Bonus Sample: Oil, Power, and Theocracy

In 1953 the CIA and MI6 participated in a coup d’etat in Iran. That true sentence (and what usually follows) can create an oversimplified distortion of history—and present. But Iran is in the news again with the biggest protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution bringing millions to the streets. The regime unsurprisingly cracked down hard: at least 2,700 protesters have been killed and 18,000 arrested.

Though the initial impetus was economic, these are the latest in a wave of growing uprisings in Iran against the far-right theocratic authoritarian government—especially its treatment of women. How did we get here? What h...