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

Explores how oil companies, Western development NGOs, the US government, and Iranian technocrats turned Iran into the first 'petro-state'.

Gregory Brew (Author)

9781009206341, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 December 2022

261 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.57 kg

'In his fascinating, meticulously-researched book, Gregory Brew demonstrates how US development efforts during the Cold War shaped Iran's political and economic history, challenging grand narratives about US Cold War liberalism. This will be required reading for scholars of US foreign relations, Iranian history, petro-development and critical development studies.' Karine V. Walther, Georgetown University in Qatar

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.

Introduction
1. Iran, global oil, and the United States, 1901–1947
2. 'We have done nothing': the Seven-Year Plan and the failure of dual integration in Iran, 1947–1951
3. The Mosaddeq Challenge: nationalization and the isolation of Iranian oil, 1951–1952
4. The collapse narrative: the coup and the reintegration of Iranian oil, 1952–1954
5. The petrochemical paradise: oil-driven development and the Second Plan, 1954–1963
6. The golden goose: Iran, the Consortium, and the first OPEC crisis, 1954–1965
7. Controlled revolution: expertise, economics, and the American view of Iran, 1954–1965
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: History: specific events & topics [HBT], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1], Regional & national history [HBJ]