Review of Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden

I’ve been on a major Iran kick this summer for some reason.

Guests of the Ayatollah is a fairly lengthy 650-700 page look at the Iranian hostage crisis. Perhaps due to Bowden’s background as a former sports reporter in Baltimore, the text is fairly easy to read and actually reads like a lengthy novel.

Bowden tries to tackle the crisis from all sides: the Iranian hostage takers, the embassy hostages, the President and his key advisors, the military role in the ill-fated rescue operation, and even the reaction of the American public as we move towards the 1980 election and beyond.

Much of the book is spent inside the embassy through the collective recollections of the hostages however. Overall, I thought Bowden struck a pretty good balance between all these different narratives, but individual opinions will vary of course.

When you’re trying to string together as many different perspectives as exist in the Iranian hostage crisis, the reader is bound to be left wanting in one area or another. I thought Bowden did a fantastic job capturing the dynamics between the hostages themselves, rather than merely bouncing them off their Iranian captors.

Would make an interesting companion piece to the new David Crist book The Twilight War, which provides a comprehensive treatment of U.S.-Iran relations from 1979-2011

The Subjective Terrorists: The Curious Case of MEK

Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) is a State Department designated terrorist organization that has murdered Americans and sought to create an amalgam of Islam and Marxism to take over Iran since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.

Why then, does the MEK have such high level support among many former government officials? They count among their supporters Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Howard Dean, and Lee Hamilton, among others. 

The MEK has often paid money to these high ranking officials to make speeches on the groups behalf. Some even see the group as a suitable alternative to the current Islamic regime—despite their lack of domestic support within Iran.

There’s now an active probe to determine whether these officials can be charged under the Federal Agents Registration Act that requires U.S. citizens lobbying on behalf of foreign powers within the U.S. to disclose their roles and officially register with the government.

Don’t get your hopes up for government action as rules for officials outside government are selectively enforced.

Do we hate the regime in Iran so much that we’re willing to support any dubious crackpot organization that may be better than the Islamic regime?  

But some former U.S. officials love them. Lord knows why…

Review of The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran by David Crist

When I heard that David Crist was a senior historian for the federal government and an advisor to government officials on the Middle East, I was slightly concerned because one is never sure whether or not someone has a political agenda. While, I can't determine anyone's political leanings, David Crist has written a painstakingly thorough and detailed history on the thirty year conflict with Iran. Although every president from Carter to Obama is covered, wide swathes of the book are dedicated to the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.

The Reagan administration (1981-89) takes up approx. three hundred pagesor more than half the book. This may not indicate any political bias either way as the Regan administration was tasked with dealing with the Iran-Iraq war, the 1983 marine barracks bombing in Lebanon by Hezbollah, and Iran-Contra affair. No president since Reagan has been tasked with dealing with quite so much on the Iran front.

This twilight war, like any other war conventional or otherwise has ebbed and flowed, perhaps explaining why some presidents get so much coverage, while some get decidedly less. The war was hot during the Reagan and Bush II administrations, while other presidents had other concerns (Bush I had the Gulf War, while Clinton had his own personal conduct to deal with, for example.)

Crist because of his unique position is able to take the reader on ships and airplanes that had the task of patrolling the Persian Gulf with the pilots and crewmen while simultaneously taking us inside presidential administrations to detail the decision making and infighting among administration officials, which I feel is the ultimate strength of the book.

The Iran issue created divisions within every American presidents administration and perhaps surprisingly within the leadership of Iran towards the United States as well. This ultimately creates a book where both sides come out looking equally at fault and no president comes out looking spectacular. Both Iran and the United States have missed opportunities to potentially lessen the hostilities.

A remarkably fair and even handed book, highest recommendation.

 

This review is from the Amazon Vine program. Twilight War is scheduled for release July19, 2012.

Submit to Theocracy: Election Season in Iran

While Iran remains in an icy stare down with the West over its’ nuclear program, the international community is largely ignoring the other drama playing out within Iran. It’s time for another election in Iran.

 Ever watchful of the internationally broadcast street demonstrations following the dubious results of the last presidential election, Iran has begun clamping down on the press and personal freedoms throughout the country. Sadly, this is just pretty much par for the course for the Islamic Republic these days.

Iran has basically proven every Western leader that has called the Islamic Republic a corrupt, authoritarian, police state correct. What exactly do the religious leaders not want the world to see?

I’m not Colombo, but sounds like their preparing for another controversial election where basic democratic rights are withheld. This will probably be followed by large scale mass protests that will be broken by the elite guards under the thumb of the theocracy.

Another Iranian election season…joy.

Target Ambassador: The American Decision

Details of a bizarre alleged assassination plot directed at the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States are slowly emerging. As of this writing, it appears as though two Iranian operatives attempted to get a member of a Mexican drug cartel to carry out the assassination in a few days time in Washington D.C.

That Iran-Saudi Arabia detest each other should be no surprise, the Shiite-Sunni divide over who was meant to succeed the Prophet Mohammad has dated back at least fourteen centuries. In the modern context, Saudi Arabia is seen as pro-Western, while Iran is a fundamentalist Islamic state with links to Hezbollah and Hamas.

What does the United States do about this alleged plot? Is a military confrontation with Iran coming? Slow down war hawks, it was the Saudi Arabian ambassador and therefore I feel like the United States should let the royal family in Saudi Arabia deal with Iran.

Running in there with military forces would appear rash and hot headed, not to mention that we have enough of our own problems. The American public is already steaming over the state of the economy and perceived government inaction, I think if you engage in another military campaign, your fanning the flames of discontent with government.

Pursuing further sanctions against Iran is probably the best bet the Obama administration has at the moment, as Iran cannot go unpunished for a planned assassination on American soil. At this point though, I can’t authorize military action. I’ll keep you posted as events warrant.