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Mohammad Gholi Majd's book covers the history of Iran from 1919, when the British tried to force the Iranians to sign the highly unpopular Anglo-Persian Agreement, through 1930, when Reza Shah Pahlavi consolidated his power and managed to establish an arbitrary dictatorship. It mostly consists of a long series of quotations from U.S. documents that very frequently overlap. The author's narrative is awkwardly divided into sections in such a way that there are ruptures between them and gaps in information. In sum, Majd tells an incomplete story.
The story details a number of important episodes such as the coup of February 1921, Reza Khan's struggle to consolidate power in the early 1920s, and the change in the Persian monarchy that culminated in the crowning of Reza (by himself) as the founder of a new dynasty in Iran.
In the introduction, the author promises to explain the entire vicissitudes of Iranian history in terms of imperialist policy. He argues that Reza Khan, later Reza Shah, was always a puppet of...