past
- Breaking with the old sacred cows
- Armed struggle by the revolutionary vanguard
5 Bijan Jazani's accounts of why armed struggle
- Mysteries around What a Revolutionary Should Know
- To confront a monarchical military dictatorship
- Revolutionary intellectuals: The dynamite of the revolutionary movement
- Jazani's paradoxical hints
- Revolutionary agents and the question of leadership in a despotic or democratic Iran
6 The Tudeh Party's awkward tango with armed struggle
- Ideological rift over revolution-making
- Iranian students take sides
- The Tudeh Party's reluctant approval of armed struggle
- The Tudeh Party pushes back against armed struggle
- Revolution means employing peaceful methods of struggle
- The Tudeh Party denounces armed struggle
- What did the revolutionary Marxists think of the Tudeh Party?
7 Monarchists, Maoists, and the Tudeh Party in unison: armed struggle is counterrevolutionary adventurism
- For Nikkhah the red revolution turned white
- Kourosh Lasha'i's rejection of romanticism and embrace of realism
- The Tudeh Party: We told you so
8 Armed struggle and Marxist canonists
- Historical determinism or revolutionary voluntarism?
- Marx and Engels: Wavering over the role of violence?
- Lenin on violence, unequivocal?
- Trotsky: Dissonance between intellectual revolutionary consciousness and backward economic conditions invites violence
9 Armed struggle and Marxist revolutionaries
- Mao Tse-tung's revolutionary authority
- Che Guevara's revolution-making to overthrow dictators
- Carlos Marighella: Unleashing violence to end dictatorial violence
- Marighella in Iran via Baghdad
10 Formative years of the Jazani group
- Jazani the entrepreneur
- Whence it came
- Student political activities
- First phase of the Jazani Group
- Jazani and The Message of University Students
- Second phase of the Jazani Group
- The political and propaganda branch
- The operational and military branch
- The military operation that should have happened but did not
- Ghafour Hasanpour's networks: Recruiting behind the scenes
11 Jazani Group compromised
- First raids
- The remnants of the Jazani Group under siege
- Bank robberies
- The decision to leave the country
- The final nabs
12 The new Hasanpour, Ashraf, and Safa'i-Farahani Group: Preparations and operations
- Picking up the broken pieces
- Organizing armed struggle: Three teams
- The first urban operations of the H-A-S Group
13 The Pouyan, Ahmadzadeh, and Meftahi Group
- The dissimilar but inseparable Pouyan and Ahmadzadeh
- Enter 'Abbas Meftahi
- Pouyan's circles at Mashhad and Tabriz
- Ahmadzadeh's membership in Hirmanpour's circle
- Meftahi's Sari and Tehran circles
- The P-A-M Group's military operations before Siyahkal
- An ethical digression: To press or not to press the trigger
14 Armed struggle in Iran: Rural or urban
- Theoretical positioning
- Ahmadzadeh gently parts with the Cuban model
- Jazani: Rural Iran not the ideal revolutionary base
- Jazani's change of heart: Emphasis on rural/mountainous warfare
15 Merger discussions for Iran's revolutionary armed movement
- The painful and slow process of negotiation
- Last hurdle: Convincing the P-A-M rank and file
- The mountain group's five-month reconnaissance mission
- Postponements
16 The H-A-S Group hounded
- The beans are spilled
- The arrests begin
- The mountain team compromised
17 The Siyahkal operation
- Assault on the Siyahkal Gendarmerie Station on 19 Bahman
- The aftermath of the assault
- The nineteen-day odyssey of the retreating guerrillas
18 Assessing the Siyahkal strike
- Objectives of the Siyahkal strike: Ahmadzadeh, Ashraf, Safa'i-Farahani
- Siyahkal as a military operation: Fumbles and blunders
- The regime's first public response to the Siyahkal strike
- The Ranking Security Official's spectacle
19 The Hamid Ashraf factor
- Schooling
- Ashraf in the eyes of fellow combatants
- Three years of guerrilla struggle in perspective
- Ashraf violent and authoritarian?
20 Hemming the guerrillas or cultivating a guerrilla culture?
- The Shah declares the end of terrorist activities in Iran
- The Golesorkhi affair
- Revolutionaries of the Film School of the Iranian National Television
- Slaying heroes: Fuel on fire
21 Jazani's questioning of armed struggle
- Challenging the theory and practice of the Fada'is
- Looking for new forms of struggle
- Underlining the role of legal methods of struggle
- A matter of trade-off
22 Softly disarming armed struggle to regain the trust of the masses
- Step one: The correct stage in the movement
- Step two: Walking on two legs
- Step three: Iran's paradoxical political condition, democratic and despotic
- Step four: The guerrillas' conflicting remits, or unity of opposites
- Step five: Armed propaganda and the combined method of struggle
- Two interpretations of armed struggle
- The issue of objective conditions of revolution
- How long would it take the masses to join the movement?
- Saving the armed movement from the unhealthy leftist tendency
23 Jazani's ideological offensive in prison
- Spreading the good word
- Open schism in prison
- Where did the original members of the Jazani Group stand?
- The secretive delinking of armed struggle from the movement
- The misunderstood or conflicted theoretician
24 The Fada'i interface, inside, outside prison
- Indirect interactions between Ashraf and Jazani in 1973
- On the correct method of struggle: The Fada'is and the Star Group
- Summer 1974: Armed struggle as strategy and tactic has the upper hand
- Reading about the correct method of struggle in People's Combat
- Familiarity with and reaction to Jazani's works outside prisons
25 Fada'i leadership debating correct methods of struggle
- A discreet Jazani special issue of People's Combat
- Growing a second leg?
- Political activities in 1976 discussions with the Marxist Mojahedin
- Does Ashraf take sides in May/June 1976?
26 Bird's-eye view of armed struggle (1971-1976)
- The guerrillas' persistent presence
- Guerrillas highlighted: Partial transparency
- The news blackout and the Fada'is' rising success
- Changing tides: Expansion, exposure, and beleaguered
- The Fada'is' relations with Libya, Palestinian groups, and the Soviet Union
- The shock of state terrorism
- Fada'is under attack
- The Fada'is without Ashraf
27 Guerrillas conducting the regime's requiem
- Students at home beat on the drums of war
- University turmoil and campus guards
- Policy of zero tolerance
- The student backlash to the Golesorkhi affair
- Winds of change
28 The regime's requiem: The players abroad
- Iranian students abroad rallying against the regime
- Iranian students abroad take their cue from the guerrillas
- Radical methods to put the Shah's regime on the spot
29 Prelude to the Shah's free fall
- The Western press reveals secrets
- Disdain for torture
- The grand anti-Shah conspiracy
- A last-ditch effort against the guerrilla-CISNU coalition
- Beating a fatal retreat
Conclusion
Chronology
Bibliography
Index
