Palgrave Macmillan has published The Carter Administration and the Fall of Iran's Pahlavi Dynasty. US-Iran Relations on the Brink of the 1979 Revolution, authored by Javier Gil Guerrero, a collaborator with the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS).

This publication is based on Javier Gil's thesis, which he defended in 2014 and was entitled, "Opening Pandora's Box: Jimmy Carter, The Persian Gulf and the Rise of Militant Islam (1977-1981)." His thesis research was conducted within the framework of ICS's Religion and Civil Society project.

The book studies American foreign policy during the administration of Democratic President Jimmy Carter and his relationship with the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Javier Gil Guerrero, using recently declassified documents, offers a new vision of the forces that paved the way for Khomeini's triumph, of the altered perception Americans had of Islam and of the changing relationship between the United States and Iran.

Among other issues, the author analyzes the differences between Washington and Tehran concerning human rights and arms exports, the divisions within the White House itself and the Shah's uncertainty regarding Carter's support. 

A brief summary of the book

During the first two years of the Carter presidency, Iran entered into a spiral of violence and unrest that ended with the exile of the Shah and the establishment of an Islamic Republic. American diplomats and intelligence services initially ignored the Iranian Revolution. When Carter finally realized the extent of the unrest in Iran, he refused to explicitly support the iron fist policy that the Shah proposed.

The Iranian monarch was unwilling to decisively address the protests without Carter's backing and carried out a failed policy that mixed concessions and repression, which only served to postpone the inevitable.

The sources in this book suggest that the American-backed process of political liberalization came too late and only served to weaken the Shah's authority.