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 Lashäi¿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 Guevaräs 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 Safäi-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, Safäi-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 Fadäis
• 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 Fadäi interface, inside, outside prison

• Indirect interactions between Ashraf and Jazani in 1973
• On the correct method of struggle: The Fadäis 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 Fadäi 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 Fadäis¿ rising success
• Changing tides: Expansion, exposure, and beleaguered
• The Fadäis¿ relations with Libya, Palestinian groups, and the Soviet Union
• The shock of state terrorism
• Fadäis under attack
• The Fadäis 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 guerrilläCISNU coalition
• Beating a fatal retreat

Conclusion

Chronology

Bibliography

Index