LET THE SWORDS ENCIRCLE ME

A captivating though somewhat unwieldy look at the ongoing animus between conservatives and reformists in Iran—played out recently in the reaction to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s grip on power.

Veteran Christian Science Monitor bureau chief Peterson (Me Against My Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda, 2000) reports from 13 years of close observance of the changing Iranian landscape, especially as it is misinterpreted by the West. He begins with a rather startling comparison between Iran and the United States in terms of a “national mission”—one that defines itself in opposition to a foreign, imperialist power (British and Russian influence, in Iran’s case) and based on faith (“In God We Trust”). Humiliated by America’s support of the Shah in a 1953 coup, at the expense of the popularly elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Iranians grew to mistrust Americans, whom they loved for their culture but abhorred for their support of the Shah’s repressive regime. The Islamic Republic, heralded by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, had to deal with a debilitating war with Iraq, the Iran-Contra scandal, Israeli aggression and American diplomatic flip-flopping—the latest of which was being labeled an axis of evil by Bush II. The so-called True Believers were steeped in the beliefs of Imam Hossein, “the seventh-century ‘Lord of Martyrs’ who rode willingly into a battle he couldn’t win, knowing he faced certain death,” and other propaganda tales fed by the current crop of films that Peterson has viewed. The author is most astute in evaluating the relatively recently rise and fall of reformer philosopher-cleric Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, who won election as president in 1997 and ushered well-welcomed reforms, yet was undercut by conservatives keen on limiting the rampant Westernization among youths. Peterson also examines the startling accession of power of the mayor of Tehran, his cronyism and his belief in a messianic component to his election. The author offers convincing evidence that Ahmadinejad’s election was craftily rigged, precipitating the still-simmering revolution of June 2009. A thoroughgoing, headlong plunge into answering the Iranian lament that “Americans don’t know us.”