Daika Kaba (Hitotsubashi University)
Between Local Race and Global FascismL the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and Interracial movements in Harlem, New York

The Iranian People’s Fadai Guerrillas (IPFG) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) built and maintained extensive transnational networks throughout the Middle East in the lead-up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, sending activists to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Oman, and South Yemen. These guerrillas forged relationships with regional governments and liberation movements alike, through which they gained access to military training, created arms-smuggling channels, and established their own radio stations. This paper, thus, explores two questions: firstly, how Iranian guerrillas established these transnational relationships, and, secondly, how these relationships influenced both Iranian guerrilla activism and the evolution of the Iranian revolutionary movement as a whole. These relationships were formed largely through contingent processes, emerging from chance encounters or the personal decisions of rank-and-file activists rather than through organisational design or intent. Accordingly, this paper adopts a micro-level approach that foregrounds activists’ individual trajectories across borders, rather than the top-down, teleological perspectives that have characterised much of the scholarship on the Iranian Revolution. This focus on individual-level processes reveals the impactful nature of these relationships: they both enabled these activists to operationalise previously abstract revolutionary theory and prompted porousness and collaboration across political divides amongst Iranian revolutionaries based abroad. Further, these relationships, though initially pragmatic in origin, evolved into emotionally powerful bonds between Iranian activists and their foreign allies. These affective ties – rooted in a commitment to each other’s liberation – both facilitated the exchange of material support, crucial to sustaining the guerrilla struggle inside of Iran, and, conversely, led Iranians to participate in various regional conflicts alongside their non-Iranian counterparts. Given its focus on individual trajectories, this study relies on a wide range of sources, including memoirs, oral history interviews, and archival sources, such as organisational pamphlets and publications.

Ashkan Hashemipour (Oxford)
Between Iran and the World: The transnational dimensions of the Iranian guerrilla movement (1963-1979)

The Iranian People’s Fadai Guerrillas (IPFG) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) built and maintained extensive transnational networks throughout the Middle East in the lead-up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, sending activists to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Turkey, Oman, and South Yemen. These guerrillas forged relationships with regional governments and liberation movements alike, through which they gained access to military training, created arms-smuggling channels, and established their own radio stations. This paper, thus, explores two questions: firstly, how Iranian guerrillas established these transnational relationships, and, secondly, how these relationships influenced both Iranian guerrilla activism and the evolution of the Iranian revolutionary movement as a whole. These relationships were formed largely through contingent processes, emerging from chance encounters or the personal decisions of rank-and-file activists rather than through organisational design or intent. Accordingly, this paper adopts a micro-level approach that foregrounds activists’ individual trajectories across borders, rather than the top-down, teleological perspectives that have characterised much of the scholarship on the Iranian Revolution. This focus on individual-level processes reveals the impactful nature of these relationships: they both enabled these activists to operationalise previously abstract revolutionary theory and prompted porousness and collaboration across political divides amongst Iranian revolutionaries based abroad. Further, these relationships, though initially pragmatic in origin, evolved into emotionally powerful bonds between Iranian activists and their foreign allies. These affective ties – rooted in a commitment to each other’s liberation – both facilitated the exchange of material support, crucial to sustaining the guerrilla struggle inside of Iran, and, conversely, led Iranians to participate in various regional conflicts alongside their non-Iranian counterparts. Given its focus on individual trajectories, this study relies on a wide range of sources, including memoirs, oral history interviews, and archival sources, such as organisational pamphlets and publications.