Exploring continuities and changes, this book provides the historical backdrop crucial to understanding how Iranian pride and sense of victimization combine to make its politics contentious and potentially dangerous. From the struggle between the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini to the current tension between the reformers and traditionalists, a central issue in Iranian domestic politics has long been its place in the world and relations with the West.
Praise for Eternal Iran
"An essential guide to a country, and a foreign policy problem, that we ignore at our peril." --National Review
"Eternal Iran is a sophisticated and subtle book, a seamless narrative of Iranian history and contemporary politics. A book of careful scholarship, yet accessible to a wide readership. One of the best accounts of recent years on that important and problematic country." --Fouad Ajami, Author of The Dream Palace of the Arabs