Quotes from Christopher De Bellaigue

Seyyed Hassan Modarres: "However good the guarddog is, it stops being useful the moment it bites the hands of its master's child, and must be banished

He seemed to believe that every battle was worth fighting.

since 'nothing can be begun with certainty, it's better we begin with doubt'.

He [Mosaddegh] was part of a generation of Iranian men who were inspired by Europe but who expected their wives to remain Iranian. (p37)

In his Interview in Les Nouvelles, Mosaddegh gave an unintentional insight into his own marriage at this stage when he described Iranian women as "more mother than wife." (p37)

The first constitutional monarchy in the Muslim world was established in Tunis in 1861.

Reza implemented an impressive number of reforms that were designed to turn the cracked empire he had inherited into a purposeful nation state. But he ended up, like so many of his fellow dictators, alone in his citadel. And much of the goods he did was nullified by the way he did it.

The 1953 coup was a catastrophe which slammed him [Mosaddegh] to floor, and from which Iran never fully recovered

The historical point that needs to be made here is that Shia Islam and Arab culture were no longer being seen as contributory to the national sense, but inimical to it.

the Brotherhood was not a throwback to the past but a reflection of its modern rivals, with attributes that would allow it to take on such ideologies and defeat them.

Jamal al-Din embodied the use of Islam as a worldwide ideology of resistance against Western imperialism, knitting the Islamic heartlands together in a way that today seems impossible. He was the godfather of universal, modern Islamism.

Elections to the sixteenth majles were held first in the provinces, and they were conducted so dishonestly that even the British were shocked.

Even those who were ignorant of the word of God were not entirely deprived of divine light,

He ran Iran, which is a big and complicated country, wearing a pair of pyjamas.