Does Obama understand Iran?
04/19/09 7:52 PM
Very few reasonable people doubt President Barack Obama’s intellectual capacity, but some worry that he is not the sort to seek out information that challenges his long-held views. One of those views is that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a nation that the United States can engage in serious, sustained and ultimately fruitful negotiations over a variety of issues, including the mullahs’ nuclear ambitions. Even if the new president is absolutely convinced of his ability to achieve what no president since Carter has been able to do — though each of them, including both 41 and 43, tried — he ought still to spend some time with two books and a movie that communicate the opposite view.
The first book is a serious and riveting read by a dedicated journalist who is no doubt very high on the hit list of the Iranian theocracy, which has long used foreign assassinations of exiles as a tool of state policy.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor of the largest newspaper in Iran prior to the Khomeinist revolution. As a prolific writer throughout his exile, he has contributed important stories and analyses to the world’s most influential newspapers and published highly regarded books on Iran and the West.
Now Taheri has written his most important book, “The Persian Night,” which is a one-volume history of the tragedy of Iran that began with the return of Ayatollah Khomeini into the country in 1979. Aware that most of the West does not possess even a simplistic understanding of Persian history, the conquest of Iran by Islam or the nature of Khomeinist ideology, Taheri carefully recounts the fascinating history of the country and in so doing provides a comprehensive introduction to the Sunni-Shia schism and the development of Islam inside Iran in the centuries leading up to the convulsions of 1978 and 1979. Then in chilling detail, Taheri provides a vivid and detailed portrait of the regime and its deeply malign intentions toward the West as well as its fantastically repressive control over the people of Iran.
No fair reader can complete “The Persian Night” and think of Iran as just another regime that the world’s only superpower must manage with benevolent care. Those who worry that Iran is in fact the first “suicide nation” will find little comfort in Taheri’s book. Indeed, Taheri’s impressive work conveys that Iran is more a cult with borders than a country with a radical government.
For those who simply refuse to read history or any sort of nonfiction, National Review Editor Rich Lowry’s excellent new thriller, “Banquo’s Ghosts,” is an easy way to at least begin to grasp the realities of Iranian enmity toward America and the dire consequences of a successful lurch by Iran to nuclear status. The book is a great page-turner that promises Lowry and his co-author, Keith Korman, will be back with sequels a la Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp blockbusters, and the merit of the novel, far beyond its real entertainment value, is like that found in Flynn’s works or those of Daniel Silva or Alex Bereson: Their stories all convey important truths about the world we live in through plots that draw deeply from the realities of the world around us.
In the case of “Banquo’s Ghosts,” the reality is not just in the portraits of bureaucratic incompetents in America’s intelligence agencies or of the occasional hypercompetent espionage operative — the former all too true, the latter, sadly, too good to be true — but far more importantly in the message that Iran’s radical elites are irrevocably committed to a real war against America. The novel drives home truths about the fanaticism of Iran’s ruling elite in the same way that John le Carre and Len Deighton educated a generation of Americans about the Soviets’ operations and operatives.
If the president lacks the time to read either Taheri’s or Lowry’s/Korman’s books, then perhaps his staff will arrange for a White House screening of “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” a movie that won’t open until June, but which will leave a mark on the mullahs if it gets the attention it deserves. The buzz surrounding “The Stoning of Soraya M.” hints at a film that will define for many why Iran is not a potential “partner” with any of the West’s leaders, except for those guided only by potential profits.
It requires even more than willful blindness to refuse to see the nature of Iranian fascism and the threat it poses to the world. It requires an ideology so powerful that it cripples all the senses and not just the eyes. The storm has been gathering in Iran for three decades. Now on the eve of the moment when Iran moves from category of “malevolent menace” to “malevolent nuclear menace,” the opportunities to understand the threat are many and easily available. Let’s hope Obama exercises his real ability to learn to arrive at the truth about Iran.
As Michael Ledeen would and often does say: “Faster, please.”
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
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