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CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
Washington’s Missing Piece
Review by Roger Howard
Kenneth Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America. New York: Random House, 2004, 576 pp. $26.95.
It is a curious paradox that a foreign government should play a starring role on the political stage of a country with which it has no formal relations. Nevertheless, in the past quarter century, Iran has haunted successive U.S. administrations like a sinister eminence grise. The rupture of U.S.-Iranian diplomatic relations and the tragic failure to rescue American hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran in April 1980 dashed. Jimmy Carter's hopes of winning the presidential elections the following November. Six years later the Iran- Contra scandal rocked the Reagan administration and led to criminal proceedings against numerous officials, a suicide attempt by a former National Security Advisor, and the near impeachment of the president. More recently, it has been alleged that the chimera of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was conjured by an Iranian intelligence service that sought to use the influence of its protégé, Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi, to deflect American pressure from Tehran and lure the U.S. military into an Iraqi quagmire.
During President George W. Bush's second term, Iran is under the spotlight of attention once again. Amidst claims that its leaders are close to developing the fissile material for a nuclear weapon and press reports of U.S. personnel on Iranian soil reconnoitering possible targets for a pre-emptive military strike, Vice President Dick Cheney has described Iran as "right at the top" of the challenges facing the new administration. Meanwhile, President Bush continues to voice idealistic rhetoric about bringing "freedom" to those "oppressed" by the tyrannies of the Middle East.
The timing of Kenneth Pollack's new book, The Persian Puzzle, is therefore as meticulous as his earlier work, The Threatening Storm, a best-selling piece on the alleged threat posed by Saddam that appeared in September 2002, just as the clouds of war darkened Iraqi skies. Now, as the author points out, "there are signs of important developments in Iran." While it is, of course, extremely difficult to judge what lies ahead, whether change will be prompted by the regime's nuclear program, or what the impact will be of events in neighboring Iraq, the pertinence of Pollack's latest work is hardly in doubt.
Such a work is much needed not just because Iran is such a timely subject, but also because its subject matter represents so much else. For example, the regime's nuclear program and alleged links with Middle Eastern militia groups raise the wider questions of how and why the West should deal with weapons proliferation throughout the developing world and how terrorism should be defined and addressed.
Although many might claim that his strong support for the Iraq war destroys his credibility, Pollack is nonetheless extremely well qualified to write on Iran, having acted as the director for Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton years. In these roles, and during his subsequent work at the Brookings Institution, he has acquired not only a vast knowledge of almost every aspect of the country, including its relationship with the Middle East and the wider world, but also considerable first-hand experience and insight into American policy formation. This means that his book is valuable because, consciously or not, it necessarily reveals something about the unspoken assumptions held by those who pull the strings of power in Washington.
Roger Howard is the author of Iran in Crisis? (Zed Books, 2004). He has written extensively on Iran for the Royal United Services Institute in London.