Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War

Gregory Brew

2022-12 · Cambridge University Press

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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. Drawing on both American and Iranian sources, 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'etat of August 1953. By placing oil at the centre of the Cold War narrative, Brew contextualises Iran's pro-Western alignment and slide into petrolic authoritarianism. Synthesising a wide range of sources and research methods, this book demonstrates that the Pahlavi petro-state was not born, but made, and not solely by the Pahlavi shah.

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Gregory Brew is Kissinger Visiting Fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University. He is a historian of modern Iran, the Cold War, and international oil. He has written extensively on contemporary issues of energy and geopolitics, and his work has appeared in Iranian Studies, The International History Review, and the Texas National Security Review.