Scott Anderson, Yeganeh Torbati, and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in Conversation: King of Kings, Stolen Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Iran

Join journalists Scott Anderson, Yeganeh Torbati, and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin for a conversation about the birth of modern Iran and leading up to the war with Israel and the US — and their recent books, Anderson’s King of Kings and Torbati and Sharafedin’s Stolen Revolution.

In 1979, the Iranian revolution remade the Middle East. The region, and America’s role in it, has never been the same. How does a regime that appears immovable fall almost overnight? And how does a revolution fueled by dreams of justice become something else entirely? Bringing novelistic sweep to the story of the Shah’s final years and the US government’s profound misread of his regime’s tenuous grip on power, Anderson’s King of Kings shows us how modern Iran emerged. Centering the lived experience of Iranians across generations — from insiders who broke with the regime to young women who have risked everything in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests — Torbati and Sharafedin’s Stolen Revolution give us a glimpse of the Iranian people since the revolution, and what the war with Israel and the US means for their future.

In a conversation about Iran’s tumultuous history and uncertain future, hear three experts on the region as they unpack the long aftermath of 1979, the machinery of modern authoritarianism, and the stakes of the current war with the US. What did the world misunderstand then — and what might we be missing now?