The Foreign Service Journal, March 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2017 79 In the same prologue, he uses a phrase beloved of those promoting endless American- Iranian hostility, writing about “Iranian behavior” as though Iranians were some sort of unruly children or animals. Solomon correctly notes that Obama’s outreach efforts originated in his long Democratic primary campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2008. In those debates Obama declared that, as president, he would engage with America’s adversaries, including Iran. He took harsh criticism for his stance fromboth Clinton and, during the general election campaign, from Sena- tor JohnMcCain (R-Ariz.), whose position seemed to be that Iran was irredeemably evil. How, his opponents asked, can you engage with those people ? Despite these attacks, Obama won the White House and stuck to his efforts to endmore than 30 years of futility with the Islamic Republic. For four years, however, his efforts went nowhere. His quoting Persian poetry (Sa’adi) and his talk of engagement “based onmutual interest andmutual respect” caught the Iranians flat-footed. To an avowed and threatening enemy they knewwell how to respond; but they were paralyzed when an American presi- dent spoke to them as Obama did. Inmy own scattered conversations with Iranian officials during 2009 and 2010, they essen- tially had nothing to say. On the U.S. side, the president found A Useful Guide to a Rogue’s Gallery The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East Jay Solomon, Random House, 2016, $28/ hardcover, $13.99/Kindle, 336 pages. Reviewed By John Limbert Jay Solomon’s title recalls Herodotus’ masterpiece, The PersianWars, and reminds us that Persia/Iran has fascinated both friends and enemies for more than twomillennia. In his account, Solomon traces the political maneuvers of the Islamic Republic and the administration of Barack Obama that led to the signing of the nuclear agreement (the “Joint Compre- hensive Plan of Action”) in July 2015. Now that the agreement, and the whole process of American-Iranian relations, has an uncertain future in the new Trump administration, this book is especially timely. Solomon is a most conscientious jour- nalist, and he builds a compelling story fromnumerous interviews with officials and analysts, and frommedia reports and articles. His telling is by necessity “Amero- centric,” andmost of his views of Iran are through non-Iranian lenses. As befits a writer for the conservative Wall Street Journal , the author shows considerable skepticism about Iranian intentions and about President Obama’s stated goal of changing the longstanding hostility betweenWashington and Tehran into something more productive. Solomon’s choice of language tells us where he stands. In the prologue, for example, he tells us that “President Obama, fromhis first days in office, pursued an opening to Iran and Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i with an obsessive commitment” (my emphasis). BOOKS that, by himself, he could not change 35 years of exchanging threats, insults and accusations. Although he spoke eloquently about the pointless “satisfying purity of indignation,” he found himself working with both Americans and Irani- ans who did not share his vision and who simply did not know how to change what they had been doing for so long. They knew well how to bash; many in Washington and Tehran had built their careers on bashing. What no one knew how to do—or what no one had the cour- age to do—was something different that might send the relationship on a new path that could serve the interests of both sides. In Washington, new ideas were regularly shot down by the fearful ones who occupied what became known as “Dithering Heights.” What broke the four-year stalemate and set the United States and Iran on the road to nuclear agreement? Solomon credits the economic hardships fromnew interna- tional sanctions imposed on Iran after 2010. He also credits Omani mediation, the new Iranian administration of Hassan Rouhani elected in 2013, and the American concession to allow Iran to enrich uranium on its own soil. At least as important as the above, however, was the persistence and forbear- ance of American officials during the sterile exchanges of 2009-2013. When the Iranians haggled endlessly over the time and place of future meetings; when their representatives ran away frommeetings with American counterparts; and when their negotiating consisted of long-winded statements of maximalist positions, the Solomon’s work is a timely reminder that wrong-headed ideas and those who propagate them never go away.