Abbas Milani has vivid memories of what it was like in Tehran the day before the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
At the time, he was a young assistant professor at Tehran University where he taught political science and law. He recalls the anticipation in Tehran as Iran’s last monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah, was overthrown, and the country’s new supreme leader, the Islamic nationalist Ayatollah Khomeini, rose to power.
But Milani was hesitant, worried about what might happen to a country with a deep, rich culture that he cared about passionately.
“I knew disaster was coming,” said Milani.
A few years earlier, Milani had read some of Khomeini’s writings, but he never believed that such extreme ideology would ever become mainstream. “I said, ‘This is nonsense – these are medieval ideas. Nobody can do this in Iran.’ Well, the writer of those medieval ideas was being praised as a sacred figure whose image is seen on the moon, literally,” said Milani, referring to a rumor that had circulated about the leader’s face being visible on the lunar surface.
After the revolution, Milani found himself navigating restrictions far more oppressive than in the previous regime. For example, there were strict segregation laws between men and women, who were now mandated to wear a hijab, and widespread bans on Western culture. Punishment, even for minor offenses, became brutal.
“The period turned out to be far, far darker than I ever imagined,” said Milani, who joined Stanford in 2003 as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution – a position he still holds today, as well as being the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies, a program he launched 20 years ago.
When Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980, life, which was already challenging for Milani and his family, became harder. Bombings and air raids were frequent. Food and basic supplies – including medicine like penicillin – were hard to come by.
By the summer of 1985, Milani fled Iran for California, where an old life awaited him: He had spent his formative years in the United States, attending high school in Oakland, completing his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, before going to graduate school at the University of Hawaii. This time, however, he arrived knowing full well that he might never return to Iran.
Political prisoner
Brushing up against a government that has vehemently opposed his beliefs was not a new experience for Milani.
His American education, particularly the ideas he was exposed to in the Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, helped shape Milani’s worldview. He was galvanized by people in the community, like Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, who co-founded the Black Panther Party, and Mario Savio, who was a leader in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley.
As a Berkeley undergraduate, Milani joined other Iranian students opposing the Shah, and in 1975, he returned to Iran, hopeful that a small cadre of committed people could bring about change.
His involvement in Iran’s leftist movement – which was forbidden – landed him in the infamous Evin Prison for two years. It was there that Milani got to see the inner workings of the future Islamic Republic.
Milani’s fellow inmates included prominent clerics who later became some of Khomeini’s closest political allies, including Ayatollah Akbar Rafsanjani who became Iran’s president in 1989, as well as Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who was the mastermind behind giving Shia clergy its political and religious authority by enshrining the doctrine velayat-e faqih – “guardianship of the Islamic jurist” – into Iran’s constitution.
While Milani’s political persuasion has evolved in the decades since, he has no regrets about his time in captivity.
“I’ve never regretted, for a moment, going to prison,” Milani said. “It was some of the most educational years of my life.”
Growing the Iranian studies program at Stanford
Before joining Stanford in 2003, Milani was a professor in history and political science at Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, California, and a research fellow at the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley.
Since returning to the United States, Milani has written extensively about modern Iran. His work spans topics such as the evolution of the Shah’s political ideology, the rise of fundamentalism and the Islamic Republic, the Iranian people’s enduring struggle for democratic reform and freedom, and the shifting dynamics of Iran’s diplomatic relations with the U.S. and other nations.
Milani is a widely recognized expert on Iran and the Middle East, often sought after by international media for analysis on unfolding events in the region.
Milani’s perspective has also long been admired in the Iranian diaspora community.
“With respect to the greater Iranian American audience, he’s got a lot of credibility. He’s the voice of reason when people are trying to make sense of conflicting information,” said Hamid Moghadam, MBA ’80, and a former member of the Board of Trustees.
Moghadam met Milani in the late 1990s at a convening for Iranian Americans in the Bay Area.
Also in attendance were Stanford political scientists Larry Diamond and Michael McFaul. There, an idea emerged to have a dedicated space for scholars to gain a better understanding of modern Iran and its politics.
“Since the revolution in Iran, very few people have studied Iran,” Moghadam said. “There were a few people at universities or think tanks that were familiar with issues of Iran, and there were a few programs that focused on history and what happened 2,000 years ago, but not on the modern issues facing Iran and Iranian people.”
Milani, together with McFaul and Diamond, founded the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution in 2003.
“Helping to bring Abbas Milani to Stanford University was one of the most consequential things I have done in my four decades as a scholar here,” said Diamond. “It was clear to me, to Mike McFaul, and to other colleagues that Abbas would be a priceless asset to the Stanford community – a scholar of not only profound, wide-ranging, and authoritative knowledge about contemporary Iranian history, society, and politics but also a person of great humanity who is deeply committed to the cause of freedom in Iran.”
With respect to the greater Iranian American audience, [Milani’s] got a lot of credibility. He’s the voice of reason when people are trying to make sense of conflicting information.”Hamid MoghadamFormer member of the Board of Trustees
Milani is not only admired by his Stanford colleagues but by students as well. As Diamond adds, “For Stanford undergraduates who have taken his classes, alumni who have traveled with him, faculty who have learned from him, and the Iranian diaspora community, he has been a transformative figure.”
Over the past two decades, Milani has dedicated himself to establishing Stanford as a leading center for Iranian studies. In 2004, with support from then-Stanford President John Hennessy and Richard Saller, who was dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at the time, the Iranian Studies Program (ISP) was created. In 2006, the program received an endowment from Moghadam and his wife Christina, becoming the Hamid & Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies.
They also host a wide variety of events, from academic lectures to cultural events, sometimes held in Persian.
Initially focused on modern Iranian society, politics, and religion, ISP has expanded to include study of Iranian culture, thanks to additional support from the Iranian American philanthropist, entrepreneur, and computer scientist Bita Daryabari. The program now includes courses on Iranian cinema, theater, literature, and language.
“If you want to understand the dynamics of Iranian society, you need to understand its culture,” Milani said. “Modern Iran can only be understood in this interconnected manner.”
Making Stanford a prominent hub for research on modern Iran
Milani says he is disheartened by how Iran – with an extraordinary and epic history and its many contributions to science, arts, and the humanities – is now associated with geopolitical problems such as terrorism, proxy warfare, human rights abuses, and oppression.
“I never thought the regime would last as long as it has because it is so alien from the spirit of Iran and what’s in the Iranian soul,” Milani said.
Milani is dedicated to preserving and promoting Iran’s history and heritage that he and so many others cherish which is why he has led a concerted effort to build a wide range of archival collections of key Iranian politicians, scholars, and cultural figures.
For example, one of the most prominent collections is the archive of diplomat Ardeshir Zahedi, Iran’s former ambassador to the United States. Held at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, the archive offers indispensable information based on Iranian sources, including the notes of General Zahedi as well as hundreds of boxes of diplomatic correspondence, government documents, personal letters, handwritten notes, and never-before-seen photos. The collection has already proved revelatory – for example, in it is information indicating that the CIA were involved in orchestrating the 1953 coup.
Abbas Milani discusses the August 1953 coup in Iran. | Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Milani has also collaborated with the Stanford University Libraries, which now house 11 distinct collections related to Iranian history, culture, and politics, including four collections related to important women in Iran such as the scholar Homa Nategh and Homa Sarshar, a prominent Iranian journalist and women’s rights activist.
“The goal from the beginning was to make Stanford an indispensable place for anyone who wants to do something meaningful about the history of Iran in the 20th century,” said Kioumars Ghereghlou, the curator for Middle East Collections at Stanford University Libraries, noting that the collections have been donated to Stanford because of the connections Milani has cultivated across the Iranian diaspora community.
Relentless researcher
In addition to establishing programs on Iran, Milani is a prolific scholar whose work over the past five decades has illuminated Iranian history and culture. His two-volume book, Eminent Persians (Syracuse University Press, 2008), profiles key innovators in Iran between World War II and the Islamic Revolution, drawing on original interviews he conducted that are now archived at Stanford Libraries. Milani has also translated Persian poetry and prose.
Currently, Miliani is working on a book on Reza Shah, who ruled Iran from 1925 to 1941.
“For me, it is a complete rediscovery of modern Iran,” Milani said. “I find that he had enormous, remarkable, singular qualities that no historian has really paid any attention to, and now that we have archival material, now that time has passed, and now that I’ve gotten older and I look at the world – I don’t dare say, wisely – but at least, less ideologically, I see him in a completely different light.”
Milani credits the resurgence of democratic sentiments in Iran today to some of Reza Shah’s modernization policies, such as “the great unveiling,” which occurred from 1939 to 1979.
Seeing activists committed to advancing freedom – from their right to education to choosing what clothes they want to wear – gives Milani optimism for the future of a country he cares deeply about.
As the Iranian studies program celebrates its 20-year anniversary, Milani continues to hope for democratic change in Iran. “I hope for the hundred years old dream of secular democracy in Iran, spearheaded by Iranian women in the last two decades, will finally become reality. The world and especially the Middle East will then be a more peaceful place.”
For more information
In 2024, Milani was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which celebrates inspiring Americans who are working for the betterment of the United States. This award is one among several that Milani has received throughout his lifetime. In 2017, he was recognized with the Richard W. Lyman Award by the Stanford Alumni Association for his active involvement in Stanford alumni activities.
In addition to interviews, the following sources were used in the writing of this piece:
Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir (Mage Publishers, 1996)
The Iranian Optimist, STANFORD magazine (2010)