Title: Rethinking Iran and International Law: The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Case Revisited
Abstract: It seems to have long been a commonplace in the West to describe Iran as an outlaw; irredeemably defiant of international law at worst, recalcitrant at best. And yet like most commonplaces, the story is more complicated than it first appears. As Djamchid Momtaz observed in 1976, in an essay entitled L’Iran et le Droit International, in order even to begin to understand Iran’s relationship to international law, one must have regard to historical context. In this essay, we take up the invitation to think about Iran and international law in historical context by revisiting the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Case of 1952 through a lens we call ‘historically inflected jurisprudence’.