¹ The dam was also intended to improve Tehran's fresh water supply; see note 55.

² Pamela Karimi states that the 1950s U.S. “Point IV Program … indirectly re-oriented the Iranian economy toward mass market consumption.” “Transitions in Domestic Architecture and Home Culture in Twentieth-Century Iran” (PhD diss., MIT, 2009), ch. 3: 5. See also Amin, Camron, “Importing ‘Beauty Culture’ into Iran in the 1920s and 1930s: Mass Marketing Individualism in an Age of Anti-Imperialist Sacrifice,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, 1 (2004): 79–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ On the West, see Trentmann, Frank, “Beyond Consumerism: New Historical Perspectives on Consumption,” Journal of Contemporary History 39, 3 (2004): 373–401CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A key introduction to the topic is: Miller, Daniel, ed., Acknowledging Consumption (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar.

⁴ Floor, Willem, Textile Imports into Qajar Iran (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2009)Google Scholar; Gurney, John, “The Transformation of Tehran in the Later Nineteenth Century,” in Adle, Chahryar and Hourcade, Bernard, eds., Téhéran: Capitale bicentenaire (Paris: IFRI, 1992), 58Google Scholar; see also Chehabi, Houchang, “The Westernization of Iranian Culinary Culture,” Iranian Studies 36, 1 (2003): 43–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 49.

⁵ Sheikh, Reza, “Asnad-i tasviri,” Tarikh-i Mu‘asir-i Iran 3, 10 (1999): 319–23Google Scholar; Sivan Balslev, “Of Bowties and Boy Scouts,” MS, 2011.

⁶ Quote: Chehabi, “Westernization of Iranian Culinary Culture,” 56. See also Clawson, Patrick, “Knitting Iran Together,” Iranian Studies 26, 3–4 (1993): 235–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ehlers, Eckart and Floor, Willem, “Urban Change in Iran, 1921–1941,” Iranian Studies 26, 3–4 (1993): 251–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 269. For consumerism in other Middle Eastern countries, c.1900–1950: Russell, Mona, Creating the New Egyptian Woman (New York: Palgrave, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kupferschmidt, Uri, European Department Stores and Middle Eastern Consumers (Istanbul: Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre, 2007)Google Scholar; Shechter, Relli, “Press Advertising in Egypt: Business Realities and Local Meaning, 1882–1956,” Arab Studies Journal 10, 2 and 11, 1 (2002–2003): 44–66Google Scholar; Reynolds, Nancy, A City Consumed. Urban Commerce, the Cairo Fire, and the Politics of Decolonization in Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Frank Trentmann (“Beyond Consumerism,” 381) gives a summary of an argument of Heinz-Gerhard Haupt about the difference between consumerism and mass consumerism, which applies to Iran as well: In “a ‘consumer society,’ … a particular set of goods was available to certain groups who used them for self-representation.… ‘[M]ass consumer society’ was qualitatively different, not only because an expanding set of goods became accessible to more people, but because ‘distinction’ through possession was becoming more complex as consumption became connected with many more social, political and cultural formations.” See Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Konsum und Handel. Europa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003), 20–21.

⁸ R. Sheikholeslami, “Administration in Iran, VII: The Pahlavi Period (1925–1979),” Encyclopædia Iranica, www.iranicaonline/org/articles/administration-vii-pahlavi (accessed 2 Jan. 2012); Vieille, Paul and Hagcheno, M., “Le bazar et le tournant économique des années 1954–1960,” Studia Iranica 1 (1972): 55Google Scholar. On oil, see note 70.

⁹ These protests were rooted in the time-honored bread riot: Martin, Vanessa, Qajar Pact (London: Tauris, 2005)Google Scholar, chs. 3–5; McFarland, Stephen, “Anatomy of an Iranian Political Crowd: The Tehran Bread Riot of December 1942,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 17, 1 (1985): 51–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ A famous example of the latter is Ahmad's, Jalal Al-iPlagued by the West (Gharbzadegi), Sprachman, Paul, trans. (Delmar: Caravan, 1982 [1962])Google Scholar.

¹¹ The particular demand for electricity expansion was answered also because electrical power drove consumption as well as industrialization, the latter being the top concern of Iranian development planners. However, since this issue is not directly relevant to my argument, I will not address it further here. Iranian planners were influential because their base, the Plan Organization (hereafter PO) was Iran's technocratic headquarters during the 1954–1959 tenure of the iron-willed Abol-Hassan Ebtehaj. In Iran's Second Plan (1955–1962), infrastructural preparations, including electricity, received considerable funding. In “Irrigation” (23.5 percent of funding), about 85 percent (i.e., about 20 percent of the overall plan expenses), was used for the Karaj and Sefidrud hydro-electrical dams. The Karaj dam alone, primarily “not an irrigation project, … use[s] about 38%,” (that is, about 9 percent of overall plan expenses): PO, Economic Bureau, Review of the Second Seven-Year Plan Program of Iran (Tehran: n.p., 1960), 28. In “Regional Development”—an added field, by 1962 16 percent above the plan's 100 percent total—Khuzestan gobbled up 94 percent (Mofid, Kamran, Development Planning in Iran [Outwell: Middle East and North African Studies Press, 1987], 43Google Scholar). There, the exorbitant cost of the gigantic hydro-electrical Dez Dam, since 1955 Ebtehaj's pet project, made even the Karaj project look cheap. Finally, electricity expenditures were, by January 1959, 22 percent of “Municipal Aid” but were decreasing; since this aid was about 10 percent of Second Plan expenses by 1962, municipal electricity was a maximum 2 percent of total expenses (Mofid, Development Planning, 43; PO, Economic Bureau, Review, 89, Annex I-5). Together, the hydro-electrical dam expenses in “Irrigation,” the Dez Dam's part in “Regional Development,” and municipal electricity outlay consumed at least a third of the Second Plan's overall expenditures.

¹² Even in Western Europe in the 1950s, not all citizens enjoyed mass consumerism equally (Haupt, Konsum, 131–37), and many continued to experience shortages: Wildt, Michael, Am Beginn der “Konsumgesellschaft” (Hamburg: Forum Zeitgeschichte, 1994)Google Scholar. Retail practices remained complex: de Grazia, Victoria, “Changing Consumption Regimes in Europe, 1930–1970,” in Strasser, Susan, McGovern, Charles and Judt, Matthias, eds., Getting and Spending (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 59–83Google Scholar.

¹³ On the coup, see Gasiorowski, Mark, “The 1953 Coup against Mosaddeq,” in Gasiorowski, Mark and Byrne, Malcolm, eds., Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 227–60Google Scholar. Ali Ansari states that, following August 1953, the shah was “very much a first among equals,” and that even in the late 1950s, “royal dominance [remained] fragile.” See Ansari, Ali, Modern Iran since 1921 (London: Longman, 2003), 125Google Scholar, 143.

¹⁴ Vieille and Hagcheno, “Le bazar, 55.

¹⁵ On acceleration in the 1950s, see Haupt, Konsum, esp. 130.

¹⁶ Different roles were played by different parts of “the West”—most crucially the United States and the biggest West European countries—and a more detailed study would need to disentangle these regarding Iran. For U.S.-West European relations, see de Grazia, Victoria, Irresistible Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. World-wide, mass consumerism was driven by demand as much as supply; in Iran, a tell-tale sign was the doubling of debts owed by individuals between 1957 and 1960: Vieille and Hagcheno, “Le bazar,” 55. For studies of how in the capitalist West and communist East, business and/or the state, as well as consumers, drove mass consumerism and, more specifically, electricity expansion, see: Cohen, Elizabeth, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage, 2003)Google Scholar; Jarausch, Konrad, ed., Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999)Google Scholar; Nye, David, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Platt, Harold, The Electric City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)Google Scholar; see also Wischermann, Clemens, “Einleitung,” in Borscheid, Peter and Wischermann, Clemens, eds., Bilderwelt des Alltags (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995)Google Scholar, esp. 8–12.

¹⁷ My interest in the Soviet dimension took shape in discussions with James Pickett, a graduate student at Princeton University's Department of History.

¹⁸ This was true from 1945 onward, and increasingly so from 1953 when, drawing lessons from the Korea War, President Dwight Eisenhower's “New Look Doctrine,” inter alia, “called for a major effort to strengthen pro-Western countries along the entire periphery of the Soviet sphere of influence”: Gasiorowski, Mark, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 93Google Scholar. Two studies that mention Tehran's leverage vis-à-vis Washington, D.C., are: Chubin, Shahram, “Iran,” in Sayigh, Yezid and Shlaim, Avi, eds., The Cold War and the Middle East (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 216Google Scholar; and Carr, C. D., “The United States-Iranian Relationship, 1948–1978,” in Amirsadeghi, Hossein, ed., The Security of the Persian Gulf (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 57–84Google Scholar. For the larger Middle Eastern context of Washington's interest in Iran, see: Ovendale, Ritchie, Britain, the United States, and the Transfer of Power in the Middle East, 1945–1962 (London: Leicester University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ For a different example of U.S. economic development politics in the early Cold War Middle East, particularly the failure to keep Egypt close to the Western camp, see: Alterman, Jon, Egypt and American Foreign Assistance, 1952–1956 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hahn, Peter, The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945–1956 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Ekbladh, Bias: David, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daniel Klingensmith, “‘One Valley and a Thousand’: Remaking America, India, and the World in the Image of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1945–1970” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1998). For other Middle Eastern technocrats advocating dams, see Elizabeth Bishop, “Talking Shop: Egyptian Engineers and Soviet Specialists at the Aswan High Dam,” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1997); Meital, Yoram, “The Aswan High Dam and Revolutionary Symbolism in Egypt,” in Erlich, Haggai and Gershoni, Israel, eds., The Nile (Boulder: Rienner, 1999), 219–26Google Scholar; Mitchell, Timothy, Rule of Experts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar. A terminological note: as Cullather, Nick argues, “By the twentieth century, [“modernization”] referred to economic and social improvement. Its meaning fused with development….” “Development? It's History,” Diplomatic History 24, 4 (2000): 643Google Scholar, n. 11. For this reason, here I use the term “development.”

²¹ On PO and development policy, see: Mofid, Development Planning; Daftary, Farhad, “Development Planning in Iran: A Historical Survey,” Iranian Studies 6, 4 (1973): 176–228CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bostock, Frances and Jones, Geoffrey, Planning and Power in Iran: Ebtehaj and Economic Development under the Shah (London: Frank Cass, 1989) (this study is rather hagiographic)Google Scholar; Nasr, Vali, “Politics within the Late Pahlavi State: The Ministry of Economy and Industrial Policy, 1963–1969,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 32 (2000): 97–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Abbasi, Ibrahim, Dawlat-i Pahlavi va tawsi‘a-yi iqtisadi (Tehran: Intisharat-i Markaz-i Asnad-i Inqilab-i Islami, 2004)Google Scholar. See also Baldwin, George (a member of the Harvard Advisory Group to Iran's PO in the late 1950s), Planning and Development in Iran (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Ebtehaj, Abol-Hassan, Khatirat-i Abol-Hassan Ebtehaj (London: Paka, 1991)Google Scholar; interviews with Abol-Hassan Ebtehaj (in Persian), 1 Dec. 1981–30 Aug. 1982, at Cannes, France, Harvard Iranian Oral History Project, at: http://ted.lib.harvard.edu/ted/deliver/executeQuery?_collection=iohp&searchtype=browsesearch&searchterm=52&searchxpath=tape%2Fnarrator~%3D%27%3F%27+or+tape%2FnarratorTransliterated~%3D%27%3F%27&docType=/iranianOralHistory&browseIndex=Narrator); interview with Khodadad Farmanfarmaian, a member of the PO's Economic Bureau (in English), 10 Nov. 1982–19 Jan. 1983, at Cambridge, Harvard Iranian Oral History Project, at: http://ted.lib.harvard.edu/ted/deliver/executeQuery?_collection=iohp&searchtype=browsesearch&searchterm=59&searchxpath=tape%2Fnarrator~%3D%27%3F%27+or+tape%2FnarratorTransliterated~%3D%27%3F%27&docType=/iranianOralHistory&browseIndex=Narrator); David E. Lilienthal and Development and Resources Corporation Collections, Princeton University Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library (PUSMML).

²² Regarding Iran, it may help to go beyond the traditional focus on the state: Schayegh, Cyrus, “‘Seeing Like a State’: An Essay on the Historiography of Modern Iran,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42 (2010): 37–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ This study also points beyond traditional political and economic themes of historians of the Cold War in the Middle East. For new approaches, see Joseph, Gilbert and Spenser, Daniela, eds., In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, which fascinatingly combines (bottom-up) sociocultural with (top-down) diplomatic histories. See also, Westad, Odd Arne, “The New International History of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 24, 4 (2000): 551–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Engerman, David, “The Romance of Development and New Histories of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 28, 1 (2004): 23–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dockrill, Saki and Hughes, Geraint, eds., Palgrave Advances in Cold War History (New York: Palgrave, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Westad, Odd Arne, ed., Reviewing the Cold War (London: Frank Cass, 2000)Google Scholar. On consumerism as an example: Crew, David, ed., Consuming Germany in the Cold War (Oxford: Berg, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wagnleitner, Reinhold, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994)Google Scholar. Middle East Cold War overviews can be found in: Sayigh and Shlaim, eds., Cold War; Khalidi, Rashid, Sowing Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009)Google Scholar. For case studies: Yacub, Salim, Containing Arab Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004Google Scholar); Ashton, Nigel, ed., The Cold War in the Middle East (London: Routledge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. See also Hahn, Peter L. and Ann Heiss, Mary, eds., Empire and Revolution: The United States and the Third World since 1945 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Karabell, Zachary, Architects of Intervention: The United States, the Third World, and the Cold War, 1946–1962 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Prashad, Vijay, The Darker Nations. A People's History of the Third World (New York: New Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Smith, Tony, “New Bottles for New Wine: A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 24, 4 (2000): 567–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On diplomatic historians’ “internationalization” of studies of American history and culture: Hogan, Michael, “The ‘Next Big Thing’: The Future of Diplomatic History in a Global Age,” Diplomatic History 28, 1 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 3 (quote); Zeiler, Thomas, “Just Do It! Globalization for Diplomatic Historians,” Diplomatic History 25, 4 (2001): 529–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hogan, Michael and Paterson, Thomas, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 2d ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ Engerman, David and Unger, Corinna, “Introduction: Towards a Global History of Modernization,” Diplomatic History 33, 3 (2009): 376–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 377. See also Engerman, David, “American Knowledge and Global Power,” Diplomatic History 31, 4 (2007): 599–622CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cullather, “Development?”; Cooper, Frederick, “Writing the History of Development,” Journal of Modern European History 8, 1 (2010): 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent case studies include: Simpson, Bradley, Economists with Guns. Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960–68 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Brazinsky, Gregg, Nation Building in South Korea (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Engerman and Unger, “Introduction,” 378, n. 12–14, 379, n. 15, 379, n. 17. For a synthesis focusing on the U.S. perspective, see Latham, Michael, The Right Kind of Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

²⁶ On the USSR: Engerman, David, “The Second World's Third World,” Kritika 12, 1 (2011): 183–211Google Scholar. On international organizations: Staples, Amy, The Birth of Development (Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Maul, Daniel, “‘Help Them Move the ILO Way’: The International Labor Organization and the Modernization Discourse in the Era of Decolonization and the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 33, 3 (2009): 387–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On development as an (elite) transnational field: Sinha, Subir, “Lineages of the Developmentalist State: Transnationality and Village India, 1900–1965,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, 1 (2008): 57–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ekbladh, Great American Mission. For planning as a (elite) global phenomenon: van Laak, Dirk, “Planung: Geschichte und Gegenwart des Vorgriffs auf die Zukunft,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 34 (2008): 305–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eckert, Andreas, “‘We Are all Planners Now.’ Planung und Dekolonisation in Afrika,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 34 (2008): 375–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ James Scott presents a strong formulation of this thesis in Seeing Like a State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

²⁸ Another way of contextualizing state power has been put forward by Partha Chatterjee, who sees state-planned development as a “passive revolution” suited to rural elites’ interests: “Development Planning and the Indian State,” in Byres, Terence, ed., State, Development Planning and Liberalisation in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 82–103Google Scholar.

²⁹ Investigations of these processes can build on studies of, for example, the late colonial period: Joshi, Sanjay, Fractured Modernity. Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and Markovits, Claude, Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs: Indian Business in the Colonial Era (New York: Palgrave, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Or they can build on postwar urbanization, for example in 1950s and 1960s Africa, which is usefully reviewed in Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), ch. 1Google Scholar.

³⁰ “Namihha-yi kh^vanandigan: Raf‘-i naqisih-yi barq,” Ittila‘at (4 Jan. 1955): 5.

³¹ Quote: Vizarat-i Ab va Barq, Tarikhchih-yi barq-i Tihran (Tihran: n.p., 1947), 37. An overview can be found in Willem Floor and Bernard Hourcade, “Barq. I. in Iran,” www.iranica.com/articles/barq (accessed 28 Aug. 2010). The figures I cite exclude Anglo-Iranian Oil Company electricity production. Vizarat-i Ab va Barq states that the 1934 to 1939 jump was due mainly to the 1937 installation of a 6 mw Skoda generator (Tarikhchih, 36). The figure of 8.5 kw was used in 1939: “L’éclairage électrique en Iran,” Bulletin de la Banque Mellié Iran 7, 41 (1939): 545. For comparisons with other countries, see: Overseas Consultants, Seven Year Development Plan for the Plan Organization of the Imperial Government of Iran (New York: n.p., 1949), IV: 189–90Google Scholar.

³² Several projects came to naught during World War II: Vizarat-i Ab va Barq, Tarikhchih, 39.

³³ Morrison-Knudsen International, Report on Program for the Development of Iran (n.p., 1947), 3.

³⁴ Morrison-Knudsen, Report, 234, 235.

³⁵ Quotes: Overseas Consultants, Seven Year Plan, IV: 189, I: 49; electricity chapter: IV: 189–231. At the time, Iran's largest non-industrial plant was a 12,000 kw steam-driven plant in Tehran.

³⁶ Bundesstelle für Aussenhandelsinformation, Iran (Persien): Wirtschaftsgrundlagen und Aussenhandelsmöglichkeiten (Köln: Deutscher Wirtschaftsdienst, 1953), 90 (quote), 91Google Scholar. Electricity report: Tehran Power Bongah, Report No. 2 (Tehran: n.p., 1952), reproduced in Karaj River Project: Evaluation Report, Prepared for the FOA (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, 1954), ch. 10. Westinghouse generator: Vizarat-i Ab va Barq, Tarikhchih, 39. Tehran's 1953 capacity: Dresdner Bank, Wirtschaftlicher Lagebericht: Iran (Frankfurt a.M.: Dresdner Bank, 1958), 44Google Scholar.

³⁷ For example, in 1951, there were thirty-two thousand electricity-subscribing parties, mostly families, amongst Tehran's 1 million inhabitants: Tehran Power Bongah, Report No. 2, 3.

³⁸ Bundesstelle, Iran, 91; PO, Review, 5.

³⁹ Imports costs were 83.2, 65.0, and 73.8 million rials in 1950, 1951, and 1952, respectively, after a rise from 3.8 to 17.2, to 72.3 million rials in 1945, 1946, and 1949: Bharier, Julian, Economic Development in Iran, 1900–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 220Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Vizarat-i Ab va Barq, Tarikhchih, 39f. By 1953, the longest-waiting, not-yet-connected electricity “subscriber-hopefuls” had applied in 1947: “Ta shish mah-i digar bungah-i barq chahar-hizar-i mushtarik-i jadid mipazirad,” Ittila‘at (16 Dec. 1953): 1.

⁴¹ Overseas Consultants, Seven Year Plan, IV: 193; Bundesstelle, Iran, 90.

⁴² Applications: “Bara-yi takmil-i kamil-i barq,” Ittila‘at (14 Oct. 1953): 1. Estimates: “Ta shish mah-i digar” (75–90 mw) and “Niazmandiha: Tihran ihtiaj bih-divist-hizar kiluvat barq darad,” Ittila‘at (26 Dec. 1954): 9 (200 mw). For another upward revision taking into account “Tehran's rapid expansion,” see “Bara-yi ta'sis-i karkhanih-yi yik-sad hizar kiluvati-yi barq …,” Ittila‘at (24 Sept. 1957): 15.

⁴³ It fell into a range between mid-400 to low-700 million rials until 1965, then rose to 2,187 million rials in 1968. Bharier, Economic Development, 220.

⁴⁴ Vizarat-i Ab va Barq, Tarikhchih, 40f.

⁴⁵ “With minor exceptions, all systems are greatly overloaded”: Sanderson & Porter Inc., Power Survey of Iran for the Plan Organization (1955), 13, quoted in Bharier, Economic Development, 221.

⁴⁶ The volume of letters to the Ittila‘at editor complaining about electricity supply problems, for which private companies were held responsible, apparently grew around 1958. Early example: Firuz Hib'at, “Intiqad,” (Critique—a letter to the editor) Ittila‘at (6 Nov. 1954): 2; later examples: Rahmathullah Feiz, “Vam-i barq,” Ittila‘at (1 Jan. 1958): 5; “Barq-i na-munazzam,” Ittila‘at (23 June 1958): 5.

⁴⁷ “Mahkumiyat bih-ittiham-i sirqat-i barq-i dawlati,” Ittila‘at (18 Dec. 1957): 16. Similarly incensed Tehranis often complained in letters to the editor; e.g., Hossein Nikju, “Bain-i du barq,” Ittila‘at (31 Dec. 1957): 5.

⁴⁸ “Khanih bara-yi furush ya ijarih,” Ittila‘at (15 Feb. 1958): 15.

⁴⁹ Compare Pamela Karimi, Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran (London: Routledge, 2012), ch. 3.

⁵⁰ “Yakhchal-i Bosch,” Ittila‘at (18 Mar. 1958): 18.

⁵¹ “Servel,” Ittila‘at (26 May 1955): 10. On another note, many advertisements were adapted from Western sources. The two here drive home this fact: Iranian office culture did not condone the use of alcohol and Tehran's wires were subterranean.

⁵² “Barq-i ahali-yi chahar-rah-i Abbasi,” Ittila‘at (10 Feb. 1954): 1; “Namih-hayi kh^vanandigan: Barq va-ab-i Abadan,” Ittila‘at (23 Dec 1954): 5; “Bara-yi ta'min-i kamil-i barq-i masrafi-i ahali-yi paytakht,” Ittila‘at (14 Oct. 1953): 1.

⁵³ Hakim Ilahi, “Intiqad,” Ittila‘at (26 June 1955): 2.

⁵⁴ The letters to the editor section of Ittila‘at of 20 July 1955 (p. 8) includes all of three different complaints, sent in from Hamadan and two Tehrani neighborhoods. Ali Javahar-Kalam, “Barq-i Saddih,” Ittila‘at (7 June 1958): 5; “Niru-yi barq-i Mahallat ta'min mishavad,” Ittila‘at (21 May 1955): 7.

⁵⁵ On water: Nasser Teymurian, “Die Trinkwasserversorgung in Iran” (PhD diss., Universität Bonn, 1960). For one of many newspaper articles: “Sakinin-i barzan-i 13 miguiyand: Ma-ra az ab-i aludih va gard-va-khak nijat dahid,” Ittila‘at (6 May 1958): 6.

⁵⁶ For instance, in early 1954, Tehran municipality promised to “secure potable water, asphalt [streets], light [thoroughfares], and reduce living expenditures as well as bread, meat, and rice prices”: “Jalasih-yi shurah-yi ‘ali-yi anjumanha-yi mahalli-yi shahr-i Tehran dar salun-i shahrdari tashkil yaft,” Ittila‘at (5 Jan. 1954): 1.

⁵⁷ Compare Binder, Beate, Elektrifizierung als Vision (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Book series: Ittila‘at (21 Mar. 1954): 12. Nuclear power: “530,000 kw barq dar yik saniyih,” Ittila‘at (11 June 1958): 8; “Buzurgtarin karkhanih-yi barq-i atumi-yi jahan,” Kh^vandaniha 16, 29 (1955): 29. Tehran Pars: “Ba-ham az ‘Tehran Pars,’ in shahr-i mudirn va ziba, didan kunim,” Ittila‘at (15 Jan. 1958): 12.

⁵⁹ Complaints that the electricity supply was faulty came from middle-class and some upper-class neighborhoods: see e.g., “Intiqad,” Ittila‘at (4 Oct. 1954): 2 (Suvvum-i Isfand Street); “Namihha-yi kh^vanandigan,” Ittila‘at (7 July 1955): 8 (Qulhak); “Ma va kh^vanandigan,” Ittila‘at (8 Oct. 1957): 5 (West Tehran). A 1960 plan of the electricity transmission system built to connect the Karaj Dam with Tehran shows that power was fed into middle- and upper-class eastern, western, north central, and northern Tehran: Bungah-i mustaqall-i barq, Matrah-i muqaddamati-yi ta'min-i barq-i Tihran (Tihran: bungah-i mustaqall-i barq, 1960), back flap.

⁶⁰ By 1953, for instance, forty thousand Tehrani families were waiting for their subscriptions to be processed and almost that many must have had electricity (compare notes 39 and 44). These people cannot have been lower-class inhabitants, since electricity was not quite cheap yet: see e.g., “Intiqad,” Ittila‘at (6 Nov. 1954): 2. If we multiply the sum of eighty thousand by a (modest) factor of five (people per family), we get four hundred thousand people, about 30 percent of Tehran's population at that time.

⁶¹ The latter process had started earlier with important changes in the architecture of houses and interior design: Mina Marefat, “Building to Power: Architecture of Tehran, 1921–1941” (PhD diss., MIT, 1988). Interestingly, emphasis on lighting went hand in hand with a newfound interest in interior design and Western furniture: Karimi, Domesticity, ch. 3.

⁶² Cohen, Consumers’ Republic; Crew, Consuming Germany.

⁶³ Mass popular culture, too, came into focus after the war; like mass consumerism, this was a Western-centered phenomenon with global effects and adaptation patterns. In Iran, the high-circulation Kh^vandaniha (comparable to Reader's Digest) never tired of splashing Western film stars like Gina Lollobrigida across its pages, and portrayed celebrities of Tihran's emerging pop culture scene in similarly artistic poses. See pictures in: “Gina Lollobrigida,” Kh^vandaniha 17, 56 (Mar. 1957): 17; and “Tahmineh,” Kh^vandaniha 17, 56 (Mar. 1957): 93 (“a theater actor with a great future”); “Azadeh,” Kh^vandaniha 17, 56 (Mar. 1957): 100 (“an Iranian cinema artist”). Clearly, gender is central to this process, meriting an independent in-depth study. For tantalizing hints, see Farhad Zamani's film Googoosh (2000).

⁶⁴ “Izdiham dar muqabil-i Furushgah-i Firdawsi,” Ittila‘at (15 Dec. 1957): 1; “Dastgiri dar Furushgah-i Firdawsi,” Ittila‘at (29 Dec. 1957): 16.

⁶⁵ Consumer procession: “Nushabih-yi bain-al-millali-yi Coca Cola,” Ittila‘at (13 Oct. 1957): 1, 19. Prize winners portrayed with Aspro and Oldham products: picture, Ittila‘at (31 Dec. 1957): 3. Consumer competitions: “Aha-yi mardum, bih-Ja‘far Khan-i ‘aziz kumak kunid,” Ittila‘at (17 Oct. 1957): 6. Consumer (Coca Cola ski) competition: “Qarib-i du-hizar nafar az mardum-i Tihran dar musabiqat-i eski-yi karkhanih-yi Coca Cola shirkat kardand,” Ittila‘at (11 Mar. 1958): 11. Consumer puzzles: “Agha-yi ‘Shams’ imruz shinakhtih nashud,” Ittila‘at (18 Dec. 1958): 17. Iranian producers: “Dar ti-yi jishn-i buzurgi-yi … rughan-i nabati-yi Shahpasand,” Ittila‘at (26 Sept. 1957): 12. Compare Karimi, Domesticity, ch. 3.

⁶⁶ Oral communication from Houchang Chehabi, Cambridge, Mass., 26 Feb. 2011.

⁶⁷ “Photograph-ads” (two children drinking Pepsi Coca on a street): Ittila‘at (15 Dec. 1957): 15. A sample of Ittila‘at ads—from the months June 1930, February 1937, April 1944, June 1948, and April 1952—shows that ads multiplied massively and changed in quality from the early 1950s, and especially from 1953 onwards. See, e.g., Ittila‘at, 25 Mar. 1930: 4; 5 Feb. 1937: 7; 6 Apr. 1944: 3; 7 June 1948: 4; and 26 Apr. 1952: 5, 6.

⁶⁸ The 1951 British-initiated oil boycott had forced Iran to “increase income taxes on urban wage earners … and [to] raise [the] price of government-controlled monopolies.” These measures and others, like restrictions on currency export, prevented state bankruptcy. But they also increased inflation, posing “serious economic difficulties” for many individuals: Heiss, Mary Ann, “International Boycott of Iranian Oil and the anti-Mosaddeq coup of 1953,” in Gasiorowski, Mark and Byrne, Malcolm, eds., Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 190, 192Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Warne, William, Mission for Peace: Point 4 in Iran (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 261Google Scholar. Similar sentiments are expressed in: Washington, D.C.: National Security Council document 5402: Note by the Executive Secretary to the National Security Council on U.S. Policy toward Iran, Washington, D.C., 2 Jan. 1954, pp. 18–21, repr. in Documentary History of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidency, vol. 10 (Bethesda: Lexis Nexis, 2005), 230–33Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ In fiscal year 1954, U.S. economic and budgetary aid to Iran totaled $84.5 million. Together with $25.6 million in military aid, U.S. aid totaled 60 percent of Iranian government expenditures in 1954. From 1954–1961, Iran received on average $60 million military aid and $64.5 million U.S. economic aid per year (other than NATO member Turkey, only Pakistan received more): Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy, 94, 101. However, “total foreign exchange revenues from the oil sector … [rose] from $139 million in 1955 to $359 million in 1960”: Hashem Pesaran, “Economy: The Pahlavi Period,” in Ehsan Yarshater, ed., Encyclopaedia Iranica, www.iranica.com/newsite (accessed 6 Jan. 2011).

⁷¹ For Western diplomats’ evaluations of the continued early post-coup strength of the National Front and the Tudih, and of Mosaddeq's continuous attraction: Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy, 86, n. 1; Ansari, Modern Iran, 131, n. 19.

⁷² Bill, James, The Eagle and the Lion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 98–99Google Scholar; Rubin, Barry, Paved with Good Intentions (London: Penguin, 1980), 93–94Google Scholar; Ladjevardi, Habib, Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 193–94, 198Google Scholar; Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy, 86–90. On hesitant overtures to nationalists and some of their demands, especially for land reform: Ansari, Modern Iran, 131–33, 140–41.

⁷³ “Shahinshah dar sharafyabi-yi diruz ‘asr a‘sa-yi sabiq-i utaq-i bazargani,” Ittila‘at (25 Aug. 1953): 1; “Bih-munasabat-i payan-i suvvumin mah-i zamamdari-yi dawlat-i Timsar-i sipihbud-i Zahidi,” Ittila‘at (21 Nov. 1953): 5; “Dar zimistan-i imsal bi-kulliyih-yi mustamandan-i Tihran zughal va libas dadih mishavad,” Ittila‘at (9 Dec. 1953): 1. On the argument that the absence of food riots and protests suggests that many were ready to make sacrifices for the popular policy of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, see: Clawson, Patrick and Sassanpour, Cyrus, “Adjustment to a Foreign Exchange Shock: Iran, 1951–53,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 19, 1 (1987): 17–18Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Protests about shortages and high prices persisted into late 1954; see British Foreign Office, Fortnightly Political Summaries, Tehran, 16–29 Jan.; 27 Mar.–13 Apr; 24 July–6 Aug.; and Aug. to 6 Sept 1954, all in Burrell, R. M., ed., Iran: Political Diaries, 1881–1965, vol. 14 (London: Archive Editions, 1997), 305Google Scholar, 317, 336, 341.

⁷⁵ My argument here draws on Ansari (Modern Iran, 142), who asserts that after the coup the “message of the Shah as a tireless campaigner for the welfare of his people was being systematically disseminated throughout the country.”

⁷⁶ British Foreign Office, Fortnightly Political Summaries, Tehran, 16–29 Jan.; 27 Mar.–13 Apr.; 24 July–6 Aug.; and 24 Aug.–6 Sept. 1954, all in Burrell, Iran: Political Diaries, 305, 317, 336, 341.

⁷⁷ Quote: Pesaran, “Economy.” On excessive spending, and the financial and budgetary crisis and resultant IMF-imposed Stabilization Program it triggered in 1960, see Baldwin, Planning and Development, 42–43.

⁷⁸ Milani, Abbas, Eminent Persians (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008), I: 394–98Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ “Ba tavajjuh-i shahinshah mu‘ama-yi barq-i shahr hall shud,” Ittila‘at (25 Dec. 1954): 7; “A‘lihazrat-i humayuni dar musafarat-i Shiraz …,” Ittila‘at (31 May 1955): 1.

⁸⁰ “Bara-yi ta'min-i barq-i Tihran,” Ittila‘at (18 Feb. 1954): 1.

⁸¹ “Ittila‘iyih-yi bungah-i barq-i Tihran,” Ittila‘at (20 Dec. 1954): 12; “Agahi raji‘ bih-barq-i muvaqqat,” Ittila‘at (2 June 1955): 11. Responses to specific complaints: “Vizarat-i iqtisad-i milli: pasukh-i bungah-i barq-i Tihran,” Ittila‘at (30 Dec. 1954): 5; “Idarih-yi barq va Agha-yi Akbari,” Ittila‘at (13 Feb. 1958): 5.

⁸² “Barq-i ahali-yi chaharrah-i ‘Abbasi,” Ittila‘at (10 Feb. 1954): 1, 4.

⁸³ Ibid. Mayors used successes in electricity expansion to try to bolster their popularity: “Musahibih ba Agha-yi Gulsha'ian,” Ittila‘at (13 July 1955): 9; “Qat‘-i barq,” Ittila‘at (28 Sept. 1957): 7.

⁸⁴ “Niazmandiha: Tihran ihtiaj bih-divist-hizar kiluwat barq darad,” Ittila‘at (26 Dec. 1954): 9; “Mudir-i karkhanih-yi nisachi va barq-i Shiraz tawqif shud,” Ittila‘at (25 June 1955): 7; Majlis-i Sina: barqha-yi ikhtisasi,” Ittila‘at (7 Dec. 1957): 1; “Majlis-i shura-yi milli: shahrdari layiq nist,” Ittila‘at (29 Jan. 1958): 1, 18.

⁸⁵ For a literature review and critique: Engerman, “Second World's Third World.”

⁸⁶ Quotes: “Safari bih-Tachikistan. Darrihha-yi gharq dar aftab,” Payam-i naw 6, 11 (1953): 11, 8, 7, 11, 7. This is part of a Payam-i naw series about Soviet Caucasia and Central Asia. Compare Westad, Global Cold War, ch. 2, “The Empire of Justice.”

⁸⁷ For comparisons with the West, and full employment: “30 sal mi‘mari va sakhtiman dar kishvar-i shawravi,” Payam-i naw 4, 10 (1951): 60. On the three “basics” of food, clothing, and housing, see speech by sipahbud Amanullah Jahanbani, “Shamih'i dar barih-yi sakhtimanha-yi ‘azimi-yi susialisti,” Payam-i naw 6, 6–7 (1952): 47; “Kulkhuzha,” Payam-i naw 1, 8 (1945): 47; “Bipursid—ma pasukh midahim,” Payam-i naw 5, 1 (1951): 66; Ali Vakili, “Mushahidat-i man dar kishvar-i shavrawi,“ Payam-i naw 6, 1 (1952): 4. Yahya Khudabandih wrote that there could be no doubt left as to the Soviets’ high standard of living, in “Dar barih-yi zindigi-yi kargaran-i shawravi,” Payam-i naw 6, 6–7 (1952): 101. Vakili reported seeing various goods in the shops, and that people were buying them, even “luxury items” like radios, televisions, bicycles, and “different motors” (“Mushahidat,” 5, 6). Also accentuated by Jahanbani was social mobility; that is, workers who became engineers (Jahanbani, “Shamih'i”).

⁸⁸ The reality was different: Stalin stressed industrial and weaponry production, and after the devastating war, consumer supplies recovered “only” around 1950: Hessler, Julie, Social History of Soviet Trade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 303Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Vakili, “Mushahidat,” 7.

⁹⁰ “Safari bih-Tachikistan: Darrihha-yi gharq dar aftab,” Payam-i naw 6, 11 (1953): 14; “Uzbikistan,” Payam-i naw 7, 1 (1953): 39.

⁹¹ On Baku's electrification and road asphalting: ‘Adl (a member of Parliament), “Mushahidat-i ma dar Azirbaijan-i shawravi,” Payam-i naw 1, 7 (1945): 24. Electricity and water in every village: “30 sal,” 61. Also listed (p. 58) was the cost of a normal flat in Moscow in 1946, including running water and electricity (100 rubles; the average worker's income was 500 rubles). There were material improvements also in villages, including electricity, cinemas, radio, and newspapers: “Qarqizistan,” Payam-i naw 6, 10 (1953): 41. On the cheap price of hydro-electricity: Jahanbani, “Shamih,” 51; Vakili, “Mushahidat,” 7.

⁹² Jahanbani, “Shamih,” 49–53. On electricity having been a key concern of the USSR since the revolution: Vakili, “Mushahidat,” 7. Nuclear energy: V. Ramadin, “Atum-i ram shudih: ihdas-i karkhanih-yi barq ba-niruyi atum,” Payam-i naw 7, 6 (1953): 67–73.

⁹³ Compare Karimi, Domesticity, ch. 3.

⁹⁴ In the early Cold War, Stalin focused on communist Eastern Europe and East Asia, and on the Soviet model's productivist side.

⁹⁵ Engerman, “Romance of Development,” 41.

⁹⁶ Malia, Martin, Russia under Western Eyes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 374–75Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ The Soviets knew they were trailing the West regarding living standards and the rising mass consumerism there. This became obvious when a Cold War thaw allowed Soviets and Americans to resume mutual visits in 1955, and was underscored by the summer 1959 Moscow American National Exhibition, which purposefully and with smashing success put consumer goods front and center. Hinxson, Walter, Parting the Curtain (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 161, 167Google Scholar. Still, in Khrushchev's “kitchen debate” with visiting Vice President Richard Nixon, and during his own U.S. tour that fall, he asserted that socialists would soon beat and “bury” capitalists in consumerism as much as in technology and industrialization (Hinxson, Curtain, 180). In hindsight, and already by the mid-1960s, Khrushchev's projections appeared unattainable. But at the time even leading Western newspapers like the New York Times and Le Monde found them at least plausible (Malia, Russia, 374–75).

⁹⁸ Warne, Mission for Peace, 49.

⁹⁹ Foreign Broadcast Information Service (15 Sept. 1953): page CC11. Soviet radio broadcasts in Persian continued their critique (with some interruptions due to improved relations, for example in 1956). In 1959, for instance, they habitually deplored Iran's “poor living conditions”: Foreign Broadcast Information Service (5 Oct. 1959): page M1.

¹⁰⁰ Berliner, Joseph, Soviet Economic Aid (New York: Praeger, 1958), 76Google Scholar (on fairs), 216 (on statistics, only Soviet exports). In 1953, Egypt came first; in 1955 Argentina; and in 1956 Yugoslavia, followed by India, Argentina, and Egypt. However, Berliner (pp. 80–81) also reports that the USSR remained starkly autarkic. In 1956, for example, its imports from non-communist countries totaled less than 1 percent of its total world imports; the United States continued to be an incomparably stronger trade power. On the Czech exhibition: “Namayishgah-i sanaiyi‘-i chikusluvaki,” Ittila‘at (16 Nov. 1954): 11.

¹⁰¹ Czech “Škoda” diesel electricity motor ad: Ittila‘at (2 June 1954): 5. Soviet “ZIS” and “Poveda” car ads: Ittila‘at (18 Mar. 1954: 10; and 3 Nov. 1954: 6). Polish “Motoimport” truck ad: Ittila‘at (3 Nov. 1954): 8. Czech “Kovo” electricity counter ad: Ittila‘at (18 Mar. 1954): 6. Hungarian “Technoimpex” transformer ad: Ittila‘at (29 May 1955): 1, and electrical kitchen appliances ad: Ittila‘at (2 Jan. 1958): 9. “Kovo” sowing machine ad: Ittila‘at (23 Sept. 1957): 8. See also Polish “Skorimpex” clothes ad: Ittila‘at (18 Dec. 1957): 10.

¹⁰² Ittila‘at (23 June 1955): 3.

¹⁰³ Ittila‘at (17 Oct. 1957: 11; and 8 Oct. 1957: 9).

¹⁰⁴ Iranian newspapers translated USSR travel reports by foreign journalists. Le Monde journalist Phillipe Bonne was typical in that, while identifying a great consumerist gap between the Soviet Union and the West, he also noted that Soviets’ material well being was changing “very palpably.” “Mardum-i shawravi zindigi-yi khudra az hamih jah bihtar midanand,” Ittila‘at (6 Oct. 1957): 13. Compare Paris Match reporters Dominique Lapierre and Jean-Pierre Pedrazzini, “Pa bih-pa-yi in du khabarnigar az pusht-i pardih-yi ahin didan kunid,” Kh^vandaniha 17 (1957), 50: 8–11; 51: 8–11, 31; 52: 10–13, 33–34; 53: 8–10.

¹⁰⁵ The Foreign Operations Administration, which existed from 1953–1955, coordinated the U.S. Technical Cooperation Agency's technical assistance programs, but also military aid. Launched in 1949, the Agency's very first agreement was with Iran, in 1950.

¹⁰⁶ Foreign Operations Administration, Executive Secretariat, Meeting on the Karaj Dam Project in Iran: 1, Washington, D.C., 23 Jan. 1954, fol. 504.1, box 15, record group 469, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md. (hereafter, NARA).

¹⁰⁷ Ibid.: 2.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid.; U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Karaj River Project Iran: Evaluation Report (Washington, D.C., May 1954), ch. 1: 7; Bernard van Renselaer, “How Not to Handle Foreign Aid,” Reader's Digest (Feb. 1957): 28. Van Renselaer had been part of a Senate Appropriation Committee investigation into foreign-aid programs.

¹⁰⁹ Warne, Mission for Peace, 27.

¹¹⁰ Foreign Operations Administration (as in note 106). For another opponent, Everett Eslick, head of the Power Branch in Washington, see van Renselaer, “How not to Handle Foreign Aid,” 28.

¹¹¹ Foreign Operations Administration (as in note 106).

¹¹² Harold Stassen, Karaj Dam Project and General Aid Program, Washington, D.C., 8 Oct. 1954, record group 460, fol. 504.1, box 15, NARA.

¹¹³ Early on, Taleghani and Ebtehaj had differences, but they were personal rather than technical. Suspiciously, Ebtehaj launched his Dez Dam Project in mid-1955, in the wake of losing the battle for control over the Karaj Dam, one of few developmental projects that remained outside the PO's purview during his tenure. From 1955, Ebtehaj supported the Karaj Dam. Taleghani and he retired from their respective jobs in 1958 and 1959, and during the dam's construction from 1958–1961 the PO continued to support it.

¹¹⁴ Stassen, Karaj Dam Project, citing confidential cable 825, from Henderson, dated 7 Oct. 1954.

¹¹⁵ Compare Ekbladh, Great American Mission, ch. 5.

¹¹⁶ Bingham, Jonathan, Shirt-Sleeve Diplomacy: Point 4 in Action (New York: John Day, 1953), 13–14, 235–41Google Scholar.

¹¹⁷ Brooks, Karl, Public Power, Private Dams (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), ch. 7Google Scholar.

¹¹⁸ U.S. Congress, United States Aid Operations in Iran. First Report by the Committee on Government Operations, January 28, 1957 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1957), 3 (quote), 34–39Google Scholar; U.S. Congress, United States Aid Operations in Iran: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, Eighty-Fourth Congress, Second Session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1956)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Van Renselaer, “How not to Handle Foreign Aid,” 25–30.

¹²⁰ Regarding the leverage of South Vietnam, another country of geo-strategic value to Washington, see: Statler, Kathryn, “Building a Colony: South Vietnam, and the Eisenhower Administration, 1953–1961,” in Statler, Kathryn C. and Johns, Andrew L., eds., The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (Lanham: Rowman, 2006), 101–23Google Scholar.

¹²¹ Even politically, sometimes, “The Cold War inverted power relations by allowing the weaker party to cash in on weakness” (Chubin, “Iran,” 216). Nonetheless, Washington had considerable say in geo-political and military matters and used Iran as a base to help contain the USSR, especially in the 1950s (Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy, 93–98).

¹²² The organs of the PO and of the Independent Irrigation Agency published routinely on dams: “Sadd-i Sefidrud,” “Sadd-i Dez,” and “Sadd-i Karaj,” all in Guzarish-i Haftagi-yi Sazman-i Barnamih special Nawruz edition (Mar. 1959): 24, 32, 56; “Tahavvul va takammul … saddha-yi ‘azim,” Ab new series 3 (1956): 25–110. For a general technical journal article on the Gurgan dam, see: “Tarh-i sakhtiman-i sadd-i Gorgan va ahamiyyat-i iqtisadi-yi an,” Majallah-yi ‘ilmi va fanni 2:6 (1959): 19–30.

¹²³ “Marasim-i iftitah-i sadd-i Kuhrang,” Ittila‘at (17 Oct. 1953): 1.

¹²⁴ Dez Dam: Shah, Mohammed Reza, Mission for My Country (London: Hutchinson, 1961), 144–46Google Scholar. Dams and other infrastructural projects, and the shah inaugurating or visiting them, featured prominently in the short weekly news show that people had to watch in the cinema, as the national hymn was played, before the movie started (Houchang Chehabi, personal communication, Cambridge, Mass., 26 Feb. 2011).

¹²⁵ For his visit to India's Bhakra Nangal dam, see Ab new series 3 (1956): cover picture; in Japan: “Shahinshah imruz az sadd-i ‘azim-i Sakuma bazdid kard,” Ittila‘at (26 May 1958): 1; Nehru's visit: “Agha-yi Nehru … sadd-i Karaj bazdid namudand,” Guzarish-i Haftagi-yi Sazman-i Barnamih 25 (1959): 16.

¹²⁶ “Bara-yi ‘umran va abadi-yi Khuzistan az nazariyat va pishnihadat-i ma‘ruftarin-i muhandisin-i bain-al-millal va mutalla‘tarin-i rijal-i kishvar istifadih kh^vahad shud,” Mahnamih-yi Sazman-i Barnamih 2, 5 (1956): 14–16. A picture of the U.S. Hoover Dam graces the cover of Ab new series 3 (1956).

¹²⁷ Ebtehaj and Lilienthal, for instance, built a life-long friendship. Their correspondence can be found in: fol. 6, box 487, Development and Resources Corporation Records, PUSMML.

¹²⁸ Quote: Title page picture description, Radiu Iran 46 (1960): 1, of left picture. Right picture: “Kungrih-yi radiu-yi kishvar,” Radiu Iran 70 (1962): 11. The Dez Dam construction site, too, was often visited: Khuzestan Development Service/New York Office, letter 22803, 12 Aug. 1961, fol. “Iran,” box 426, David Lilienthal Papers, PUSMML. The Kuhrang Dam was on the 1954 50 rial bill, and the Karaj (Amir Kabir) Dam was on the 1958 10 rial bill. The Karaj Dam was on a 1962 2 rial and 6 rial stamp, while the Dez Dam was on a 1963 6 rial and 14 rial stamp: http://iranstamp.com/shop/year-1962/cat_18.html and http://iranstamp.com/shop/year-1963/cat_19.html (accessed 27 Feb. 2011). Re education: Houchang Chehabi, personal communication, Cambridge, Mass., 26 Feb. 2011. In 1956 and 1957, Radio Tehran broadcasted a fifteen-minute “Development Program”: see e.g., Radiu Tihran 4 (1956): 25; and Radiu Tihran 13 (1957): 25.

¹²⁹ “Ta‘mir va saddsazi-yi sadd dar Isfahan” (1936), and “Mukatibat marbut bih-sakhtiman-i sadd-i bituni-yi Babulsar” (1939), fols. 29100 01356 and 290005864 (radif), Sazman-i Asnad-i Milli, Tehran, Iran. This also shows that development was not simply exported from the post-war “West to the rest.” Compare Engerman and Unger, “Introduction,” 377.

¹³⁰ Warne, Mission for Peace, 27, 66.

¹³¹ “Mutala‘at-i saddsazi,” Ab 1 (1951): 9–11; “Khulasih-yi guzarish-i ‘amaliyat-i Isfand 1329,” Ab 1 (1951): 16.

¹³² For a harsh general critique, see “Intiqad-i shadid az sazman-i barnamih,” Ittila‘at (12 Oct. 1958): 1, 17. For a serious popular critique of the Dez Dam, see: Airgram, Embassy Tehran to State Department, 4 June 1959, fol. “Plan Organization,” box 43, record group 469, NARA; and compare fol. 1, “Ebtehaj, incarceration,” box 488, Development and Resources Corporation Records, PUSMML.

¹³³ “Guzarish-i hay'at-i i‘zami-yi Ittila‘at az sadd-i Gulpayigan,” Ittila‘at (5–10 Mar. 1955): 1.

¹³⁴ For the crowded inaugurations of even secondary railway lines: “Rah-ahan-i Tihran bih Qazvin,” Iran-i Imruz 2, 1 (1939): 11–12.

¹³⁵ “Across Iran,” Times (15 July 1938): 17.

¹³⁶ Essad-bey, M., Reza Shah (London: Hutchinson, 1938), 207Google Scholar.

¹³⁷ Houchang Chehabi, personal communication, Cambridge, Mass., 26 Feb. 2011.

¹³⁸ Ibid.; telephone interview with Mahshid Noshirvani, 9 Mar. 2011. The dam also featured in foreign guides as an attraction for sports- and nature-loving tourists: Jean Hureau, Iran Today (Paris: éditions j.a., 1975), 198, 211, 242.

¹³⁹ At: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1boXKygX1NY (accessed 27 Feb. 2011). One CSSH referee suggested that a tourist might have shot the film, but observed that “the dam did in fact become a spot for picnics and photos,” which is indeed apparent in the many people seen at the film's end.

¹⁴⁰ Iranian National Committee on Large Dams, Sadd-sazi-yi mu‘asir-i Iran (Tehran: Iranian National Committee on Large Dams [IRCOLD], 1998)Google Scholar.

¹⁴¹ Gupta, Akhil, Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Cullather, Nick, “Miracles of Modernization: The Green Revolution and the Apotheosis of Technology,” Diplomatic History 28, 2 (2004): 227–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Unger, Corinna, “Industrialization vs. Agrarian Reform: West German Modernization Policies in India in the 1950s and 1960s,” Journal of Modern European History 8 (2010): 47–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.