Download Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs AudioBook Free
For over a quarter hundred years, Iran has been one of America's main nemeses. Since Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979, the partnership between the two countries has been antagonistic: innovative guards chanting against the fantastic Satan, Bush fulminating against the Axis of Bad, Iranian support for Hezbollah, and President Ahmadinejad blaming the U.S. for the world's ills. The unending warfare of words suggests an intractable separate between Iran and the Western, one that might easily lead to a taking war in the near future. But as Ray Takeyh shows in this accessible and authoritative record of Iran's relations with the planet since the trend, behind the famous personalities and extremist slogans is a country that is a lot more pragmatic - and complicated - than many in the Western have been resulted in believe. Takeyh explodes many of our simplistic common myths of Iran as an intransigently Islamist foe of the Western. Tracing the span of Iranian policy because the 1979 trend, Takeyh identifies four distinct intervals: The brand new period of the 1980s, the tempered gradualism following a fatality of Khomeini and the finish of the Iran-Iraq warfare in 1989, the "reformist" period from 1997-2005 under President Khatami, and the switch toward confrontation and radicalism because the election of President Ahmadinejad in 2005. Takeyh demonstrates three powerful makes - Islamism, pragmatism, and great vitality pretensions - have competed in each of these periods, and that Iran's often paradoxical guidelines are the truth is some compromises between the hardliners and the moderates, often with untamed oscillations between pragmatism and ideological dogmatism. The U.S.'s job, Takeyh argues, is to find strategies that address Iran's objectionable habit without demonizing this key player in an increasingly essential and volatile region. Using its clear-sighted understanding of both nuance and historical sweep, Guardians of the Trend will stand as the typical work on this controversial - and central - actor in world politics for a long time to come.
