Long before he became the politics editor of New Lines Magazine, Danny Postel wrote one of our earliest and most prescient pamphlets — Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran (2006) — which brought critical theory to bear on the fault lines of the Islamic Republic. Nearly two decades later, his analytical instincts remain razor sharp.

In a major new piece for New Lines, Postel examines the deep historical roots of Iran's current war with the United States and Israel and in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. Drawing on scholars of Iranian politics and military culture, he argues that the Islamic Republic's strategic worldview, its siege mentality, and the ideological formation of its current leadership are all, in crucial ways, products of that largely forgotten conflict. The lexicon of "sacred defense" and "faith and firepower" that defined the 1980s war, he shows, has never really gone away — it has simply found new enemies.

It's the kind of historically informed, urgently argued analysis that we love at Prickly Paradigm. Read it at the link below and explore Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran here.