Call to Arms: Iran's Marxist Revolutionaries: Formation and Evolution of the Fada'is, 1964-1976

On 8 February 1971, Marxist revolutionaries attacked the gendarmerie outpost at the village of Siyahkal in Iran’s Gilan province. Barely two months later, the Iranian People’s Fada’i Guerrillas officially announced their existence and began a long, drawn-out urban guerrilla war against the Shah’s regime.

In Call to Arms, Ali Rahnema provides a comprehensive history of the Fada’is, beginning by asking why so many of Iran’s best and brightest chose revolutionary Marxism in the face of absolut...