New Books In Middle Eastern Studies

From the 1940s to 1960s, Iran developed into the world's first “petro-state,” where oil represented the bulk of state revenue and supported an industrializing economy, expanding middle class, and powerful administrative and military apparatus.  In Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War (Cambridge UP, 2022), Gregory Brew outlines how the Pahlavi petro-state emerged from a confluence of forces – some global, some local. He shows how the shah's particular form of oil-based authoritarianism evolved from interactions with American developmentalists, Pahlavi technocrats, and major oil companies, all against the looming backdrop of the United States' Cold War policy and the coup d’état of August 1953. By placing oil at the center of the Cold War narrative, Brew contextualizes Iran's pro-Western alignment and slide into petrolic authoritarianism. Synthesizing a wide range of sources and research methods, this book demonstrates that the Pahlavi petro-state was not born, but made, and not so