| Mahmoud Dowlatabadi |
A Review of The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
Translated from the Persian by Tom Patterdale
(Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2012)
In 1953, the CIA arrested the civilian Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, and reinstated Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Mossadeq, a democrat who had nationalized the oil industry, was thrown into solitary confinement for three years. He spent the rest of his life under permanent house arrest. The Americans, with the help of the Israelis, proceeded to set up a secret police service—which would soon include expert torturers—to suppress Iranian dissent. This, along with the routine ignominy of being a client state, was used by many dissidents, including Ayatollah Khomeini, to stoke the embers of revolution.