Warrior or Hidden Iran

Warrior: An Autobiography

Author: Ariel Sharon

Israel's newest prime minister as of February 6, 2001, Ariel Sharon is a dynamic and controversial leader. A hero in Israel's wars, perhaps the most daring and successful commander in Israel's extraordinary military history, Sharon has always been a warrior, whether the enemies were hostile Arab nations, terrorists, Time magazine, or rival politicians. The public man is well known -- aggressive in battle, hard-line in politics -- but the private man has always been obscured by Sharon's dazzling career and powerful personality. In this compelling and dramatic auto-biography, the real Sharon appears for the first time: a complex man, a loving father, a figure of courage and compassion. He is a warrior who commands the respect and love of his troops, a visionary, and an uncompromising, ruthless pragmatist.

Sharon tells his story with frankness, power, intelligence, and a brilliant gift for detail. Always controversial, he is as outspoken as his friends -- and enemies -- would expect him to be.

Read also Torture Papers or Citizen and Subject

Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic

Author: Ray Takeyh

A leading expert explains why we fail to understand Iran and offers a new strategy for redefining this crucial relationship

For more than a quarter of a century, few countries have been as resistant to American influence or understanding as Iran. The United States and Iran have long eyed each other with suspicion, all too eager to jump to conclusions and slam the door. What gets lost along the way is a sense of what is actually happening inside Iran and why it matters. With a new hard-line Iranian president making incendiary pronouncements and pressing for nuclear developments, the consequences of not understanding Iran have never been higher.

Ray Takeyh, a leading expert on Iran’s politics and history, has written a groundbreaking book that demystifies the Iranian regime and shows how the fault lines of Iran’s domestic politics serve to explain its behavior. In Hidden Iran, he explains why this country has so often confounded American expectations and why its outward hostility does not necessarily preclude the normalization of relations. Through a clearer understanding of the competing claims of Muslim theology, republican pragmatism, and factional competition, he offers a new paradigm for managing our relations with this rising power.

Publishers Weekly

In this well-constructed sketch of American-Iranian relations, Takeyh (senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations) critiques the U.S.'s unnuanced approach to Iran since its 1979 revolution as well as the failure of successive administrations to note that decades of sanctions and containment haven't significantly changed Iranian behavior. A picture emerges of a complex society marked by cultural struggle and compromise, as Takeyh criticizes the perception of Iranian politics as monolithic. He concludes that the "chimera of regime change" must finally be rejected, and pointedly observes that "it is rare... for a state that views nuclear weapons as fundamental to its security interests to dispense with such weapons under relentless threats." Takeyh urges America to look beyond President Ahmadinejad to such institutions as Iran's powerful Supreme National Security Council and Foreign Ministry, each of which distanced themselves from Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel rhetoric. Takeyh even suggests areas in which Iran and the U.S. might forge a "selective partnership"-not least their shared need for a stable Iraq. Though he occasionally slips into a too-casual assumption of the inevitability of his forecasts, Takeyh (The Receding Shadow of the Prophet) provides a well-argued, seldom heard viewpoint. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Think Iraq is a mess? Wait until the neocons get to Iran, warns Council on Foreign Relations fellow Takeyh. Getting Iran wrong is the single thread that has linked American administrations of all political persuasion, writes the author. In some instances, getting Iran wrong has involved overestimating its people's willingness to endure oppression, as with the hated Pahlavi dynasty, which fell in 1979. In other instances, it has involved overestimating the power of religious orthodoxy-and misreading the very nature of the Iranian theocracy. In the case of the Bush administration and its think-tankers, misreadings are tinged with ideological certainty that Iran is indeed a member of the league of rogue nations: Thus, former CIA director James Woolsey deems Iran the "central antagonist" in World War IV ("the third evidently being the Cold War," Takeyh glosses), while Iraq war architect Richard Perle urges the overthrow of "that miserable government." Takeyh argues that Iran seeks only to be regionally influential, though it has an unfortunate habit of projecting its power via terrorist proxies, as with Hezbollah in Lebanon and various Shiite factions in Iraq. All that aside, Iran is best understood as a nation in search of itself, one in which Islamic ideology, factional politics (including reformist, democratic organizations) and pragmatic national interests are in constant struggle. Even if the 2005 presidential election seemed to secure the ascendancy of conservative power, opposition politics is very much alive. It does no good, Takeyh urges, to isolate Iran; the specter of an "impudent American president castigating Iran as part of an 'axis of evil,' or denigrating its political processby proclaiming its elections a fraud even before they take place, only provides ammunition to hard-liners decrying Iran's democrats as unwitting agents of Western machinations."Think of Iran as China, Takeyh concludes in this useful essay, a nation with whom it is possible to compete and cooperate at once. We'll see. Agent: Larry Weissman/Larry Weissman, LLC