The Foreign Service Journal, March 2005

54 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 5 Paranoia or Reality? The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America Kenneth M. Pollack, Random House, 2004, $26.95, hardcover, 576 pages. R EVIEWED BY J OHN L IMBERT This very readable and timely account of U.S.-Iranian relations has the great virtues of honesty and intellectual humility. When Ken Pollack, a former NSC director for Persian Gulf affairs, poses the ques- tion, “What is a reasonable U.S. pol- icy toward Iran?” his frank answer is, “It beats the heck out of me.” But perhaps the book’s key strength is its emphasis on history, the crucial element in understand- ing a country where competing ver- sions of a very long and tragic past weigh heavily on the present. In the early chapters Pollack provides a very competent survey, moving from the formative role of the constitution- al movement of 1906-1911 through the rise of Reza Shah and the tripar- tite (British-Soviet-American) occu- pation of Iran during World War II. After giving us a well-researched dis- cussion of the Azerbaijan crisis of 1946 and American backing for the 1953 royalist coup, he carefully traces how Iran’s oil bonanza of 1973 shattered the country’s social and economic fabric and contributed directly to the revolutionary turmoil of 1978-1979. And he provides a most readable and coherent account of the progress of the Iran-Iraq War and of Iran’s disastrous decision to continue fighting after 1982. Given his obvious grasp of that long, checkered history, one might expect Pollack to be sympathetic to Iranians’ tendency to see foreign meddling as the cause of their nation’s many problems. Instead, he dismisses such suspicions as para- noid conspiracy theories, ignoring the extent to which they have been rooted in truth — as Pollack might have discovered had he used a greater range of sources. Although he cites some excellent secondary works by Iranian and foreign writers, including Shaul Bakhash, James Bill and Mark Gasiorowski, I could find no evidence that he looked at Assadollah Alam’s The Shah and I , an invaluable insider’s account (by the shah’s minister of court) of the last years of the Pahlavi dynasty. As Alam and others have docu- mented, it seems likely that Mo- hammed Reza Pahlavi truly believed that his hold on power depended on pleasing his foreign patrons. (He was so insecure that he even capitu- lated when an American ambassador solicited a campaign contribution for President Nixon’s re-election cam- paign.) Not only had the British helped install his father, Reza Shah, in 1921, then joined with the Russians to expel him in 1941 — but, along with the Americans, they had engineered a coup d’etat and his victory over Prime Minister Mossa- degh in 1953. (Curiously, I could find no reference to the 1921 British role in Pollack’s account.) The les- son was clear: the shah owed his throne to the foreigners, who could dispose of him whenever he dis- pleased them. Iranian popular opin- ion exaggerated this dependence, but it was still real — a fact unap- preciated by most foreign observers at the time. There has already been much dis- cussion on the Internet about Pollack’s use of the phrase, “the nation’s traditional xenophobia.” In fact, one key to Iran’s survival as a distinct nation through centuries of invasion and upheaval has been its readiness to accept foreign ways and give them an Iranian flavor. Herod- otus pointed to this practice among the Persians 2,500 years ago, and historians have long noted how Iranians enthusiastically accepted Islam (a foreign transplant) and used B OOKS Given Pollack’s grasp of the country’s rich history, it is surprising he is so dismissive of Iranian suspicions of foreign meddling. w