Arash Davari
What was Pahlavi Iran’s role in the 1974 declaration of the New International Economic Order? How does this history, largely ignored and dismissed, alter political theories of decolonization? The Pahlavi state’s diplomatic efforts from 1968 until the 1979 revolution were a reflection of Iran’s semi-colonial history. Iran occupied an intermediary posture alongside peers who espoused anticolonial visions of nondomination more recognizable as revolutionary. The state’s posture is illegible in regnant theories of decolonization. To see it, scholars must adopt methods attuned to imprecision. Pahlavi state diplomacy thus set the stage for a popular transnational revolutionary movement, which would assume an intermediary posture of its own.