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Guardians Of The Revolution
Ray Takeyh
Iran And The World In The Age Of The Ayatollahs
Oxford University Press
June 2009
On Sale: May 27, 2009
328 pages
ISBN: 0195327845
EAN: 9780195327847
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
For over a quarter century, Iran has been one of America's
chief nemeses. Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the
Shah in 1979, the relationship between the two nations has
been antagonistic: revolutionary guards chanting against the
Great Satan, Bush fulminating against the Axis of Evil,
Iranian support for Hezbollah, and President Ahmadinejad
blaming the U.S. for the world's ills. The unending war of
words suggests an intractable divide between Iran and the
West, one that may very well lead to a shooting war in the
near future. But as Ray Takeyh shows in this accessible and authoritative
history of Iran's relations with the world since the
revolution, behind the famous personalities and extremist
slogans is a nation that is far more pragmatic--and
complex--than many in the West have been led to believe.
Takeyh explodes many of our simplistic myths of Iran as an
intransigently Islamist foe of the West. Tracing the course
of Iranian policy since the 1979 revolution, Takeyh
identifies four distinct periods: the revolutionary era of
the 1980s, the tempered gradualism following the death of
Khomeini and the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989, the
"reformist" period from 1997-2005 under President Khatami,
and the shift toward confrontation and radicalism since the
election of President Ahmadinejad in 2005. Takeyh shows that
three powerful forces--Islamism, pragmatism, and great power
pretensions--have competed in each of these periods, and
that Iran's often paradoxical policies are in reality a
series of compromises between the hardliners and the
moderates, often with wild oscillations between pragmatism
and ideological dogmatism. The U.S.'s task, Takeyh argues,
is to find strategies that address Iran's objectionable
behavior without demonizing this key player in an
increasingly vital and volatile region. With its
clear-sighted grasp of both nuance and historical sweep,
Guardians of the Revolution will stand as the standard work
on this controversial--and central--actor in world politics
for years to come.
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