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Still vivid in many Americans' memories are the 444 days of 1979 when Islamic militants held U.S. diplomatic personnel hostage in Iran. Though their story has been told before, never has it been related from such a perspective. Unique among the hostages, the author was an officer for the Central Intelligence Agency serving at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Once his CIA connection was discovered, Bill Daugherty became a special target of his captors and was subjected to extraordinarily harsh treatment. He managed to survive the ordeal by relying upon his Marine Corps training and combat experience and his remarkable inner reserve of fortitude. Ultimately he was awarded the State Department Medal of Valor and the CIA Exceptional Service Medal. Drawing on intelligence information not readily available to previous writers, recently declassified materials, interviews with such key government officials as former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former CIA director and ambassador to Iran Richard Helms, and to his own firsthand knowledge, Daugherty sheds light on this disturbing event, particularly with respect to the decision-making process in the White House. Among his revelations is the involvement of the Soviet Union. Despite his personal involvement, Daugherty has produced an impressively objective account of the tragedies and triumphs that marked this black time in U.S. history. It is both a harrowing adventure story and a serious look at U.S.-Iran relations. The pivotal event continues to evoke emotions and begs careful analysis for potential lessons learned.
‘An excellent contribution to our knowledge of Iran and Soleimani.’ Kim Ghattas, author of Black Wave When the US assassinated Qassem Soleimani, he was one of the most powerful men in Iran. Known as ‘the shadow commander’, he enacted the wishes of the country’s Supreme Leader across the Middle East, establishing the Islamic Republic as a major force in the region. But all this was a long way from where he began – on the margins of a nation whose ruler was seen as a friend of the West. Through Soleimani, Arash Azizi examines how Iran came to be where it is today. Providing a rare insight into a country whose actions are often discussed but seldom understood, he reveals the global ambitions underlying Iran’s proxy wars, geopolitics and nuclear programme.
This book contends that the transition of leadership from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will result in a crisis of legitimacy for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Using Max Weber’s typology of legitimacy, the book explains that the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy was based on the charismatic authority of the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Since Khomeini’s death in 1989, the regime has failed to develop the rule of law necessary for legal-rational authority. Moreover, it abandoned the logical underpinnings justifying clerical rule when a mid-ranking cleric rather than a Grand Ayatollah was placed in the position of Supreme Leader. With neither a legal basis nor a traditional basis of authority, the new leader relied extensively on the cover of Khomeini’s charismatic shadow for legitimacy. After nearly four decades, this shadow is fading. Not only will Khamenei’s successor lack the same direct ties to Khomeini, but the demographic and societal changes in Iran have made the charisma of Khomeini a historical concept rather than a viscerally felt experience. First the book analyzes the likely succession scenarios, finding the most probable outcome is the appointment of a hardline conservative backed by the regime’s security forces. Next, the regime’s economic, political, and social failures are presented, in order to explain why the new leader is likely to try to return to a traditional basis of legitimacy – religion. Thereafter, the book explains how this hardliner focus on religion is likely to result in an aggressive Iranian foreign policy toward the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, impacting the region’s security.
The New York Times–bestselling author of Black Hawk Down delivers a “suspenseful and inspiring” account of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 (The Wall Street Journal). On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans captive, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. In Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent to free them, their radical, naïve captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Bowden takes us inside the hostages’ cells and inside the Oval Office for meetings with President Carter and his exhausted team. We travel to international capitals where shadowy figures held clandestine negotiations, and to the deserts of Iran, where a courageous, desperate attempt to rescue the hostages exploded into tragic failure. Bowden dedicated five years to this research, including numerous trips to Iran and countless interviews with those involved on both sides. Guests of the Ayatollah is a detailed, brilliantly recreated, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world. “The passions of the moment still reverberate . . . you can feel them on every page.” —Time “A complex story full of cruelty, heroism, foolishness and tragic misunderstandings.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Essential reading . . . A.” —Entertainment Weekly
The publication in 1988 of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses triggered a furor that pitted much of the Islamic world against the West over issues of blasphemy and freedom of expression. The controversy soon took on the aspect of a confrontation of civilizations, provoking powerful emotions on a global level. It involved censorship, protests, riots, a break in diplomatic relations, culminating in the notorious Iranian edict calling for the death of the novelist. In The Rushdie Affair, Daniel Pipes explains why the publication of The Satanic Verses became a cataclysmic event with far-reaching political and social consequences.Pipes looks at the Rushdie affair in both its political and cultural aspects and shows in considerable detail what the fundamentalists perceived as so offensive in The Satanic Verses as against what Rushdie's novel actually said. Pipes explains how the book created a new crisis between Iran and the West at the time--disrupting international diplomacy, billions of dollars in trade, and prospects for the release of Western hostages in Lebanon.Pipes maps out the long-term implications of the crisis. If the Ayatollah so easily intimidated the West, can others do the same? Can millions of fundamentalist Muslims now living in the United States and Europe possibly be assimilated into a culture so alien to them? Insightful and brilliantly written, this volume provides a full understanding of one of the most significant events in recent years. Koenraad Elst's postscript reviews the enduring impact of the Rushdie affair.
The Little Green Book is a collection of fatawah handed down by the most prominent and arguably one of the most influential Muslim clerics in modern history; the Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Mosavi Khomeini, commonly known as the Ayatollah Khomeini. Fatawah (the plural of fatwah) are Islamic religious decrees sent down by Muslim religious leaders. Since Islam demands that Muslims abide by Sharia - Islamic law as individuals and as a society, these fatawah are not simply religious insights or advice. They are legal pronouncements, and define the law of the land in an Islamic country. In his unrivaled role as Iran's Supreme Leader and the highest-ranking cleric for Shi'a Muslims, the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatawah guided the lives of more Shi'a Muslims than did any other Islamic leader throughout history
PEN/West Award Finalist " Told with energy, perception and great charm. . . . For anyone who wants to . . . gain insight into the great cultural and political richness of Iran, past, present and future, this book is a marvelous introduction." --Fred Halliday, Los Angeles Times Iran was the first country in the Middle East to develop an oil industry, and oil has been central to its tumultuous twentieth-century history. A finalist for the PEN/West Award, Blood and Oil tells the epic inside story of the battle for Iranian oil. A prominent member of one of Iran's most powerful aristocratic families--so feared by Khomeini that the entire clan was blacklisted--Prince Manucher Farmanfarmaian was raised in a harem at the heart of Iran's imperial court. With wit and provocative detail, he describes the days when he served as the Shah's oil adviser and pioneered the partnership that resulted in OPEC. Beautifully written and epic in its scope, this scintillating memoir provides a fascinating history of modern Iran. " Distinguished by its political acumen, historical sense, and vividness of description and anecdote. It is also notable for a wry sense of humour. . . . Amid the euphoria about the development of the oilfields of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus, [its] lesson should be kept in mind." --Anatol Lieven, Financial Times "A book of stunning beauty . . . One of the best accounts of the cultural and political life of modern Iran, it is exquisite and intimate, rendered with art-istry and detail." --Fouad Ajami
From the former New York Times bureau chief in Baghdad comes the gripping and heroic story of an elite, top-secret team of unlikely spies who triumphed over ISIS. The Spymaster of Baghdad tells the dramatic yet intimate account of how a covert Iraqi intelligence unit called “the Falcons” came together against all odds to defeat ISIS. The Falcons, comprising ordinary men with little conventional espionage background, infiltrated the world’s most powerful terrorist organization, ultimately turning the tide of war against the terrorist group and bringing safety to millions of Iraqis and the broader world. Centered around the relationship between two brothers, Harith al-Sudani, a rudderless college dropout who was recruited to the Falcons by his all-star younger brother Munaf, and their eponymous unit commander Abu Ali, The Spymaster of Baghdad follows their emotional journey as Harith volunteers for the most dangerous mission imaginable. With piercing lyricism and thrilling prose, Coker’s deeply-reported account interweaves heartfelt portraits of these and other unforgettable characters as they navigate the streets of war-torn Baghdad and perform heroic feats of cunning and courage. The Falcons’ path crosses with that of Abrar, a young, radicalized university student who, after being snubbed by the head of the Islamic State’s chemical weapons program, plots her own attack. At the near-final moment, the Falcons intercept Abrar’s deadly plan to poison Baghdad’s drinking water and arrest her in the middle of the night—just one of many covert counterterrorism operations revealed for the first time in the book. Ultimately, The Spymaster of Baghdad is a page-turning account of wartime espionage in which ordinary people make extraordinary sacrifices for the greater good. Challenging our perceptions of terrorism and counterterrorism, war and peace, Iraq and the wider Middle East, American occupation and foreign intervention, The Spymaster of Baghdad is a testament to the power of personal choice and individual action to change the course of history—in a time when we need such stories more than ever.
In 1978, as the protests against the Shah of Iran reached their zenith, philosopher Michel Foucault was working as a special correspondent for Corriere della Sera and le Nouvel Observateur. During his little-known stint as a journalist, Foucault traveled to Iran, met with leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini, and wrote a series of articles on the revolution. Foucault and the Iranian Revolution is the first book-length analysis of these essays on Iran, the majority of which have never before appeared in English. Accompanying the analysis are annotated translations of the Iran writings in their entirety and the at times blistering responses from such contemporaneous critics as Middle East scholar Maxime Rodinson as well as comments on the revolution by feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. In this important and controversial account, Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson illuminate Foucault's support of the Islamist movement. They also show how Foucault's experiences in Iran contributed to a turning point in his thought, influencing his ideas on the Enlightenment, homosexuality, and his search for political spirituality. Foucault and the Iranian Revolution informs current discussion on the divisions that have reemerged among Western intellectuals over the response to radical Islamism after September 11. Foucault's provocative writings are thus essential for understanding the history and the future of the West's relationship with Iran and, more generally, to political Islam. In their examination of these journalistic pieces, Afary and Anderson offer a surprising glimpse into the mind of a celebrated thinker.
"Insightful and important.... A readable, timely and valuable contribution to the understanding of the revolutionary forces at work in Iran.... The reader almost becomes a participant." —The New York Times Book Review In Shah of Shahs Kapuscinski brings a mythographer's perspective and a novelist's virtuosity to bear on the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran, one of the most infamous of the United States' client-dictators, who resolved to transform his country into "a second America in a generation," only to be toppled virtually overnight. From his vantage point at the break-up of the old regime, Kapuscinski gives us a compelling history of conspiracy, repression, fanatacism, and revolution. Translated from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand.