Iranian leftists like the Constitutional Revolution’s Social Democrats, in 1905-1909, and proper Marxists like the members of the Iranian Communist Party—one of the earliest in the Middle East, founded in 1920, and enjoying considerable standing in the Comintern—never succeeded to capture the state in modern Iran. But as works like Maziar Behrooz’ Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran (2000) and Stephanie Cronin’s edited volume Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran (2004) remind us, Marxism was an influential sociopolitical and ideological force in Iran in the 1920s and especially from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Thus, from its birth as a general leftist party in 1941 via its transformation into a properly Marxist party—memorably analyzed in Ervand Abrahamian’s Iran between Two Revolutions (1982)—to its repression after the CIA-led coup d’Etat of 1953, the Tudeh was the most powerful party of mid-century Iran and the biggest of its kind in the Middle East.

Moreover, from the 1950s to the 1960s Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-1980; r. 1941-1979) and his regime saw the remaining Tudehis and 1960s Maoist splinter groups in Iran and in exile as a threat. It was against this political backdrop, too, that some socioeconomic policies like the 1963 land reform picked up long-standing communist demands, though that reform had other roots, too, and sought to neutralize Iran’s land-holding urban upper class. And in early 1971, it was a new Marxist group, the Sazman-e cherikha-ye fada’i-ye khalq-e Iran,The Organization of the Iranian People’s Fada’i Guerillas (OIPFG), that launched an armed struggle against the shah’s regime, a history told in Peyman Vahabzadeh’s A Guerilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979 (2010). The Fada’i-ye Khalq denounced the Tudeh for sitting on its hands, excoriated the Soviet Union and soon also China for accommodating the shah, and forced competitors like the Islamo-Marxist Mujahedin-e Khalq to spring to action as well. Many fada’iyin died an early violent death.

Even so, several ones wrote influential theoretical texts while in prison, like Bizhan Jazani (1937-1975), or in the underground, like Amir Parviz Puyan (1947-1971) and Mas‘ud Ahmadzadeh (1947-1972). Although hailing from two different groups that had been active before early 1971 and then joined to form the Fada’i-ye Khalq, they had much in common. Thus, they welcomed Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese armed revolutionary experiences, but never saw them as simple models to emulate. They had contacts with the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a story and whose long aftermath is analyzed in Naghmeh Sohrabi’s “Remembering the Palestine Group: Friendship, Global Activism, and the Iranian Revolution” (2019). And partly drawing on Regis Debray and Latin American urban guerilla theorists, they most crucially stressed the need for a self-sacrificing vanguard that attacks the state to shatter workers’ lethargy. (As this did not happen, by 1975 some fada’is split and turned to political agitation; some even joined the Tudeh.)

At the same time, there were disagreements, too. Perhaps key was the nature of the US-Iranian relationship. Ahmadzadeh saw the shah as a US puppet pure and simple, whereas Jazani though he had considerable autonomy while under US control. In this regard, the text produced here hews closely to the Ahmadzadeh line, which was dominant at the time of publication, in 1973. The text is an English translation of a Persian text published in the (obviously prohibited) fada’i publication Nabard-e Khalq; it did not have a byline. The text is of interest in this collection not only because of its systemic reference to US imperialism but also because of its region-wide perspective.

In 1901, Iran granted an oil concession to a foreigner: William Know D’Arcy (1949-1917), a British national who before had worked in mining in British imperial Australia and New Zealand. The 60-year concession gave the Iranian government, then led by the Qajar dynasty (1794-1925), 16-percent of annual profits. In 1908, D’Arcy’s engineers found oil in the southwestern province of Khuzistan, bordering Ottoman Iraq. The same year, D’Arcy’s company became the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC; from 1935 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company [AIOC]; from 1954 British Petroleum [BP]), which by 1913 began to commercially exploit Iranian oil. In 1914, the British government bought 51-percent of APOC’s shares and hence effectively its control, which mattered particularly to the Navy, the world’s largest, that was shifting from coal to oil combustion. In 1933, the 1901 concession was moderately revised. Iran now received 20-percent of annual profits, and APOC made other minor concessions, agreed on in a meeting between Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878-1944, r. 1925-1941) and APOC Chairman John Cadman (1877-1941).

Iranian AIOC laborers’ and the Iranian public’s complaints about the status quo grew audible after the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran opened up the political sphere in 1941. Later that decade, nationalist parliamentarians, including Muhammad Musaddiq (1882-1967), began to demand a new agreement along the lines of the 50-50 profit-sharing deal that Venezuela’s 1943 Hydrocarbons Law had successfully imposed on foreign oil companies. AIOC refused. Its 1949 counter-offer was accepted by Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-1980, r. 1941-1979) but rejected by parliament, not the least because in 1950 also Saudi Arabia got a 50-50 profit-sharing deal with ARAMCO. In April 1951, parliament elected Musaddiq Prime Minister.

Having for a long time criticized AIOC’s role—and by extension Britain’s influence—in Iran, Musaddiq demanded AIOC respect sovereign control. When it refused, he cancelled its concession and nationalized its assets in Iran. The following two years were fateful. They ended with a CIA-led coup d’Etat that in 1953 ousted Musaddiq, turned Iran into a US client, and allowed the US government to bring (initially not quite willing) US oil companies into Iran, sidelining BP, and to create a consortium in 1954 that paid Iran 50-percent of its profit. Moreover, Iran’s oil nationalization drama was an international affair. Anticolonial masses treated Musaddiq as a hero also outside Iran, as Lior Sternfeld shows in “Iran Days in Egypt: Mosaddeq’s Visit to Cairo in 1951” (2015). And Christopher Dietrich’s Oil Revolution (2017) demonstrates that among anticolonial elites in many non-Western countries and at international organizations like the United Nations (UN), Iran’s case sharpened conversations about and demands for economic decolonization, i.e. for politically independent countries’ right to also exercise sovereign rights over their resources. (Publics were involved in these debates, too.)

In New York, Iran’s UN delegate Djalal Abdoh (1909-1996) was a leading voice in this regard, together with colleagues especially from Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. Moreover, Musaddiq himself addressed international organizations on economic decolonization. In June 1952, he was at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands, which would accept Iran’s claim that AIOC’s nationalization was a domestic Iranian rather than an international legal matter. And on October 15, 1951, he addressed the UN Security Council’s 560th meeting in New York, speaking in French; as he was frail, after a while Allahyar Saleh, Iran’s ambassador to the United States, took over.

Mao congratulates the visitors from Iraq on their successful July 14 revolution. While expressing support for the ongoing anti-colonialist struggles in Iraq, Iran, and Cyprus, he discusses a variety of topics, including American aggression, Taiwan, Cuba, and the eventual downfall of imperialism.

Etemad acknowledges receipt of a letter from Haunschild stating that fissionable nuclear materials will not be transfered to any of the countries listed in the annex.

Etemad acknowledges receipt of a letter from Haunschild stating that in the future West Germany and Iran may cooperate " to build uranium enrichment, or fuel reprocessing installations in Iran."

Etemad acknowledges receipt of a letter from Haunschild with details of the contract to be signed for nuclear cooperation between West Germany and Iran.

The Central Committees of the Iraqi Communist Party and Iranian Tudeh Party condemn Iraqi aggression against Iran, support Palestinian rights against what they view as "Zionist aggressors," and criticize American imperialism in the region.

This statement was made by Joudat at the 2nd Party Conference of the Azerbayjani Democratic Party in Baku on March 24-25 1957. His statement spoke out against imperialism and the accomplishments of DPA organizations.

Materials provided by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin to CWIHP, following the publication of the Working Paper No. 40, "The KGB in Afghanistan." As with all Mitrokhin’s notes, his compilation on Soviet “active measures” in South and Southwest Asia is based on other smuggled-out notes and was prepared especially for CWIHP. Please read the Notes on Sources for information on the nature and limitations of these documents.