A few years ago, I became greatly concerned when I read in the newspapers that Donald Trump and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have been threatening to use war to achieve their goals. When the Iranian reformists asked that their Revolutionary Guard stop warfare in the Middle East, the government responded by putting the reformists in prison. As far as Donald Trump is concerned, he has been talking of attacking several countries. The leaders of America and Iran do not seem to be aware of the legacy of Anatole France and his hope for peace among nations.My intention in this book is to explain my concerns about whether world peace can ever be reached.

Since the 1979 revolution, scholars and policy makers alike have tended to see Iranian political actors as religiously driven—dedicated to overturning the international order in line with a theologically prescribed outlook. This provocative book argues that such views have the link between religious ideology and political order in Iran backwards. Religious Statecraft examines the politics of Islam, rather than political Islam, to achieve a new understanding of Iranian politics and its ideological contradictions. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar traces half a century of shifting Islamist doctrines against the backdrop of Iran’s factional and international politics, demonstrating that religious narratives in Iran can change rapidly, frequently, and dramatically in accordance with elites’ threat perceptions. He argues that the Islamists’ gambit to capture the state depended on attaining a monopoly over the use of religious narratives. Tabaar explains how competing political actors strategically develop and deploy Shi’a-inspired ideologies to gain credibility, constrain political rivals, and raise mass support. He also challenges readers to rethink conventional wisdom regarding the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the Green Movement, nuclear politics, and U.S.–Iran relations. Based on a micro-level analysis of postrevolutionary Iranian media and recently declassified documents as well as theological journals and political memoirs, Religious Statecraft constructs a new picture of Iranian politics in which power drives Islamist ideology.

"When Iranians overthrew their monarchy, rejecting a pro-Western shah in favor of an Islamic regime, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for decades to come. Yet forty years after the 1978-79 revolution, Iran has emerged as a critical player in the Middle East and the wider world, as demonstrated in part by the 2015 international nuclear agreement. In Iran Rising, Iran specialist Amin Saikal describes how the country has managed to survive despite ongoing domestic struggles, Western sanctions, and countless other serious challenges"--

The mystery of how an Islamic dictatorship came to power remains more than thirty years after the Islamic Republic's inception in Iran. The precise nature of a regime that calls itself both a republic and Islamic but is neither is little understood. The ayatollahs' unpopularity may have reached unprecedented heights, but their power seems more secure. Such paradoxes weigh heavily and judgments diverge. While public opinion wonders how an archaic theocratic regime could survive so long, some explain it in terms of Iran's continued modernization and the clergy's ability to reconcile itself with politics.Understanding the modernization process propelled by the Constitutional Revolution is difficult and raises questions. How and why could ideological Islam continue to dominate Iranian society since the late 1970s? How did it gain power and influence and overcome the reforms molded by the Constitutional Revolution? Mahnaz Shirali analyzes twentieth-century Iranian history to understand the Shiite clergy's role in a modernized country's social and political organization. She explains what enabled the clergy to take over prevailing political forces and gain control of the state.Studying Iran's history for the past one hundred years reveals the force of a religious conservatism opposing political modernity, repelling any attempt at democracy by Iranians, thanks to its constant metamorphoses. Shirali studies the curse of the Shiite clergy on political modernity. It is a convincing, in-depth criticism of the ideological Islam imposed on Iran.

Flynn "lays out [the reasons he believes] why we have failed to stop terrorist groups from growing, and what we must do to stop them. The core message is that if you understand your enemies, it's a lot easier to defeat them--but because our government has concealed the actions of terrorists like bin Laden and groups like ISIS, and the role of Iran in the rise of radical Islam, we don't fully understand the enormity of the threat they pose against us"--Amazon.com.

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 “[A] sweeping and authoritative history" (The New York Times Book Review), Black Wave is an unprecedented and ambitious examination of how the modern Middle East unraveled and why it started with the pivotal year of 1979. Kim Ghattas seamlessly weaves together history, geopolitics, and culture to deliver a gripping read of the largely unexplored story of the rivalry between between Saudi Arabia and Iran, born from the sparks of the 1979 Iranian revolution and fueled by American policy. With vivid story-telling, extensive historical research and on-the-ground reporting, Ghattas dispels accepted truths about a region she calls home. She explores how Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region, became mortal enemies after 1979. She shows how they used and distorted religion in a competition that went well beyond geopolitics. Feeding intolerance, suppressing cultural expression, and encouraging sectarian violence from Egypt to Pakistan, the war for cultural supremacy led to Iran’s fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, the assassination of countless intellectuals, the birth of groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the rise of ISIS. Ghattas introduces us to a riveting cast of characters whose lives were upended by the geopolitical drama over four decades: from the Pakistani television anchor who defied her country’s dictator, to the Egyptian novelist thrown in jail for indecent writings all the way to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Black Wave is both an intimate and sweeping history of the region and will significantly alter perceptions of the Middle East.

The definitive book on Obama's historic nuclear deal with Iran from the author of the Foreign Affairs Best Book on the Middle East in 2012 This timely book focuses on President Obama's deeply considered strategy toward Iran's nuclear program and reveals how the historic agreement of 2015 broke the persistent stalemate in negotiations that had blocked earlier efforts. The deal accomplished two major feats in one stroke: it averted the threat of war with Iran and prevented the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Trita Parsi, a Middle East foreign policy expert who advised the Obama White House throughout the talks and had access to decision-makers and diplomats on the U.S. and Iranian sides alike, examines every facet of a triumph that could become as important and consequential as Nixon's rapprochement with China. Drawing from more than seventy-five in-depth interviews with key decision-makers, including Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, this is the first authoritative account of President Obama's signature foreign policy achievement.