Although a glut of studies have explored the dissemination of Sayyid Qutb’s thoughts and the impact of his widely-circulated works on the formation of Islamist ideology in the Sunni world, less attention has been paid to the influence of Qutb on the Islamist movements in prerevolutionary Iran. However, in parallel with the translations and multiple production of Qutb’s works elsewhere in the Islamic world, almost all major works of Qutb, including his voluminous commentary of the Qur’an, were rendered into Persian between the 1960s and 1970s. Qutb has been avidly read in Persian by his Iranian audience and his books went into multiple printings before and after the revolution. This paper examines the motives behind this translational movement from an Islamist Sunni author for a Shi'i audience in prerevolutionary Iran, and argues that the translations from Qutb played a very instrumental role in shaping the discourse and vocabulary of the Islamists in prerevolutionary Iran. It also maintains that Qutb’s works came as a ready-made source for inspiration and political mobilization for the Islamist youth in Iran. Concurring with Maria Tymoczko who sees translation as an ethical, political and ideological activity rather than mechanical practice, this paper argues that Qutb’s translations in Persian were instrumental in resistance to contemporary western ideologies and to the secular Pahlavi regime which strove to implement anti-clerical reforms. The present study also investigates the way in which the translators of Qutb rendered his works into Persian and introduced the author to their authors, by exploiting on the introductory remarks of the translators in the translated works. It should be noted that the translators of Qutb were by no means invisible characters. Quite to the contrary, they were highly visible and publicly active figures including today’s religious supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Republic’s first ambassador to the Vatican, S. H. Khosrawsahi, among others. In addition to the translations from Qutb, this paper also seeks to demonstrate the living hermeneutics of Qutb in today’s Iran where Qutb has been reinterpreted in the light of contemporary developments. Towards this end, a conference on Sayyid Qutb, held in Tehran in 2015 with a considerable attendance has been discussed in this study. The conference in not only a good indicator of the vivid memory of Qutb, but also an important occasion to observe changes and continuities in the perception of Qutb among the attendants of the conference.

Following World War II, one of the underground resistance movements against the Allied occupation forces in Iran transformed itself into the Pan-Iranist party that promoted Iran’s national integrity and independence. Led by Mohsen Pezeshkpour, in much of the 1940s and 1950s it resonated intense Aryan nationalism combined with concepts of identity, race and religion during the post-colonial awakening in the Middle East. This article is an analysis of the semantics between the Pan-Iranist Party and the Pan-Arabism of Gemal Abdul Nasser of Egypt. The study is a detailed analysis of three critical years of Iran’s history which led to the widespread use of diverse ideologies. The first is the Pan-Iranist diatribe as a reaction to Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Pan-Arabist claims over the Khuzestan region and the Persian Gulf which he referred to as the Arabian Gulf. Following the Shah’s White Revolution of 1963, Iran had witnessed the riots in Qom after Ayatollah Khomeini’s speech that was critical of the Shah. This prompted the Shah to extend an invitation to the newly declared King of Saudi Arabia, Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who had managed to push aside King Saud and with the support of the ulema and the grand mufti, acquire the throne. Faisal was also disenchanted with Nasser’s constant efforts to hijack the leadership of the Arab world by promoting an aggressive policy of Pan-Arabism and an Arab union. The alternative response to Nasser’s Arab Union was Pan-Islamism which sought to deflate and curtail Nasser’s political ambitions. The study is based on primary sources available on the Pan-Iranists, the proceedings of the Majlis (Parliamentary Papers), documents in the Iranian National Archives, and Arabic newspaper. A preliminary study shows that with all the saber-rattling between Pan-Arabism and Pan-Iranism, Nasser’s genuine audience was his popular Arab supporters in Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Nasser’s effort to sustain the delicate balance of the United Arab Republic since its inception on 23 February 1958 required that he generate a non-Arab scape-goat as a perceived threat. For this purpose Pezeshkpour’s Pan-Iranism with its highly volatile and over-toned racial comments fulfilled the requirements. This was the beginning of the war of semantics between Arabs and Ajams (Persians), and claims over Khuzestan and the Persian Gulf which has continued to plague the region ever since.

"We should combat and arrest the danger on the beaches of the Mediterranean so we do not have to shed blood on Iranian soil”. While many may think that this statement was pointed by theIslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander or the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it was first pointed by GeneralPashai, head of SAVAK’s Middle East branch, in 1958. In fact,while much ink has been spilled on Iran’s foreign policy under the Shah’s reign, there has been a void in analysis of Iran’s ties with the Shia Lebanese in the pre-1979 Revolution Era. In the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis and the 1958 Iraqi coup, the Shah saw both Nasser and Qasim as his regional foes. Thus, to deter the threats of pan-Arabism and Communism, heordered Iran's security service, the SAVAK, to seek a strategic ally in the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, Seyyed Musa Sadr, a charismatic leader of the Shia Lebanese, emerged as a new strong religious-political actor. Sadr, whose relations with the Iranian revolutionaries were significant in the emergence of the Islamic Revolution, transformed the position of the Shia in the Lebanese polity and began crafting a complicated policy towards the regional states, including Iran. From this point of view, the present paper is an attempt to set forth a new understanding of the emergence and fluctuation of Iran’s ties with the Shia Lebanese in the Shah’s era. Here, the story of the evolution of these ties can be narrated as the unfolding of constant interaction between states and non-state forces in the Middle East. Analyzed from this perspective, the paper examines the actors, processes, and mechanisms that Iran has used to construct its ties with the Shia Lebanese from 1958 until 1979. “What actors and processes at what levels of analysis and through what mechanisms have shaped Iran’s ties with the Shia Lebanese?” This is the central question that guides the analytical narrative in the present survey. In this framework, the proposed work will trace the history of the ebbs and flows within Iran’s ties with the Shia Lebanese, and assess the broad contours of the evolutionary trajectory of these ties and its impacts on the geopolitics of the Middle East and its regional balance of power during the Cold War.

The Arab revolts have disturbed social movement scholars and policy makers alike. These revolts started to erupt about two years after the emergence of the Iranian Green Movement of June 2009. Ironically, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, stepped down one night before the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran. Since then, Iranian activists, intellectuals, and political elites from far right to far left have been framing the Arab revolts based upon their divergent political perceptions and agendas. While the establishment has proposed that the Arab revolts have been inspired by the Islamic Revolution of 1979 as well as “Iranian Resistance” to the American and Zionist imperialism, the Iranian Green activists claim that it was the Green Movement of 2009 that inspired the Arab streets. The oppositions’ perceptions of the Arab revolts have been nostalgically inspired by the “lost ideals” of the 1979 Revolution such as freedom. On the fringe part of the political spectrum, then incumbent Ahmadinejad’s circle was self-contradictory. While some of Ahmadinejad’s allies had related the Arab revolts to “the conspiracy of big powers,” others shared the establishment’s anti-imperialism perceptions. It seems that for all blocs of power and the oppositions within the Islamic Republic of Iran -with the exception of some of Ahmadinejad’s allies- the Islamic Revolution of 1979 is a permanent and inspiring revolution. I examine these divergent perceptions within Iranian political elites towards the Arab revolts and propose that, although inherently divergent, all blocs of power and the mainstream oppositions keep trying to reframe and restructure the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The data gleaned through traditional online media as well as new social media from the fall of Mubarak regime in Egypt up until the end of January 2016. Although this study contributes to the classical idea of “permanent revolution,” it could open some research avenues for hybrid regime studies, factional politics, and elite fragmentation.