Contextualizing Iran: A Review Essay

Contextualizing Iran: A Review Essay
By Charles M. Brown

Steven R. Ward, Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009).
John W. Limbert, Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History. (Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2009).
Dore Gold, The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West. (Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2009).
Kenneth M. Pollack, et al. Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran. (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2009).
Frederic Wehrey, et al. Dangerous But Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009).

Last fall, while attending one of my favorite academic conferences of the year--the Middle East Studies Association--I was having dinner with an old classmate, who knowing that I went into government service after graduation he asked, "Do you government folks really learn that much from us academics?" While I cannot speak for every government employee, I would say to my friend that, "Yes, there is a great deal we learn from you academics." His question stayed with me--how much is out there waiting to be learned from academic writing on the Islamic Republic, possibly one of the most opaque, vexing, and frustrating agenda items for the US Government? Truth is, there's a great deal to know. Iran is the topic of maybe a dozen or two good books annually, along with several dozen articles in various academic, military, and policy journals. 2009, when the volumes surveyed in this essay were published, was no exception1 and thus far 2010 looks to be at least as productive. The volumes under review here represent a range of writing styles and are intended for different purposes and audiences. They are by no means the best of 2009, but most here exhibit exceptionally high quality, expand the body of knowledge on Iran itself--and more importantly to us "government types"--offer fresh ideas to inform our thinking on what we should be doing next.

I'll evaluate each book individually and compare how each addresses common issues and themes. These five books represent three distinct, but at times overlapping categories, of today's informed writing on the Islamic Republic, and these might not be the same sub-genres that some of these authors might of set out to establish themselves in. Firstly, we have books that aim to contextualize or refine existing contexts for contemporary Iran. Ward, Limbert, and the RAND study would seem to fit this schema rather easily. Second, we can see some of these try and define viable US policy options. The RAND study naturally fits here too, especially given that this volume was contracted to them by the US Air Force for precisely this purpose. Pollack, et al. does this too, thinking through nine distinct policy options for a new US administration, and Limbert offers a fourteen-point list for how US officials who may find themselves sitting at the table with Iranian interlocutors should approach the issues of concern. Gold's book, very much in a category by itself in many ways given its alarmist nature, states that the failure of US diplomatic policy toward Iran necessitates a much more aggressive policy--regime change--is the only option worth considering, especially in light of gradual discoveries of the scope of Iran's nuclear development and the previous year which highlights the regime's illegitimacy inside Iran. Gold's book also, by itself, is representative of a third category in these volumes: using the "Iran issue" as a polemic restating the case against Iran, and policy options short of military action against it, and reminding us of the Israeli right's sense of threat. Gold may be by himself in this selection of books but he's far from alone in this sub-genre that sees palpable, imminent threat from Iran2 and dismisses the notion of subsequent diplomatic strategies with Iran as nothing less than Neville Chamberlain-style "appeasement."3
The Long History of Iranian Arms
Steve Ward starts us off with his Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. Ward, a senior intelligence analyst at CIA and a former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East who has written publicly on Iranian military doctrine,4 is particularly well-placed to offer a perspective on Iran's military history. This book is easily the most original covered in this review given that it is the first military history of Iran written in English for a non-specialist audience. Ward's approach could be criticized for relying too much on secondary sources to create his historical narrative--there are few, if any primary sources in Farsi consulted for this work. However, this book fills a long-neglected gap in the literature on a critical subject. Since the election debacle has heightened awareness of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iranian political life, readers may wish to supplement Ward's book--initially published just three months prior to the elections--where the IRGC is not treated with the kind of depth given the broad canvas on which Ward paints. In the context of the post-election unrest and the oft-heard analysis here inside the beltway that the June elections represented the IRGC decisively taking over many areas of state administration that had been the prerogative of the Islamic Republic's clerical leaders,5 one might wish to supplement Ward's volume with a pair of RAND studies, The Rise of the Pasdaran6 and Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads,7 that, altogether, help contextualize the IRGC in military, economic and political contexts.
Immortal is not without some shortcomings: the treatment of the Iran-Iraq War, which is seems to be in need of more introduction and context so we can see the larger picture of that era-defining conflict. The abrupt end of the narrative between the chapter on the Iran-Iraq War and his concluding chapter makes it clear that, probably for a lack of source material, Ward's book is, then, a survey of the Iranian practice of military arts from roughly 500 BCE to 1988 CE. Thus there is no thorough treatment of the 1990s and the periods during and after Operations Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. But these are minor criticisms. Ward deserves much credit for producing an eminently readable survey of the past 2500 years of Iranian military history--and given the large amount of secondary sources to synthesize, this is no easy task. This book does an admirable job filling a gaping hole in the literature on modern Iran that will be useful for foreign policy practitioners and academics alike.

The Ghosts Are in the Room
John Limbert, a former hostage of the Islamic Republic during the 1979-81 crisis in his Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling the Ghosts of History, gives four case studies of Iran at the negotiating table spanning six decades. Ambassador Limbert, who has a 45-year connection with Iran, one of the few US Government employees fluent in Farsi most recently, until 4 June,8 served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran, and easily one of the most experienced and intimately acquainted with Iran of all the government's Iranists. He is quite possibly the only US official to have had a conversation with Iran's Supreme Leader.9 Negotiating with Iran is a highly-nuanced account written especially for Americans who might get an opportunity to sit toe-to-toe with the Iranians. This monograph is also a first-of-its-kind in that almost all historical accounts of his cases are almost never written on with an eye toward what they might mean for how the US could go about negotiating with the Islamic Republic. Case studies include two examples from before the Islamic Revolution and two from after it, making this book one about negotiating with Iran, not necessarily about negotiating with the Islamic Republic. The cases are the Azerbaijan Crisis (1945-47); the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadegh (1951-53); just after the Islamic Revolution, the US Embassy Hostage Crisis (1979-81); and the efforts to free Western hostages in Lebanon during the mid and late 1980s. Each includes a lengthy and detailed reexamination of the factors of the case, with an emphasis on how Iranian leaders of the time negotiated with interlocutors to advance their various agendas, and what this history should tell us. Throughout the book he applies Roger Fisher and William Ury's negotiation methodologies to the Iranian cases. Fisher, a master negotiator who had attempted finding common ground with Ayatollah Muhammad Husayni Beheshti10 in a failed attempt to end the crisis to free Limbert and his sixty-five fellow hostages, developed the concept of "Best Alternatives to Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) in his seminal work, co-authored with William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.11 Limbert examines the various BATNAs of the cases--best solutions, or, least bad ones, the Iranians could get without negotiating a solution to the issue at hand and how these might have been influenced to get to a settlement of some sort.
The strength of Limbert's approach to these cases is through the combination of intimate knowledge of the cases and the Iranian historical and political contexts in combination with the application of Fisher and Ury's methods. Understanding the complex decision trees that Iranian leaders have internalized over during the events recounted here gives more clarity to why they've taken the seemingly incomprehensible actions they have--such as keeping US hostages for 444 days, well past the point where keeping hostages offered any kind of political leverage, and became major liabilities for the regime. This leads Limbert to fourteen lessons "history has taught us" about how Iranians negotiate and the limits of what could reasonably be expected from Iranian interlocutors. Among the most important of these points worth elaborating on here, is that the "past matters: be aware of Iran's historical greatness, its recent weakness, and its grievances from decades or centuries before." (p. 157) Good advice, and thankfully Limbert prevents overeager would-be negotiators from going overboard into Iranophilia by reminding us that "American negotiators need not be scholars of Iran . . . They should, however, at least be aware of the past that has gone into forming the views and approaches of the Iranian side." (p. 15) 
Limbert's most important point, and one worth summarizing in some detail is that for Iranians the past is very much more alive than it seems to be for Americans. The "Ghosts of History" are indeed in the room, but forward-looking Americans often fail to see them, while for Iranians, the ghosts are not only acknowledged but often take center stage. One of the worst mistakes that could be made for serious analysts of and negotiators with Iran is to write off the past as "ancient history" and move on to today's issues. For Iranians yesterday's and today's issues merge, especially when in the Iranian calculus we may be responsible for both yesterday's and today's issues. Equally damaging would be for Iran's interlocutors to attempt to game the Iranian political system to seek an advantage over one of its factions or to dictate Iran's self-interest to Iranians. The former is ever-changing and the latter is transparently paternalistic. Understanding the past 300 or so years--when Iran fell from superpower to developing power--and how this history affects Iranian poltical culture will only help policymakers, planners, diplomats, and analysts. Some combimnation of grandeur and grievance plays itself out in Iran's political culture as Iranians remember what they were and grieve for what they no longer are.12 

Misrepresenting Iran

Dore Gold's The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West is in many ways the inverse of Limbert. Gold's main agenda is to ensure that Tehran is presented in the worst light possible, given this task, Gold's book adds little to the literature on Iran and does not aid in a better understanding of Iranian decisionmaking. He presents, throughout the book, several under-supported claims as fact, and along the way ensures that we know how the Iran-focused portion of the academic community was not just wrong about Iran but so slow as to admit their "mistakes" as to be not worth listening to. He has particular scorn for James Bill and the late Richard Cottam for giving "upbeat assessments" of the Khomeini regime, which translated through Gold's filter, is tantamount to being "supportive of Khomeini." (p. 62).13 This is a gross oversimplification given the fact that nowhere in the writings of Bill or Cottam can one discern a hint of support for Khomeini. Both are still widely cited by students and experts alike, and for good reason, since their works have been standard-setting. In fact, Bill and Cottam are cited or included in the bibliographies of three of the books reviewed here, Ward, Pollack and Limbert. Gold's focus on such studies made a generation ago--in the infancy of the Islamic Republic--overlooks the development of ideas since then and the many first-rate books on Iran published annually, not to mention a central tenet of serious political analysis that a certain amount of detachment is necessary to explain various social phenomena in a given society. It is not necessary nor helpful to establish in such writing where an author stands politically vis-a-vis the contemporary Iranian regime. Gold, a former Ambassador to the United Nations from the State of Israel and foreign policy adviser to then-(and now, again) Prime Minister Netanyahu, also makes sure that the Palestinians--especially Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization--and Iran are seen as linked, which although true enough, sounds a lot like a score settling exercise in the context Gold creates; Gold's book, then, is less an analysis of Iranian politics than it is a polemic on why regime change is the essential policy option at this time.
Among some of the more jarring factual errors Gold presents includes: the notion that the 1979-81 Hostage Crisis took was "in collusion with" the highest levels of the regime (p. 72), when in fact the Embassy takeover was conceived and executed without advance knowledge by such figures;14 his claim sourced to unspecified "experts" that the detonation of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 as "the largest non-nuclear explosion that had ever been detonated on the face of the Earth" (p. 81) is almost certainly hyperbole; the claim that Sunni Muslim actors had not used suicide bombings until HAMAS started doing so in 1994 (p. 131) is similarly erroneous. There are many more such errors that collectively undermine the book's credibility for all but Gold's fellow travelers. The argumentation suffers from occasional internal inconsistency, such as declarations that the Islamic Republic is not deterrable, but then listing occurrences when it was in fact, deterred. Gold's portrayal of Tehran's regime as a monolithic bloc with little distinction between the agendas of its various personalities despite overwhelming evidence of a high degree of factionalization within regime,15 simultaneously obscures the nature of the regime while understating the difficulty of the challenge the West, the US in particular, faces in coming to terms with the future of Iran policy. Gold is right at one level to point out the repressive and retrograde tendencies of this regime--obvious enough--but it would seem that the task at hand, if we do not choose an outright military solution to the Iran "issue," is to find those opportunities within a larger political framework of international actors and quite possibly within the factions of Tehran's regime itself that can end, among other things, the twin issues of nuclear proliferation and Iranian state support for various terrorist or militia activity harming US interests in the region. 

Iran's Regional Resurgence
Dangerous But Not Omnipotent, the RAND Corporation's short analysis of Iran's increasingly-hegemonic role in the Middle East and how it is perceived in the Arab states, is arguably the least controversial of the books under review. In treating Iran's regional role, this analysis trods little new ground; Iranian support for various regional entities ranging from Lebanese Hizballah to Iraq's Mahdi Army have been the bread and butter of the think tank community for several years now. The value in this version of the story is to have it succinctly in a single volume, and to have Iran's external activity portrayed in relation to Iran's strategic culture, and the notion that deriving specific intent from Iranian actions, policies, or statements is ambiguous even at the best of times. "What seems like a drive for hegemony may in fact be a form of deterrence or the manifestation of an ambition for increased stature and 'indispensability' in the midst of isolation and encirclement." (p. 3) One of the primary reasons for the difficulty in assessing intent is the factionalization of the regime. As stated earlier, Gold refuses to deal with this facet of the Islamic Republic; Pollack states unequivocally that "The Iranian political system is one of the most complex, Byzantine, fragmented, and opaque on Earth." (p. 17). RAND's study--whose lead author is Frederic Wehrey, a former Air Force officer finishing a doctorate at Oxford University--offers more specificity by defining the various camps within the Iranian regime and giving a detailed analysis of how this factionalization affects the US-Iran relationship, and how it affected "benchmark" events in the Islamic Republic's relations with the West including the religious edict calling for the murder of British author Salman Rushdie and the on-going confrontation over Iran's nuclear program. (pp. 22-31). 
Dangerous also provides a much-needed analysis that while Iran has always had--and likely always will--have a close relationship with Lebanese Hizballah, there are limits to the degree which Iran controls this organization. This reaffirms themes in a growing body of research that groups like Hizballah, and probably some of the Iraqi Shia militias as well, can and do act independently of Iran and that notions of Iran pulling strings of "proxies" with the intention of using them to achieve regional hegemony is likely an oversimplification of the dynamics between Iran and these groups. While we are probably quite far indeed from seeing any kind of complete break between Iran and such groups it is noteworthy that statements like "The image of Hizballah as a client of Iran . . . is becoming obsolete" can be said in serious writing, and unfortunate that the RAND study is the only book of these under review to explore this theme.16 
On Iraqi groups, Wehrey and his co-authors are equally insightful, giving a whole section on "Iranian Support of Iraqi Groups Does Not Equal Control" (pp. 109-112), but the discussion on the complexity involved between Iran and Iraqi groups--especially Iran's closest strategic partner, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq--could have been strengthened by bringing to a readers' attention the fact that Ba'th regime's purges and deportations of a quarter-million Iraqi Shia of Iranian descent17 produced a complex interaction inside the Islamic regime itself, to say nothing of Iranian society, in which some figures from this large Iraqi constituency exiled to Iran have become senior officials in Iran: the Najaf-born Ali Larijani, the Speaker of the Majles (Parliament) and likely candidate in the next presidential election; his younger brother Ayatollah Sadiq Larijani, head of the Iranian Judiciary, and Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi, a founding member of the group that became the Supreme Council and the younger Larijani's predecessor in the Judiciary. This large constituency, and its members within the Iranian regime, guarantees that contrary to the overly-simplistic desires of some officials and pundits, Iraq and Iran are unable to be extricated from one another. Bringing out more of this complexity would serve the goal of contextualizing the new relationship Iran and Iraq are developing as Iraq starts its recovery from decades of cruel dictatorship, Iran's quarter-million Iraqi refugees from that dictatorship continue to be absorbed into Iranian society--or not, and the Iranian regime prepares for the very real possibility it could have a non-Persian president in just a few years.
The RAND study was also the only book to make a concerted use of the Open Source Center's (OSC) many holdings on Iran to provide source material. Ward used a smattering of OSC reports in the latter chapters Immortal but Dangerous has made far greater use of these sources, mainly because its very contemporary focus makes these sources more relevant throughout the entirety of the book, which would not be possible for the others, especially Ward and Limbert whose works cover a longer time frame.
What Next?
Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran offers analysis of several policy options on Iran. The nearly-ubiquitous Kenneth Pollack--author or co-author of seven book-length monographs since 200218--is lead author of a highly-useful soup-to-nuts survey of nine distinct policies that could be implemented in relation to Iran. The value of this volume, co-written by well-known think tank community personalities, and particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle on the American political spectrum--Daniel Byman, Martin Indyk, Suzanne Maloney, Michael O'Hanlon, and Bruce Riedel--is that each option is presented in the same format, without editorial comments about which one the authors most prefer. Policy goals, windows of opportunity, political requirements, and a pro/con analysis are offered for all nine options, giving those who must plan contingencies a head start. While the events of the past year would appear to have put the various diplomatic experiments with Iran in a state of suspended animation, running through these and the other options is a worthwhile exercise as we continue to watch for other opportunities. 
The policy options entertained are two diplomatic strategies, persuasion and engagement; three military options, invasion, airstrikes, or permitting Israeli airstrikes; three regime change choices: offering support to a popular uprising in the "velvet revolution" sense, a similar strategy offered to one of Iran's minority or opposition groups, and support to a military coup; the last option Pollack's working group considered was more of the same: containment. Whichever strategy, or combination of strategies, the administration chooses, it acts against the ticking clock of Iran's developing nuclear program. Citing the last National Intelligence Estimate of Iran's nuclear capacity, Pollack reminds us that the next five years are "the more likely time frame" for the Islamic Republic to produce sufficient fissile material for a single warhead (p. 26). Thus time is of the essence of any strategy designed to steer Iran away from this projection. Complicating this timeframe, especially for the non-military options are the fact of last June's contested election. Additionally, any of these strategies will require significantly more cooperation between the United States and international partners, and almost certainly will include a substantial investment in time--we may not have if we want to ensure a non-nuclear Iran--and will almost certainly involve unilateral US actions, cooperation aimed at strengthening United Nations resolutions against Iran, and adjusting bilateral relations between our partners and Iran. This last lever against Iran's development of nuclear technology is beyond direct US purview, and shows how the effort against the Islamic Republic can ripple through an increasing swath of American foreign relations.19 
The authors of Which Path are the first to point out that the nine policies they examine represent "nine bad options" none of which are optimal and all of which have low likelihoods of success by themselves (p. 10). These options presented are also not mutually exclusive--they represent the raw materials that can be combined and recombined to give the US maximum leverage against the frankly likely scenarios of Iran stalling for time, its flat-out rejection of the very premises of negotiations with the international community, and continuing to enshrine as policy an opposite course of action that would satisfy US concerns based on entrenched anti-Americanism as core elements of the regime's threat perception and policymaking process. Thus a future US policy toward Iran probably combines some of these diplomatic and military options and would also require the US to be much more flexible and patient than we have been thus far to give these approaches time to work.

Conclusion
This selection of books should show us why I gave the answer I did to my friend back at the conference. A few of these are real standouts that ought to be on every serious analyst or commentator's shelf. Not every volume here adds greatly to the collective wisdom on the subject, but even those that do not are revealing of where the political debates are in key constituencies. In addition to new substantive points that are brought into the foreground in these books, we get a clear sense of the importance of history to Iranians, which is one of the key issues Americans need to come to terms with when thinking about the direction of Iran policy during this uncertain time. We also, unfortunately, get a clear sense of how confused the response to the Iranian challenge has been by various US administrations, how fraught future policy will be, and that the contentious Iran issue is not going to resolve itself soon.
Brown earned his MA in Middle East Studies and History at the Middle East Center, University of Utah in 2005. He serves as a CIA intelligence analyst focusing on Iraq. 



notes

1 2009 also saw the publication of 11 other standout books on Iran: Said Amir Arjomand, After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Saira Khan, Iran and Nuclear Weapons: Protracted Conflict and Proliferation (London: Routledge, 2009); Jeremiah Goulka, et al. The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009); Anthony H. Cordesman & Adam C. Seitz, Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Birth of a Regional Nuclear Arms Race? (Praeger, 2009); Gholam Khiabany, Iranian Media: The Paradox of Modernity (London: Routledge, 2009); Ray Takeyh, Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Frederic Wehrey, et al. Saudi-Iranian Relations Since the Fall of Saddam: Rivalry, Cooperation, and Implications for U.S. Policy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009); Ghoncheh Tazmini, Khatami's Iran: The Islamic Republic and the Turbulent Path to Reform (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009); Ali Gheissari, (ed.), Contemporary Iran: Economy, Society, Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Arzoo Osanloo, The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); and Frederic Wehrey, et al. The Rise of the Pasdaran: Assessing the Domestic Role of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2009).
2 To name a couple others: Jerome R. Corsi, Why Israel Can't Wait: The Coming War Between Israel and Iran (New York: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster, 2009); Mike Evans, Atomic Iran: Countdown to Armageddon: How the West Can Be Saved (Phoenix, AZ: Time Worthy Books, 2009).
3 Standout examples of this include: Janet Doerflinger, "Embracing Iran," The American Thinker, May 9, 2010: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/embracing_iran.html; Michael Rubin, "Now Bush is Appeasing Iran," Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2008; Iran Policy Committee, Appeasing the Ayatollahs and Suppressing Democracy: U.S. Policy and the Iranian Opposition (Washington D.C.: Iran Policy Committee, 2006).
4 "The Continuing Evolution of Iran's Military Doctrine," Middle East Journal 59:4 (Autumn 2005), pp. 559-76.
5 This thesis would appear to be an overstatement. According to Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a political scientist at Syracuse University, who spoke at the Wilson Center in March 2010, the "takeover" by the IRGC throughout Iranian leadership has been occurring gradually since the mid-1990s. For detailed notes of Boroujerdi's fascinating presentation--a preview of a book project he is currently working on, see: http://pomed.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/notes_ww_iran_event_march_18_2010.pdf
6 Frederic Wehrey, et al. The Rise of the Pasdaran: Assessing the Domestic Role of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2009).
7 David E. Thaler, et al. Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2010).
8 News of Limbert's departure from the State Department and return to teaching at the US Naval Academy was broken in this post: http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/nationalsecurity/2010/06/changes-in-states-iran-shop.html
9 A video of his conversation with then-Deputy Defense Minister Ali Khamenei can be found at: http://niacinsight.com/2009/11/04/hostage-john-limbert-speaking-with-khamenei/
10 Beheshti (1928-81) was one of the main architects of the Islamic Revolution and served as the first head of the Judiciary under the Islamic Republic. He was influential for Muhammad Khatami and led the Islamic Republic Party with Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. He was killed by the the Mujahidin-e Khalq with 72 other senior figures of the Islamic regime in the Hafte Tir bombing in Tehran.
11 Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1981).
12 John Limbert, "Negotiating with Iran: Wrestling with the Ghosts of History," public presentation, Middle East Institute, Washington D.C., November 23, 2009. Podcast available at: http://www.mei.edu/Events/EventArchive/Podcasts.aspx and on iTunes.
13 Bill's best known work, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) is widely regarded as a classic and is still widely assigned as a text. Cottam's articles showing how Khomeini's Islamic ideology advanced--and degraded--a Shia theology of governance stand the test of time and are still valuable for students of contemporary Iranian affairs.
14 See also, Mark Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War With Militant Islam (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006).
15 See especially: Bahman Baktiari, Parliamentary Politics in Revolutionary Iran (University Press of Florida, 1996); Wilfried Buchta, Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic (Washington D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001); and Mehdi Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Revolutionary Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002).
16 Emile El-Hokayem, "Hizballah and Syria: Outgrowing the Proxy Relationship," The Washington Quarterly 30:2 (Spring 2007), p. 35. http://www.twq.com/07spring/docs/07spring_elhokayem.pdf; See also, Rola El-Husseini, "Hezbollah and the Axis of Refusal: Hamas, Iran, and Syria," The Washington Quarterly (forthcoming).
17 Ali Alfoneh & Alex Vatanka, "The Khamenei-Ahmadinejad Regime and the Challenge of the Iranian Opposition," public presentation, Middle East Institute, Washington D.C., 3 February 2010.
18 The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (New York: Random House, 2002); The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between the US and Iran (New York: Random House, 2004); Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 (University of Nebraska Press, 2004); A Switch in Time: A New Strategy for America in Iraq (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2006); (with Daniel Byman) Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from an Iraqi Civil War (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2007); A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East (New York: Random House, 2009).
19 Nicholas Burns, public presentation at "Iran: The Year of Reckoning," Wilson Center, Washington D.C., 4 June 2010.