Outside Iran, we hear mostly about one single aspect of this “revolution within the revolution”: the tug-of-war between reformers and conservatives since the election of President Khatami in 1997. Wright appropriately devotes much attention to this protracted political battle over the future of the Islamic Republic. She meticulously details how virtually every single initiative by the reformers to expand personal freedoms, loosen cultural restrictions, and end Iran’s international isolation has been followed by a powerful conservative counteroffensive. She identifies several phases in the conservatives’ increasingly virulent effort to intimidate and silence the reformers. At first, hard-liners merely struck at some of President Khatami’s closest allies, including Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi and Interior Minister Abdullah Nouri. In April 1998, Karbaschi was arrested on embezzlement charges. Following a highly publicized and politically motivated trial, he received a five-year jail sentence (subsequently reduced to two years). Similarly, in June 1998, Nouri was impeached by parliament after only ten months in office. Conservatives then broadened their attacks to include the new pro-reform newspapers and magazines that had flourished in the wake of Khatami’s election and that, as Wright shows, had helped redefine Iran’s domestic and foreign-policy agendas. Using their control of the judiciary, hard-liners endeavored to muzzle the many dailies, weeklies and monthlies that had become the reformers’ major sources of influence (a process that is continuing to this very day). In the fall of 1998, the assault against the reformers intensified when several dissident writers were murdered. As Wright demonstrates, the discovery that a death squad operating within the Ministry of Intelligence (a stronghold of the conservatives) had been responsible for these assassinations did little to diminish the conservatives’ determination to silence reformers.

More generally, Wright has much to say about political developments inside Iran from Khatami’s election in August 1997 to the student protests and clashes between students and vigilante groups in July 1999. But her book goes far beyond the headlines to highlight the underlying societal and intellectual transformations that are driving Iran’s ongoing political saga. Thus, for instance, Wright explores the critical role of an increasingly restless post-revolutionary generation; the assertion of women in public life; efforts by “post-Islamist” intellectuals to reconcile Islam and modernity; and the flourishing, for the first time ever in Iranian history, of a creative indigenous film industry.

Throughout the book, the author relies heavily on extensive interviews with Iranians from all walks of life. Many are political leaders and intellectuals to whom she has gained access over more than a quarter-century of reporting for such publications as The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and The Sunday Times. For instance, the book features discussions with former Tehran mayor Karbaschi; Ayatollah Mohajerani, a standard-bearer of the reform movement since Khatami selected him as minister of culture and Islamic guidance; philosopher Abdul Karim Soroush, whose modernist Islamic ideas are having a major impact throughout the Muslim world; and Vice President Massoumeh Ebtekar, the spokeswoman for the students who captured the U.S. embassy in 1979, now – as vice-president for the environment – Iran’s highest-ranking woman in government. But Wright ventures far beyond Iran’s decision-making and intellectual elite. She also relates the views and the aspirations of countless lesser-known participants in Iran’s silent revolution. Drawing on her first-hand knowledge of the country and its people as well as on her ability to place current developments inside Iran in broad historical and comparative perspective, Wright significantly enhances our understanding of a country that is changing faster and more thoroughly than at any time since the triumph of the Islamic revolution more than two decades ago.

The central argument is that Iran’s current travails are consistent with the worldwide quest for, and trend toward, empowerment. Since the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11, Wright argues, Iranians repeatedly have sought to free themselves from autocratic rule and foreign control. In 1953, a peaceful attempt to do so was thwarted. And, while the revolution of 1979 did succeed in dismantling dynastic rule and asserting Iranian independence, its promise to foster an era of greater freedom was left unfulfilled. Instead, a coterie of radical clerics around Khomeini hijacked the revolution and proceeded to establish a theocracy.

Still, Wright observes, the revolution sowed further seeds of empowerment. For one thing, it mobilized large segments of the population, which until then had remained on the fringes of politics. Wright shows at some length how this phenomenon has affected women. She quotes Abdul Karim Soroush observing that his mother, who had refrained from listening to the radio until 1979, began to do so afterward because she no longer felt radio was merely an instrument for the shah’s propaganda, and because the presence of religious programming made her far more comfortable with the medium. Similarly, the strict enforcement of “Islamic” dress codes made it easier for women from religious-oriented, conservative families to become involved in the public sphere. Meanwhile, tradition-minded fathers became less concerned that sending their daughters to institutions of higher education might expose them to values and lifestyles they deemed offensive. These changes in perceptions and attitudes, Wright argues, help explain why Iran is among the countries that have made the most progress toward closing the educational gap between boys and girls. Today, she notes, over 40 percent of university students are women (compared with 28 percent in 1978), as are more than one-third of the faculty on campuses. Political and economic developments also contributed to the empowerment of women – including the war with Iraq, which heightened women’s presence in the workplace, and a deteriorating economy, which made it necessary for many wives to work.

More generally, Wright shows that changes taking place under the Islamic Republic have promoted greater participation by women in political and social affairs. The conservative clergy did succeed in rescinding many of the progressive measures that the shah had decreed and in imposing numerous new restrictions on women’s behavior. But, as Wright observes, by failing to take back the two critical rights they had historically opposed for women – education and voting privileges – conservative clerics made it inevitable that women would come back to press their own demands, as they have done with increasing vigor since the mid-1990s. The result, Wright notes, has been the rise of a distinctive brand of activism, one shaped and dominated by women from socially conservative, often rural backgrounds. This movement has a broader base than under the shah, when its appeal was limited to Westernized, upper-class women and high-school and university students. Its growing impact is reflected in the success of publications explicitly aimed at women and in the fact that the broader media now routinely relate stories that illustrate the plight of women under the Islamic Republic. And while the new women’s activism does not challenge the regime’s legitimacy and is willing to operate within the broad parameters set by the ruling elite, it does not hesitate to oppose the state’s attempt both to interfere in women’s private lives and to oppose further gains by them in the public sphere. By giving voice to women’s concerns on matters ranging from labor rights to personal status, the burgeoning women’s movement is also forcing politicians to pay greater attention to gender issues. Significantly, Wright notes, “since 1994, female pressure [has] changed laws on employment, divorce, child custody, alimony and maternity leave” (p. 137). Women themselves are increasingly running for public office. Some 200 of them competed in the 1996 parliamentary elections (14 won seats), while 300 of the 5,000 women who took part in the February 1999 local contests were elected. Wright also reminds her readers that women played a decisive role in the election of Khatami in 1997 and that since then a woman has served as one of the country’s vice presidents, while a rising number of women can be found in senior government posts.

Wright is also particularly effective in capturing the intellectual and artistic ferment taking place inside Iran. She provides one of the clearest presentations I have seen of the nature and significance of the work of Iranian “post-Islamist” thinkers such as Soroush and Mohsen Kadivar. These new Muslim intellectuals, she argues, are doing nothing less than advancing a reformation within Islam, one that will be the revolution’s real legacy. They are blurring the line between secularism and Islamism, suggesting that religion need not be relegated to the private sphere and that Islam should set certain moral, behavioral and ethical standards to influence the manner in which public life is conducted, but arguing at the same time in favor of making politics autonomous from religion. Though determined to shelter Iran against what they see as the moral decay and spiritual vacuum of Western-style secularism, they are unwilling to condone a theocratic regime and routinely underscore the havoc that clerical rule has wreaked on Iran’s society and economy. Consequently, while they accept the premise that the preservation and promotion of certain religious values should play an important role in defining national priorities and objectives, they fiercely oppose the notion that men of religion should be entrusted with affairs of state. They also denounce the stifling of innovative thinking about religion and consistently challenge rigid interpretations of Islamic doctrine, particularly on issues related to personal freedoms. Most importantly, they oppose two tenets of the Islamic regime that are dear to the conservative clergy: that clerics should have a monopoly over the interpretation of religion, and that there should be an infallible Supreme Leader with a perfect understanding of the truth, entitled to act as both religious guardian and political sovereign. Still, they are not seeking to bring down the Islamic Republic, merely to alter its course. Their goal is for Iran to strike a better balance between the preservation of indigenous values and active participation in today’s world.

In short, Wright argues, Iran’s new intellectuals are seeking to deliver on the revolution’s original promise of creating an authentically Islamic, yet modern, sociopolitical system. Their outlook reflects their own political and intellectual journey. They all have impeccable revolutionary credentials, many having been jailed under the shah for opposition activities. Most are lay intellectuals who actively supported Khomeini well into the 1980s; others, like Mohsen Kadivar, are themselves clerics or former clerics. Once among the regime’s most fervent defenders, they grew weary of the revolution’s excesses and, by the late 1980s, had become aware of the various impasses that the Islamic Republic had reached. It was then that they turned away from the ideological zeal that had inspired them, and became far more pragmatic and sensitive to the merits of pluralism and democracy. By accepting a role for Islam in the public sphere, their ideas can appeal to religiously oriented individuals (including clerics) eager for a more liberal, flexible interpretation of their faith. But since they also urge a separation of politics and religion, they have a natural following as well among secular-minded individuals striving to open up a religious system.

Trends similar to those affecting the women’s movement and philosophical thinking can be observed in the arts and entertainment industry as well. Thus, as Wright shows, under the Islamic Republic, Iran has made real progress toward developing art forms and cultural products consistent with its heritage and reflecting its own society’s problems and aspirations. The film industry, in particular, has gained international recognition for imagination and resourcefulness in addressing universal themes from a distinctly Iranian perspective, and through plots that focus on the vagaries of contemporary daily life in Iran. By producing its own artistic genres instead of mimicking the West and merely importing its cultural expressions, Iran has allowed interest in the arts to spread to new social strata – a phenomenon to which Wright devotes much attention. By making Iranians feel more secure about their own artistic accomplishments, these very successes may help explain the country’s more relaxed stance toward foreign cultures. Once-banned books, plays and films originating in Europe and the United States are now being allowed back in, though gradually and selectively.

All in all, by combining a keen eye for detail with the ability to highlight critical trends, Wright captures the nuances of a complex political and social landscape that defies easy generalizations and quick judgments. As the war over Iran’s future intensifies, the reader can use the lenses she provides to make sense of it, while awaiting her next volume.