Choice Outstanding Academic TitleEverything began to unravel on October 5, 1986, when a Nicaraguan soldier downed an American plane carrying arms to “Contra” guerrillas, exposing a tightly held U.S. clandestine program. A month later, reports surfaced that Washington had been covertly selling arms to Iran (our sworn enemy and a state sponsor of terrorism), in exchange for help freeing hostages in Beirut. The profits, it turned out, were going to support the Contras...

A relationship beset with extraordinary acrimony, the US and Iran rarely see eye-to-eye, if only to avoid war or nuclear catastrophe. What is at the core of this troubled rivalry that has stymied policymakers and scholars alike? Using a carefully selected collection of White House, CIA, State Department, and other records, Worlds Apart provides a comprehensive answer to this question: starting from the 1979 revolution and hostage crisis, through the Iran-Iraq War and the spread of radical ...

Mohammad Mosaddeq is widely regarded as the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran’s modern history. Mosaddeq became prime minister of Iran in May 1951 and promptly nationalized its British-controlled oil industry, initiating a bitter confrontation between Iran and Britain that increasingly undermined Mosaddeq’s position. He was finally overthrown in August 1953 in a coup d’état organized and led by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, along wit...

Why does the rift between the US and Iran persist?Iran and the United States have been at odds for forty years, locked in a cold war that has run the gamut from harsh rhetoric to hostage-taking, from crippling sanctions to targeted killings. In Republics of Myth, Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, and John Tirman argue that a major contributing factor to this tenacious enmity is how each nation views itself. The two nations have differing interests and grievanc...

Why does the rift between the US and Iran persist?Iran and the United States have been at odds for forty years, locked in a cold war that has run the gamut. In Republics of Myth, Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, and John Tirman argue that a major contributing factor to this tenacious enmity is how each nation views itself. Their often-deadly confrontation derives from the very different national narratives that shape their politics, actions, and vision of the...

Becoming Enemies brings the unique methods of critical oral history, developed to study flashpoints from the Cold War such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, to understand U.S. and Iranian relations from the fall of the Shah in 1978 through the Iranian hostage crisis and the Iran-Iraq war. Scholars and former officials involved with U.S. and UN policy take a fresh look at U.S and Iranian relations during this time, with special emphasis on the U.S. role in the Iran-Iraq War. With its remarkable ...

The unexpected end of the protracted conflict has been a sobering experience for scholars. No theory had anticipated how the Cold War would be terminated, and none should also be relied upon to explicate its legacy. But instead of relying on preconceived formulas to project past developments, taking a historical perspective to explain their causes and consequences allows one to better understand trends and their long-term significance. The present book takes such perspective, focusing on t...

Hailed as "a very gripping read" by The New York Times and s****elected as one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and The Economist, this national bestseller brings to life the 1953 CIA coup in Iran that ousted the country’s elected prime minister and features a brand new preface by the author on the folly of attacking Iran.As zealots in Washington intensify their preparations for an American attack on Iran, the story of...

Osama bin Laden was the most wanted man in American history—an enemy who brought the United States what President George W. Bush called “a day of fire,” and ushered in a new era of terrorism. It took a decade of blood and sacrifice, of determination and frustration, but finally, in a nighttime raid at the end of a dirt road in Pakistan, the hunt for Bin Laden ended with a gunshot. It was a dramatic climax to a long and painful chapter.But now what? The terrorist threat that has def...

The definitive, "splendidly detailed" biography of the last Shah of Iran, tracing his dramatic rise, dictatorial rule, and fall from power in 1979 ( Chicago Tribune).Though his monarchy was toppled in 1979 and he died in 1980, the life of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, continues to resonate today. Here, internationally respected author Abbas Milani gives us the definitive biography, more than ten years in the making, of the monarch whose...

Have the diplomatic efforts of the Obama administration toward Iran failed? Was the Bush administration's emphasis on military intervention, refusal to negotiate, and pursuit of regime change a better approach? How can the United States best address the ongoing turmoil in Tehran? This book provides a definitive and comprehensive analysis of the Obama administration's early diplomatic outreach to Iran and discusses the best way to move toward more positive relations between the two discorda...

Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October 2007, after eight years of exile, hopeful that she could be a catalyst for change. Upon a tumultuous reception, she survived a suicide-bomb attack that killed nearly two hundred of her countrymen. But she continued to forge ahead, with more courage and conviction than ever, since she knew that time was running out—for the future of her nation, and for her life.In Reconciliation, Bhutto recounts in gripping detail her final mon...