This chapter documents the final collapse of detente, focusing in particular on events in the Middle East, where the Iranian Revolution, and then the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, reshaped the regional order. The chapter argues that the superpowers' differing perceptions of what constituted their legitimate interests led to conflicts in the third world. Linkage, the belief that improved Soviet–American relations would dissuade the Soviets from exporting revolution to the third world, failed as it did not align with the Soviet self-perception as America's equal. The decline of detente is traceable to multiple factors, including the Soviet appetite for maintaining a third world clientele and the twists and turns of US domestic politics. By the time the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, detente was already on the rocks and the Soviet–American relationship continued to worsen. The vision, once entertained by the now-senile Brezhnev, of a world co-managed by the United States and USSR as equals faded, leaving in its wake an uncertain and hostile environment.

Chapter 12 is the story of Iraqi reparations imposed after the Gulf War. The rise in Iraqi indebtedness was a consequence of global geopolitical trends in the 1980s, when political lending trumped solvency concerns. It allowed Iraq to obtain financing on terms more favourable than offered by the US government. Reparations were a consequence of the end of the Iran–Iraq War when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Reparations were imposed by a UN Resolution with a direct enforcement mechanism to take money from oil revenues. I use oral history sources to trace how Iraqi debt was restructured after the US invasion in 2003. The restructuring was permeated by politics to inflict harsh terms on creditors at the Paris Club, at a time when creditor-friendly restructurings were the norm. Despite its apparent success, however, in going for a politically expedient deal at the Paris Club, I argue the restructuring missed an opportunity to enshrine a doctrine of odious debt in international law. All debt was written off, except war reparations, which were paid in full through sanctions and war. They proved to be senior to all other debt and did not enter the sovereign debt restructuring.

A series of events fueled the protests against the shah’s regime. The burning of Cinema Rex and the Black Friday riots mobilized large swaths of the Iranian public against the king. Religious groups operated through their networks to protest the Pahlavi state. The shah’s government went through a rapid succession of prime ministers, as Ayatollah Khomeini became anointed as the leader of the opposition, which included many different political groups. The revolution came crashing in. Within months, Islamic policies reversed decades of Pahlavi secular reforms as women were forced to reveil. The regime promptly executed Pahlavi diehards and political activists who embraced different ideologies. An Islamic Republic took shape and punished America for its ties to the shah by taking US diplomats as hostages. Meanwhile, Iraq seized on this moment of domestic turmoil to launch a devastating war against Iran. That island of stability became a harbor of volatility.

This chapter highlights how gender was rethought and reworked and how gender roles were remade during the 1980–1988 period to contest the established idea in political science that feminism and nationalism are incompatible. In turn, this finding also suggests that national governance from 1980 to 1988 was not as rigid and authoritarian as we previously had assumed it to be during this period.

This chapter argues that by studying statecraft as entailing acts of citizenship, Women and the Islamic Republic contributes to feminist political theory and the feminist struggle to move beyond resistance in discussions of women and the state. The importance of non-elite Iranian women to the conditioning of the state formation process is not tied to the Iranian context. Rather, my exploration of gendered citizenship in contemporary Iran can more broadly help us understand the substance of citizenship, as well as the state formation process for hybrid regimes in the region and beyond. The chapter concludes by offering a summary of each chapter that follows.

After 444 days in captivity, the Iranians finally release the hostages in Iran on the same day Ronald Reagan is inaugurated president – a final insult to the hated Jimmy Carter. Despite this initial positive step, the 1980s turn out to be a low-point in the relationship. Hoping to capitalize on the chaos of the revolution and regain oil-rich provinces ceded to the Shah a decade earlier, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invades Iran and sparks an eight-year war of attrition at tremendous cost to both sides. Incensed at the lackluster response from the West over the invasion and the use of chemical weapons, Iran further isolated itself from the US and sought alternative means of promoting its interests, chief among them the spread of revolution through the region. Iranian support for Shia militant groups, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon, in turn outraged Reagan and his team, as Americans became key targets for kidnapping and terrorist attacks. Despite the mutual enmity, the two countries maintained some forms of communication, however ineffective. The greatest consequence of this, however, was the Iran-Contra Affair, which nearly brought down the Reagan White House.

Chapter 3 examines Saudi and Syrian threat perceptions during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–8). This chapter explores why, and the conditions under which, Saudi Arabia and Syria diverged in their perceptions of threats emanating from both Iran and Iraq. While Saudi Arabia perceived the revolutionary message of the Islamic Republic as the major source of threat, Syria perceived Iraq’s rising military capabilities as most dangerous. The Saudi case illustrates a situation where identity is immutable while the distribution of military capabilities presented the leadership with multiple options. Due to the lack of multiplicity in Saudi regime identity based on pan-Islamism, ideational sources of threats became predominant in leaders’ perception. The Syrian case illustrates a situation, where the regime identity included multiple narratives and the distribution of military capabilities imposed threats emerging from the military capabilities from both Iraq and Israel. The material constraints left the Syrian leadership with limited policy options to ensure the state’s physical security. Syrian leaders forced a reframing and reinterpretation of the regime’s identity to accommodate the material constraints and to render its alliance with Iran against a fellow Arab regime in Iraq plausible. Arabness was reinterpreted as the struggle against Israel instead of unity among Arabs.