Confronting Iran
The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Iran refuses to relent in developing nuclear technology, despite U.N. sanctions. Rumors persist that Israel is drawing up plans for military strikes. Neither the emboldened Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nor the embattled President Bush has relented in his war of words. How did we get here? Iran expert Ali Ansari sets the current crisis in the context of a long history of mutual antagonism. From the overthrow of Mosaddeq in 1953 to the hostage crisis in 1979 and, more recently, the Gulf War and the War in Iraq, both Iranian and American politicians have forged conflicting narratives about an “evil empire” lying half a world away-resulting in a mutual mistrust that may ultimately lead to war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Preoccupied by Iraq, America paid little attention to its vastly larger and wealthier neighbor until Iran announced resumption of its nuclear program in the past year. This scholarly but lucid account by a prominent British historian begins with the Persian empire's 19th-century decline, as it lost territory to Russia and economic independence to Britain. Iran-American relations remained friendly until after WWII, when the U.S. aligned with British policy. After Mohammad Mosaddeq nationalized his nation's oil industry, the CIA engineered his 1953 overthrow an event remembered in Iran as an outrage similar to Pearl Harbor. There followed 25 years of rule by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, who sent an avalanche of oil money to the U.S. to finance a high-tech military force that proved useless in the revolution that ousted him. Humiliated by the revolutionists' 1979 takeover of our embassy, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein during the brutal 1980 1988 Iran-Iraq war. As vividly as he portrays American blunders, Ansari does not ignore Iran's tortured politics and its national myth of victimization. American readers may wince at Iran's wildly distorted view of Western culture, but those who persist will realize the enormous barriers to understanding that both nations face.
