As a nine-year-old Tehrani schoolgirl during the Iranian Revolution, Nazila Fathi watched her country change before her eyes. The revolutionariesmost of them poor, uneducated, and radicalizedseized jobs, housing, and positions of power, transforming Iranian society practically overnight. But this socioeconomic revolution had an unintended effect. As Fathi shows, the forces unleashed in 1979 inadvertently created a robust Iranian middle class, one that today hungers for more personal freedoms and a renewed relationship with the outside world. And unless an international confrontation allows Iranian leaders to justify an internal crackdown, this internal pressure for reform will soon set the country on a more stable track.In The Lonely War, Fathi describes Irans awakening alongside her own, revealing how moderates are retaking the countryand how foreign powers can aid their progress.