Stolen Revolution

The 1979 revolution in Iran swept aside a monarchy, fuelled by a people’s dreams of social justice and political freedom. But the movement’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and his acolytes instead built a system that served their narrow faction and worsened beyond imagination the brutality and corruption that had existed under the Shah. Stolen Revolution follows six Iranians who, together, have lived the arc of modern Iranian history:

• Mehdi Karroubi, a devotee of Khomeini, rose to the heights of power and helped shape the autocratic form it took, ignored the new government’s repression of its enemies, before being cast out of the inner circle.
• Hila Sedighi, a young activist, gave voice through her poetry to her peers’ hopes during the reform years and ultimately voiced their shattered dreams.
• Said Rahmani, a successful global tech entrepreneur, returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country and encountered a ruthless security state that wanted his company for itself.
• Amir Moghadam, an ambitious government bureaucrat, witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth.
• Rozhin Yousefzade and Kosar Eftekhari, both born in the 1990s, escaped their gendered destinies by leaving their hometowns for Tehran where they joined a mass movement in confrontation with a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman Life Freedom protests. Each paid an enormous price.

Through vivid and harrowing reporting, this is a new story of resistance and nascent revolution in Iran: tracing the unfulfilled promises passed down through the generations, a story of power, corruption and greed, and those brave individuals who fought back.