About the Book
The 1979 overthrow of the Shah in Iran, in one of the most popular revolutions in world history, inspired activism and uprisings across the Global South and ushered in an era of Islamist resurgence across the Middle East. Mohammad Ataie uncovers the untold story of clerics and the Revolutionary Guards who sought to export the revolution and build the Islamist International. Drawing on exclusive oral histories in Arabic and Persian and rare archival sources in Iran and Lebanon, he traces their efforts to advance an alternative vision of anti-imperialism distinct from both leftist Third Worldism and conservative Islamic models. The Islamist International illuminates not only the immediate dynamics of the revolution itself but also its long-term impact on the contemporary world. By revealing the origins of the Qods Force and the Axis of Resistance, Ataie offers a new understanding of the global legacy of the revolution and Iran’s transnational resistance to US hegemony and Israeli regional supremacy today.