Unthinkable (64 page)

I also wanted to offer a word of thanks to Christal Shrader, formerly my assistant as director of the Saban Center and now the center's office manager. All organizations are imperfect, even Brookings. What makes their imperfections bearable are certain special people. Christal Shrader is one of those. I was blessed to have had her help when I served as director. She is so smart, so able, so professional but also so caring, so thoughtful, and so considerate that she made what was an extremely difficult situation—as I tried simultaneously to write this book and run the Saban Center—more than bearable. I always knew that Christal would handle whatever came at us. I always knew that she would do it better than I needed it (or often than I could have imagined it). I knew she always had my back. And she always did it with grace and kindness and humor, even through times of great sadness of her own. I could not have asked for more from a colleague or a friend. Christal has more than my gratitude; she has my affection and my admiration.

This book is the first that I wrote with Simon & Schuster, but the third with Jon Karp, now the president and publisher of the Simon & Schuster Group. In my home, on the holidays, we always say a special prayer of thanks for Jon. Anything I know about writing and publishing books is courtesy of Jon and I have been thrilled to be working with him again. As always, Jon was incredibly good to me, and this time one of the best things he did for me was to pair me with Ben Loehnen as an editor. In this day it is rare to find an editor willing to take the time to really work over a book to make it better. I find this disheartening because I like having my work edited by a good editor. Ben has been the answer to my prayers. He hacked apart the manuscript, chopped off all kinds of unnecessary pieces, and put it back together, paragraph by paragraph, better than it was before. It was such a pleasure to read how he had reworked my text. That is a rare compliment, and the highest I can pay to any editor. But Ben deserves it, along with my deepest thanks.

In addition to Jon and Ben, there are a number of other folks at Simon & Schuster I would like to thank for their work and assistance. Brit Hvide took care of everything I needed, and did so cheerily and efficiently. Thanks to Marie Kent
and Leah Johanson for their wonderful publicity and marketing efforts, to Lisa Erwin, Lisa Healy, and Ruth Lee-Mui for overseeing the production managing, production editing, and design, and to Tom Pitoniak for his expert copyediting.

I also wanted to express my thanks to Dave and Lydia (who must remain last-nameless) of the CIA's publications review board, who shepherded the manuscript through both the CIA and NSC bureaucracies to have it cleared for publication. As part of my obligations to both of my former employers, I am required to note that all statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the CIA or any other U.S. government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. government authentication of information or agency endorsement of the author's views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

In penultimate place, I wanted to say just a word about Barry Posen and Steve Van Evera, the two men to whom this book is dedicated. Barry and Steve were my professors and mentors in the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the chairman and second chair of my doctoral thesis committee, respectively. They are also remarkable thinkers, two of the finest analytic minds I have ever known. Few people have ever taught me more, and they did so at a time when I really did not think I had that much left to learn. Although I see them too infrequently, there is not a day that goes by that I do not remember their wisdom and benefit from it. I could not be more grateful to them for the time and attention they lavished on me.

Last, but never least, comes my family. In particular, my amazing wife, Andrea, and my adorable son, Aidan. They are the lights of my life. My reasons for waking up in the morning and what I give thanks for every night before I go to sleep. As always, this book was a burden they carried as well. I am so grateful to them for their love, support, and tolerance. I could not do it without them.

© PAUL MORIGI

Kenneth M. Pollack
is a wellknown expert on the Middle East and Persian Gulf and has appeared frequently on
The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Charlie Rose,
C-SPAN, and NPR. He is currently a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Dr. Pollack earned his BA from Yale and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of many other books on the political, military, and economic affairs of the Middle East, including the bestsellers
The Threatening Storm
and
The Persian Puzzle
.

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

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A Switch in Time:

A New Strategy for America in Iraq

Things Fall Apart:

Containing the Spillover from an Iraqi Civil War

Which Path to Persia:

Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran

A Path Out of the Desert:

A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East

Unfinished Business:

A New American Strategy for Iraq Moving Forward

1.
 For those looking for a history of the U.S.-Iran relationship, I will recommend three books. First, there is my own book,
The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America
(New York: Random House, 2004), which tries to present a balanced perspective on the U.S.-Iran relationship up through 2004. Ali Ansari's
Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East
(Cambridge, Mass.: Basic Books, 2006), tells the same story from an Iranian perspective. Finally, the most recent book on the subject is David Crist's
The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran
(New York: Penguin Press, 2012). Crist's book tends to focus on the military rather than the political and economic aspects of the relationship, and is largely presented from the American perspective, but it is well done and brings the story up to 2012.

2.
 Herman Kahn,
Thinking About the Unthinkable
(New York: Horizon Press, 1962).

1.
 Hooman Majd,
The Ayatollah's Democracy: An Iranian Challenge
(New York: Norton, 2010), p. 45.

2.
 John L. Esposito, ed., “Taqiyah,”
Oxford Dictionary of Islam
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

3.
 Shahram Chubin, “Extended Deterrence and Iran,”
Strategic Insights
8, No. 5 (December 2009).

4.
 For two superb books that delve deeply into the impact of Persian culture on Iranian foreign politics, see Graham E. Fuller,
“The Center of the Universe”: The Geopolitics of Iran
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991); and Nikki R. Keddie and Rudi Matthee, eds.,
Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002).

5.
 Rouhollah K. Ramazani, “Iran's Foreign Policy: Contending Orientations,” in Rouhollah K. Ramazani, ed.,
Iran's Revolution: The Search for Consensus
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 59.

6.
 Among other sources, see Geneive Abdo, “Iran's Internal Struggles,” in Patrick Clawson and Henry Sokolski, eds.,
Checking Iran's Nuclear Ambitions
(Carlisle, Pa.: U.S. Army War College, 2004), pp. 39–60; Wilfried Buchta,
Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic
(Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000); Hossein S. Seifzadeh, “The Landscape of Factional Politics and Its Future in Iran,”
Middle East Journal
57, No. 1 (Winter 2003): 57–75.

7.
 On the political influence of the Revolutionary Guard, see Ali Alfoneh, “The Revolutionary Guards' Role in Iranian Politics,”
Middle East Quarterly
15, No. 4 (Fall 2008): 3–14; Emanuele Ottolenghi,
The Pasdaran: Inside Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(Washington, D.C.: Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, 2011); Kenneth Katzman,
The Warriors of Islam: Iran's Revolutionary Guard
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993); Frederic Wehrey, Jerrold D. Green, Brian Nichiporuk, Alireza Nader, Lydia Hansell, Rasool Nafisi, and S. R. Bohandy, “The Rise of the Pasdaran: Assessing the Domestic Roles of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” RAND Corporation, 2009, available at
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG821.pdf
.

8.
 Karim Sadjadpour, “Reading Khamenei: The World View of Iran's Most Powerful Leader,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2008, esp. pp. 4–8, 14–21.

9.
 Of course, since 2010 increasingly severe international and multilateral sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy, inflicting real hardship on the Iranian people—albeit not to the same extent as the suffering of the Iran-Iraq War.

10.
 For the most recent and insightful accounts of Iran's decision-making to end the Iran-Iraq War, see James G. Blight, Janet M. Lang, Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, and John Tirman,
Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979
–1
988
(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), pp. 195–226;
and Ray Takeyh,
Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 101–107.

11.
 Karim Sadjadpour, “The Nuclear Players,”
Journal of International Affairs
60, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2007): 127.

12.
 Takeyh,
Guardians of the Revolution
, pp. 240–41.

13.
 Ottolenghi,
The Pasdaran
, pp. 15–27; Wehrey et al., “The Rise of the Pasdaran,” esp. pp. 8–18, 35–43, 81–88.

14.
 Sadjadpour, “Reading Khamenei,” p. 9.

15.
 See for instance, Ali Akbar Dareini, “Iran President Backs Down in Political Clashes,” Associated Press, November 2, 2012.

16.
 Ali M. Ansari, “Iran Under Ahmadinejad,” in Amin Tarzi, ed.,
The Iranian Puzzle Piece
(Quantico, Va.: Marine Corps University Press, 2009), p. 13.

17.
 Sadjadpour, “Reading Khamenei,” pp. 11–12; Sadjadpour, “The Nuclear Players,” esp. p. 126.

18.
 Mohsen Milani, “Tehran's Take: Understanding Iran's U.S. Policy,”
Foreign Affairs
88, No. 4 (July/August 2009): 48–49.