Iran: The Untold Story

A belief that Iran really is determined to acquire nuclear weapons makes a prime consideration in negotiating an agreement with Tehran the erecting of barriers, through the dismantling of Iranian capabilities, to frustrate any Iranian attempt to build such weapons. Such a belief did come to dominate, explicitly or implicitly, much American discussion of a deal with Tehran, as reflected in a narrow focus on what would be needed to prevent Iran from "breaking out" from an agreement and racing to build a bomb.

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If that belief is incorrect, however, a different approach is called for: The book is an admirably thorough treatment of the context of Iran's nuclear program and how that program has been perceived, depicted, treated, exploited, and responded to by policymakers in the United States and Israel, international diplomats, and the press.

One of the book's two main contributions is as an overall history of the understanding, or misunderstanding, of the Iranian program. It addresses each of the elements, mentioned above, that have contributed to the conventional wisdom about Iranian objectives concerning nuclear weapons. The book also adds other useful background to understanding current issues about the program.

An early chapter, for example, explains how U. The book's other contribution, as implied by its title, is to debunk the conventional wisdom that Iran is set on getting nuclear weapons. Porter examines nearly everything that needs to be examined in assessing that widespread but mistaken belief.

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His examination of individual pieces of evidence — the documents or observations that have been invoked as support for the belief — often goes into minute detail. This gives much of the book a down-in-the-weeds quality, but Porter's analysis of such minutiae is generally convincing. For the most part Porter apportions his attention to where it ought to be directed to tell this story.

This means a lot of attention to — besides the strategy of the Israeli government — the activities of the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA , which has necessarily been at the center of this issue. Several major contributions to the mistaken conventional wisdom have involved the work of the IAEA. One has been the belief that Iran has been in violation of obligations to the IAEA, when in fact the violations, since corrected, have been on bookkeeping matters that were no more serious than those of several other members states that never had their files referred to the United Nations Security Council.

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Another is the belief that Iran failed to declare the existence of a major facility such as the enrichment plant at Natanz, whereas Iran actually conformed to the agency's rules of when such facilities need to be announced. Porter examines this part of the story in much detail and makes a persuasive case that the principal documents involved, which have been the focus of much IAEA attention and repeated demands on the Iranians for explanations, are bogus.

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There also has been a widespread belief that Iran has refused to provide answers to IAEA questions about some activities at military bases, even though it has responded to the questions and even allowed IAEA inspectors to visit. The press shares as much responsibility as the agency for fostering public misperceptions about this. Porter probably is being fair, however, when he accuses the IAEA of not conveying the full flavor of Iranian responses, making renewed demands for access to non-nuclear military facilities that it knows the Iranians would not accept, and then pointing to Iranian refusals as evidence of an overall unwillingness to cooperate.

Porter's critical examination of this entire story would stand up well if it stopped there. Unfortunately he tries to argue, much less convincingly, that biases against Iran go even farther than that. He essentially says that almost the entire U. His contention is that this threat is hyped as part of an effort to hype weapons proliferation generally, and that the U.

The accusation denies the entire importance of weapons proliferation, whether involving Iran or anyone else, as a legitimate national security concern. It also does not explain why a government component would deliberately try to be wrong when being shown later to have been wrong on such an issue would be one of the biggest setbacks and embarrassments it could experience. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. The Sphinx and the Commissar: Cutting the Lion's Tail: Suez Through Egyptian Eyes.

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There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Iran had always fascinated me, and this book only adds to the intrigue.

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It is a fascinating case of how dictators in this case the Shah are an interesting mix of ignorant, cruel, coward, confused, appeasing and corrupt. Also, a good case of how people in their desperation to get away from one evil don't think twice about accepting the other evil. I have seen several of Shah's family in exile on TV imploring their case to "serve their country". While I used to feel sympathy for them earlier, this book helped me understand why millions turned against their tyrannical rule. The author claims that the Shah defrauded the State exchequer worth hundreds of millions of dollars by forcing banks to give him and his family huge loans which remained unpaid , by running virtually all major corporations of Iran as personal business, and foolishly thinking of taking Iran back to its past glory.

I would have liked a little more info on the Iran-Iraq war, but found it interesting to note that it was started by Shah's foolishness in dismissing Saddam, as incapable of taking him on. Since this book was written only after 3 years of the Shah's departure, the author tends to have deep bias against him, and even some sympathy for the Islamicists led by Khomeini.

It would be interesting to come across a book on Iran where there is a comparison between Shah's rule and the Islamic rule.

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However, it is a great starting point to learn the modern history of a country with tremendous potential to be a world leader. Although this book is now nearly thirty years old, I enjoyed reading it as a thorough study of Iranian politics from to , covering the reign of the Shah and the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. Although the book has its problems, I still recommend it to anyone with an interest in the Revolution.

It is accessible to the casual reader, although some background in the Middle East will certainly help. The cover other than having perhaps the ugliest design I've seen in a while has three serious misrepresentatons.

The book represents itself as "An Insider's Account of America's Iranian Revolution," but Heikal is an Egyptian journalist, and not an insider in any meaningful sense of the word. The book is not really about America's Iranian adventure the author never explains what "America's adventure" even means , but about the Iranian revolution.

Certainly America played a role in that Revolution, but as a supporting actor at most. Finally, the subtitle, "The Untold Story," isn't really true, and wasn't when the book was published in The story begins with the hostage crisis, then jumps back to British and Russian meddling during World War I and beyond to give the historical background.