The first detailed Iranian account of the diplomatic struggle between Iran and the international community, The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir opens in 2002, as news of Iran's clandestine uranium enrichment and plutonium production facilities emerge. Seyed Hossein Mousavian, previously the head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and spokesman for Tehran's nuclear negotiating team, brings the reader into Tehran's private deliberations as its leaders wrestle with internal and external adversaries. Mousavian provides readers with intimate knowledge of Iran's interactions with the International Atomic Energy Agency and global powers. His personal story comes alive as he vividly recounts his arrest and interrogations on charges of espionage. Dramatic episodes of diplomatic missions tell much about the author and the swirling dynamics of Iranian politics and diplomacy—undercurrents that must be understood now more than ever. As intense debate continues over the direction of Iran's nuclear program, Mousavian weighs the likely effects of military strikes, covert action, sanctions, and diplomatic engagement, considering their potential to resolve the nuclear crisis. Contents 1. The Origin and Development of Iran's Nuclear Program 2. The First Crisis 3. From Tehran to Paris 4. From the Paris Agreement to the 2005 Presidential Election 5. The Larijani Period 6. To the Security Council 7. Back to the Security Council and a New Domestic Situation 8. Iran Alone: The Jalili Period 9. U.S. Engagement 10. The Crisis Worsens 11. Conclusion

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans captive. Thus began the Iran Hostage Crisis, an affair that captivated the American public for 444 days and marked America's first confrontation with the forces of radical Islam. Using hundreds of recently declassified government documents, historian David Farber takes the first in-depth look at the hostage crisis, examining its lessons for America's contemporary War on Terrorism. Unlike other histories of the subject, Farber's vivid and fast-paced narrative looks beyond the day-to-day circumstances of the crisis, using the events leading up to the ordeal as a means for understanding it. The book paints a portrait of the 1970s in the United States as an era of failed expectations in a nation plagued by uncertainty and anxiety. It reveals an American government ill prepared for the fall of the Shah of Iran and unable to reckon with the Ayatollah Khomeini and his militant Islamic followers. Farber's account is filled with fresh insights regarding the central players in the crisis: Khomeini emerges as an astute strategist, single-mindedly dedicated to creating an Islamic state. The Americans' student-captors appear as less-than-organized youths, having prepared for only a symbolic sit-in with just a three-day supply of food. ABC news chief Roone Arledge, newly installed and eager for ratings, is cited as a critical catalyst in elevating the hostages to cause célèbre status. Throughout the book there emerge eerie parallels to the current terrorism crisis. Then as now, Farber demonstrates, politicians failed to grasp the depth of anger that Islamic fundamentalists harbored toward the United States, and Americans dismissed threats from terrorist groups as the crusades of ineffectual madmen. Taken Hostage is a timely and revealing history of America's first engagement with terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, one that provides a chilling reminder that the past is only prologue.

Illuminates the influence of the US in internal Iranian politics long before the 1953 coup by examining recently declassified CIA and US State Department documents.

"Updated with a brand-new chapter"--Cover.

I.B.Tauris in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation The decline and fall of Safavid Iran is traditionally seen as the natural outcome of the unrelieved political stagnation and moral degeneration which characterised late Safavid Iran. "Persia in Crisis" challenges this view. In this ground-breaking new book, Rudi Matthee revisits traditional sources and introduces new ones to take a fresh look at Safavid Iran in the century preceding the fall of Isfahan in 1722, which brought down the dynasty and ushered in a long period of turbulence in Iranian history. Inherently vulnerable because of the country's physical environment, its tribal makeup and a small economic base, the Safavid state was fatally weakened over the course of the seventeenth century. Matthee views Safavid Iran as a network of precarious alliances subject to perpetual negotiation and the society they ruled as an uneasy balance between conflicting forces. In the later seventeenth century this delicate balance shifted from cohesion to fragmentation. An increasingly detached, palace-bound shah; a weakening link between the capital and the outlying provinces; the regime's neglect of the military and its shortsighted monetary policies combined to exacerbate rather than redress existing problems, leaving the country with a ruler too feeble to hold factionalism and corruption in check and a military unable to defend its borders against outside attack by Ottomans and Afghans. The scene was set for the Crisis of 1722. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of Iranian history and the period that led to two hundred years of decline and eclipse for Iran.

Is Iran at a crossroads? The recent US - led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought new opportunities and dangers that could conceivably either herald a new rapprochement between Tehran and Washington or else bring a sharp detorioration that might perhaps spill over into confrontation. At home, profound demographic changes would seem to make far-reaching political changes appear inevitable in a country whose young population is alienated from the clerical elite that pulls the strings of power. This book looks at some of the causes of these domestic international tensions and considers some of the possible outcomes. In particular, it asks: Is Iran really on the way to developing nuclear weapons? What is the Iranian ‘Qods Force‘ doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? And why? What are Iran‘s connections with Middle East terror groups? Could Iran disintegrate if the current regime crumbles? How much of a threat to the regime do dissident organisations pose? The book explains the likely course of events in Iran and the region for both general readers and specialists.

Why did the CIA overthrow Iran's democratically elected government? And why has the United States treated Iran as one of its biggest enemies for four decades? Is the Trump administration’s “Maximum Pressure” campaign working, or will it precipitate a war with Iran? In The CIA Insider's Guide to Iran: from CIA Coup to the Brink of War, former CIA Officer John C. Kiriakou and investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter explain how and why the United States and Iran have been either at war or threatening such a war for most of the forty years since Islamic Republic of Iran was established. The authors delve below the surface explanations for the forty-year history of extreme U.S. hostility toward Iran to blow up one official U.S. narrative after another about Iran and U.S. policy. Against the background of Iran’s encounters with heavy-handed British and Russian imperialist control over its resources, this book shows how the U.S. began its encounter with Iran by clearly siding with British imperialism against Iranian aspirations for control over its oil in its 1953 overthrow of the Mossadegh government, then proceeded to actively support the Saddam Hussein regime’s horrific chemical war against Iran. The book shows how a parade of politically-motivated false narratives have taken U.S. Iran policy progressively farther from reality for three decades and have now brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. It explains how Donald Trump’s trashing of the nuclear deal with Iran and seeking to cut off Iran’s oil exports creates a very high risk of such a war, demanding major public debate about changing course. The CIA Insider's Guide to the Iran Crisis also includes appendices with key official documents on U.S. policy toward Iran, with particular emphasis on the major official statements of the Trump administration’s “Maximum Pressure” strategy.