By Kenneth M. Pollack
In his hugely influential e-book The Threatening Storm, bestselling writer Kenneth Pollack either educated and outlined the nationwide debate approximately Iraq. Now, in The Persian Puzzle, released to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Iran hostage trouble, he examines the behind-the-scenes tale of the tumultuous courting among Iran and the U.S., and weighs thoughts for the future.
Here Pollack, a former CIA analyst and nationwide safety Council reliable, brings his willing research and insider point of view to the lengthy and ongoing conflict among the USA and Iran, starting with the autumn of the shah and the seizure of the yank embassy in Tehran in 1979. Pollack examines the entire significant occasions in U.S.-Iran relations–including the hostage situation, the U.S. tilt towards Iraq in the course of the Iran-Iraq battle, the Iran-Contra scandal, American-Iranian army tensions in 1987 and 1988, the covert Iranian battle opposed to U.S. pursuits within the Persian Gulf that culminated within the 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist assault in Saudi Arabia, and up to date U.S.-Iran skirmishes over Afghanistan and Iraq.
He explains the concepts and reasons from American and Iranian views and tells how every one drawback coloured the contemplating either nations’ management as they formed and reshaped their guidelines over the years. Pollack additionally describes efforts by way of moderates of varied stripes to attempt to discover a way earlier animosities to create a brand new dynamic in Iranian-American family, basically to discover that after one aspect was once prepared for this kind of step, the opposite facet fell short.
With balanced tone and perception, Pollack explains how the us and Iran reached this deadlock; why this courting is necessary to nearby, international, and U.S. pursuits; and what simple political offerings can be found as we take care of this crucial yet deeply bothered country.
From the Hardcover edition.
Read or Download The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America PDF
Similar intelligence & espionage books
Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack
White condo speechwriter Marc Thiessen used to be locked in a safe room and given entry to the main delicate intelligence whilst he was once tasked to put in writing President George W. Bush’s 2006 speech explaining the CIA’s interrogation software and why Congress should still authorize it. Few understand extra approximately those CIA operations than Thiessen, and in his new ebook, relationship catastrophe, he files simply how potent the CIA’s interrogations have been in foiling assaults on the United States, penetrating al-Qaeda’s excessive command, and supplying our army with actionable intelligence.
The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan
On a moonless evening simply weeks after September eleven, 2001, U. S. certain Forces staff ODA 574 infiltrates the mountains of southern Afghanistan with a likely most unlikely undertaking: to foment a tribal riot and strength the Taliban to give up. Armed completely with the apparatus they could keep on their backs, shockingly scant intelligence, and their mastery of guerrilla battle, Captain Jason Amerine and his males don't have any selection yet to belief their in basic terms best friend, a little-known Pashtun statesman named Hamid Karzai who has back from exile and is being hunted via the Taliban as he travels the geographical region elevating a defense force.
Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole in FDR's White House Triggered Pearl Harbor
Lately declassified proof and never-before-translated records inform the true tale of the day that FDR memorably declared could stay in infamy, exploring how Joseph Stalin and the KGB used an unlimited community of double brokers and communist sympathizers—most significantly Harry Dexter White—to lead Japan into struggle opposed to the USA, providing Soviet involvement in the back of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Intelligence and Intelligence Analysis
This e-book tracks put up Sept. 11 advancements in nationwide safeguard and policing intelligence and their relevance to new rising components of intelligence perform akin to: corrections, biosecurity, inner most and regulatory environments. advancements are explored thematically throughout 3 vast sections: utilizing intelligence realizing buildings constructing a self-discipline.
Additional resources for The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America
Sample text
It was based in his strategic assessment that a Japanese military move through the South China Sea against British and Dutch territories would immediately be threatened by a westward surge of the American fleet—past Midway Island and Guam and on through the Japanese-mandated islands in Micronesia to the Philippines. S. 2 At that time the plan for the American Asiatic Fleet was also changed from a defense of the Philippines to a retreat from the region at the onset of any Japanese attack. As of January 1941, Yamamoto’s strategic understanding of America’s war plan was outdated—but that had little impact on his continued planning to significantly weaken America’s Pacific Fleet before it could move west.
For our purposes it is most important to evaluate both attacks in the strictly military issues of command, control and communications—referred to in contemporary military terminology as C3. Command and control in Hawaii and the Philippines appears to have failed on two levels. The first level of failure was based in a series of operational disconnects within the local commands themselves; the second failure was created by a massive gap between local command execution and headquarters command expectations.
11 A September 1941 practice exercise of the air warning system resulted in the total failure of the air defense, validating Brereton’s concerns. Even with general warning of an incoming air attack exercise, the ground-controlled intercept network totally failed to put fighters in contact with a simulated attack on the major American air base at Clark Field. The failure exposed the fact that even with radar detection, extensive practice between ground controllers and interceptor pilots is necessary to bring about successful interceptions—especially when the radar does not have a height-finding capability as the early units did not.