AMERICA AND IRAN

An expert on Iran delineates the massive rift between the erstwhile “closest of allies.”

In this relevant, highly elucidating work, Ghazvinian employs the poetic theme of the changing of seasons as he moves through the evolving relationship between the U.S. and Iran—from “spring,” when American colonists indulged in “Persophilia” (a romantic idealization of Persian culture and society) to “winter,” the current season, begun when the Islamic Revolution of 1979 brought chants of “death to America.” Even before the founding of the U.S., the American colonists were deeply sympathetic to the Persian Empire, for reasons both religious (where Cyrus the Great liberated the Jews from the Babylonian captivity) and political, as the counterweight to the dreaded Ottoman Empire. Ghazvinian shows how the fascination was mutual, and the Founding Fathers even derived some of their ideas from ancient Persian rule. During the second half of the 19th century, the “empire’s carcass” was "picked clean" by imperial powers like Russia and the British Empire, and Iran looked to the dynamic U.S. for help repelling colonial plunder and political interference. The defining moment in the relationship came in 1953, with the coup d’etat, engineered by the CIA and MI6, of the popular reformist Mohammad Mosaddeq. Unfortunately, the coup occurred just when Iranians desperately needed the U.S. to help bolster an educated, liberal-minded generation. After that, “Iran would swing violently back down the path of dictatorship, and over the next twenty-five years, the energetic political culture of the 1940s would disappear as activists struggled under the constant surveillance of the shah’s secret police.” Ghazvinian systematically shows how the revolution and hostage crisis served as payback. Though he left Iran at age 1 and hadn’t returned before he started this book, his decadelong, intensive research results in an evenhanded, revelatory narrative in which the author avoids muddying the waters with an overt political agenda.

An excellent single-volume history of a fraught international relationship that shows few signs of improvement.