America and Iran

Starred review from July 20, 2020
The hostility between the U.S. and Iran is a tragic lapse from a once-friendly relationship, according to this sweeping study. Historian Ghazvinian (coeditor, American and Muslim Worlds Before 1900) surveys American-Iranian relations back to colonial Americans’ support for Persia in conflicts with the Turks and Tehran’s perennial desire for closer ties to the U.S. as a counterweight against British and Russian domination in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Iranians’ pro-American outlook soured, he contends, when the C.I.A. orchestrated the 1953 coup against liberal nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and then lavished arms on Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s unpopular dictatorship. After the Shah’s overthrow in 1979, Iranian rage and American cluelessness precipitated the U.S. embassy hostage crisis. Ghazvinian blames present-day antagonism mostly on America, arguing that Iran’s conciliatory efforts, from arms-for-hostages initiatives to the Iran nuclear deal, have met with rebuffs, betrayals, and sanctions, as well as on Israel for playing a major role in sabotaging potential rapprochements. Ghazvinian distills much complicated history into a lucid, graceful narrative studded with vivid profiles, including a description of populist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “he son of a blacksmith, greasy and disheveled in appearance, so full of godly piety that he rarely dressed in anything more formal than a zip-up windbreaker.” The result is a nuanced, illuminating, and much-needed corrective to one-sided vilifications of Tehran.