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The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America by Kenneth Pollack
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America forgets, but Iran remembers. That’s Kenneth Pollack’s opening characterization of U.S.-Iranian relations. While the U.S. is relatively young, the Iranian people have long memories for the past, which includes such defining events as the CIA-backed coup that toppled their government in 1953 or President Bush’s more recent “axis of evil” rhetoric. Such memories crowd into the recent headline debates over Iran’s elections and its potential to make or sink reconstruction in Iraq. They also color the looming danger of a nuclear-capable Iran and the power it could exert in an unbalanced world. Now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Pollack has held high-ranking positions with the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Security Council, and he authored the 2002 bestseller The Threatening Storm, which laid out a case for invading Iraq that convinced many skeptics. Here, though, he counsels against a U.S. intervention to trigger regime change in Iran, grounding his recommendations for future policy in past events. He makes a brief run of Persian history through the ages and gives a quick review of the country’s often-overlooked strategic importance in the Second World War. The great bulk of the book, however, concentrates on Iran’s tempestuous relations with the U.S. in the past half century. Pollack describes Iran as an utterly unique nation that for decades has made xenophobia and anti-Americanism its defining traits. Its support for terrorism, pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, and violent opposition to the Mid-East peace process are all in opposition to U.S. goals, and Pollack doesn’t anticipate any resolution of differences without serious diplomatic effort. His analysis helps make sense of the snarl of U.S.-Iran relations and points towards possible futures. The past two years have brought engrossing memoirs by Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis and its sequels), both expatriate Iranian women who have left their native country to pursue teaching and writing careers in the West. More Iran-focused memoirs are arriving now, titles like Lipstick Jihad and In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. Each provides vivid, valuable snapshots of a fascinating nation, and they whet the reading appetite for a book that takes a broader view of the context in which such personal stories play out. The Persian Puzzle is a fine, clear-eyed source for such a broader view. Review by Mark Bradshaw , July 21, 2005 Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0803-004.html Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0503-003.html Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia by Thomas Lippman: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0804-002.html
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