Synopses & Reviews
When Christopher de Bellaigue first visited Iran in 1999, he found it irresistably alive: under the leadership of President Mohammad Khatami, Islamic revolutionary rule was loosening and the prospects for democratic pluralism seemed bright. But over the remaining six years of Khatami's presidency, de Bellaigue watched as the conservative religious establishment reasserted its power and the hopes of reform slowly died. The country seemed to turn its back on all that Khatami stood for when it elected an unsophisticated Islamist ideologue, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to succeed him in 2005.
As the optimism of the reform movement was fading, international tensions over Iran's nuclear program were rising. George W. Bush included Iran in the "axis of evil," depicting it as a malign theocracy determined to acquire nuclear weapons and threaten Israel. Yet de Bellaigue's accounts of the nuclear negotiations make clear that the West's opposition to Iranian nuclear ambitions has helped both to empower those who oppose democratic reform and perhaps even to convince Iran it needs nuclear weapons for self-defense.
Beyond the high political drama, de Bellaigue, a long-term resident of Tehran and a fluent Persian speaker, gives a sense of the complexities of Iranian culture and society through striking portraits of Iranians going about their daily lives—reading the poetry of Rumi, looking at modern art, making films under the threat of censorship, trying to get by despite domestic turmoil and military threats. His keen analyses of Iran's politics and its people offer fascinating insights into a often misunderstood nation that poses some of the most challenging problems facing the world today.
Synopsis
Who rules Iran, and how secure is their grip on a young and restless society? How should the world respond to allegations that the Islamic Republic is building nuclear weapons and supporting terrorists?
Christopher de Bellaigue traces Iran’ s political upheavals since the early 1990s, from the failures of the reformist efforts led by former President Mohammad Khatami to the election of the hard-line Islamist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as the ongoing role of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Bellaigue pays particular attention to the motivations behind Iran’ s nuclear program, the likelihood that the West will succeed in halting it, and how Iranians might respond to a US military strike. He also portrays the complexities of Iranian society and the prospects for liberalization and democratization as a nation composed predominantly of young people confronts the restrictions of Islamic rule and the lure of the West.
Beyond the headlines, Bellaigue explores Iran’ s art and literature. He learns why the thirteenth-century mystical poet Rumi still matters so much to Iranians. And he writes of both the art of ancient Persia and the paradoxes of an exhibition of modern art in Tehran.
Bellaigue’ s shrewd political analysis and insightful reporting are an essential guide to a nation that is certain to be in the headlines for some time to come.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
2. The Struggle for Iran
3. Who Rules Iran?
4. The Loneliness of the Supreme Leader
5. Big Deal in Iran
6. Stalled in Iran
7. Bush, Iran, and the Bomb
8. New Man in Iran
9. Lifting the Veil (on modern art in Tehran)
10. The PersianDifference (on ancient Persian art)
11. Studying Rumi
12. Iran and the Bomb
13. Waiting for War in Tehran
14. New Essay TK
About the Author
Christopher de Bellaigue was born in London in 1971 and has worked as a journalist in the Middle East and South Asia since 1994. His first book, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literatures Ondaatje Prize. He lives in Tehran with his wife and two children.