The Foreign Service Journal, June 2007

20 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 7 t is nothing new for the United States and Iran to denounce each other as “mad mullahs” and “great Satans” (to use the title of Professor Bill Beeman’s recent study). What is new is the volume of the recent saber-rattling accompanying these stale and predictable epithets. Carrier battle groups are moved; war games are con- ducted; quasi-diplomats are detained; captured weapons are displayed; accusations of high-level complicity are made; and defiant speeches are delivered. Each side’s neoconservatives push the case for military action and accuse skeptics F O C U S O N I R A N T HE U.S. AND I RAN : M YTHING THE P OINT P AST CLASHES HAVE LED A MERICANS AND I RANIANS TO ASSUME MUTUAL ENMITY , AND LATER EVENTS HAVE PROVED THE ARGUMENT . B UT IT NEED NOT BE SO . B Y J OHN W. L IMBERT I Julia Vaskar

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