The Foreign Service Journal, March 2017

80 MARCH 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL American side did not give up. They prac- ticed the best of diplomacy: they listened, they waited, they remained patient and professional. Solomon’s very readable account would have benefited from some edit- ing. At one place (p. 6) the author tells us that the 2012 officials’ meeting in Oman was “the first direct meeting between the United States and Iran on the nuclear issue since the revolution in 1979.” In fact, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs WilliamBurns and Iranian National Security Council Chief Ali Jalili had held a bilateral meeting on the same subject three years earlier in Geneva, where they reached an (aborted) agreement about removing Iranian low- enriched uranium and fueling the Tehran University research reactor. In another place (p. 242) we read, in a passage worthy of Sarah Palin, that in 2011 when Secretary of State John Kerry met Omani Sultan Qabus at the latter’s palace inMuscat, “the vast whitewashed facility overlooked the Persian Gulf’s azure waters.” It didn’t (and doesn’t). Solomon provides us with a useful guide to a rogue’s gallery of American Iran-bashers. He follows Harold Rhode, Michael Ledeen, Douglas Feith, Larry Franklin and others who continued to beat their anti-Iran chests despite the evidence that their long efforts to paint Iran as the source of all evil were yielding no results except sore chests. The greatest virtue of the book is that, despite his biases and occasional errors, Solomon remains cautious. He is aware of Americans’ poor record of understanding Iranian events. He acknowledges that well- qualified analysts in and out of govern- ment were wrong about the Shah; they were wrong about Iran’s revolution; they were wrong about Khomeini’s direction; and they were wrong about the course of the Islamic Republic. True scholars admit it when they are wrong. The members of the oblivious group Solomon describes so well, however, could never admit they were wrong about anything—despite the obvious reality that they were. This book is well worth the read just to follow the misadventures of this group. Solomon’s work is a timely reminder that wrong-headed ideas and those who propagate themnever go away. After the efforts of President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to find a way with Iran better thanmutual demoniza- tion, the new Trump administration—judg- ing by the statements of its appointees—is apparently on course to revive the thought- less Iran-bashing that has brought nothing but frustration (and sometimes worse) for 37 years, and will delight the most extreme ideologues in Tehran. Read Solomon’s book and then, as the Iranian war chant says, amadeh bash (get ready)! JohnW. Limbert served as the first-ever deputy assistant secretary of State for Iran from 2009 to 2010. He is a veteran U.S. diplomat and a former official at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, where he was held captive during the Iran hostage crisis. He was ambassador to Mauri- tania from 2000 to 2003 and AFSA president from 2003 to 2005, among many other assign- ments. He is the author of Iran: At War with History (Westview Press, 1987) , S hiraz in the Age of Hafez (University of Washington Press, 2004) and Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History (U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2009). Where Media and Diplomacy Meet The Future of #Diplomacy Philip Seib, Polity Press, 2016, $19.95/ paperback; $9.99/Kindle, 154 pages. Reviewed By Dennis Jett Yogi Berra once said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” That is especially true when talking about the impact technological change will have on the practice of diplomacy. Seib’s look at what is to come sees a future where public diplomacy, conducted through digi- tal platforms, will profoundly affect how foreign affairs are conducted. Traditionalists argue that social media and other technologies are only a different means of delivering the message. A bigger megaphone per- haps, but not a fundamental remaking of how foreign policy is made. Those inclined to see technology as an agent of revolutionary change assert that the way diplomats normally did business is dead, and that nothing will be the same. They struggle to predict what the future will look like, but are convinced it will bear little relation to the past. Through this book, Philip Seib, a professor of journalism, public diplomacy and international relations at the Univer- sity of Southern California, steps into the debate and lays out his vision. As Seib states, a central premise of his book is this: “The future of diplomacy is inextricably tied to the future of media.” One problemwith that view is the fact that today’s dominant media platform is tomorrow’s technological dinosaur. Every advance in communications has had implications for diplomacy, whether it was the first trans-Atlantic cable, the fax machine or the internet. And inmany cases, the prediction that traditional diplo-