Call to Arms: Iran's Marxist Revolutionaries

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 ask...