Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confronta

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		Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confronta
		Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confronta

基本信息·出版社：St. Martin's Press
·页码：272 页
·出版日期：2007年10月
·ISBN：0312368259
·International Standard Book Number：0312368259
·条形码：9780312368258
·EAN：9780312368258
·版本：1st
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语

内容简介 With lucid analysis and engaging storytelling, USA Today senior diplomatic correspondent Barbara Slavin portrays the complex love-hate relationship between Iran and the United States. She takes into account deeply imbedded cultural habits and political goals to illuminate a struggle that promises to remain a headline story over the next decade. In this fascinating look, Slavin provides details of thwarted efforts at reconciliation under both the Clinton and Bush presidencies and opportunities rebuffed by the Bush administration in its belief that invading Iraq would somehow weaken Iran's Islamic government. Yet despite the dire situation in Iraq, the Bush administration appears to be building a case for confrontation with Iran based on the same three issues it used against Saddam Hussein's regime: weapons of mass destruction, support for terrorism, and repression of human rights. The U.S. charges Iran is supporting terrorists inside and outside Iraq and is repressing its own people who, in the words of U.S. officials, “deserve better.” Slavin believes the U.S. government may be suffering from the same lack of understanding and foresight that led it into prolonged warfare in Iraq.
 
One of the few reporters to interview Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as his two predecessors and scores of ordinary Iranians, Slavin gives insight into what the U.S. government may not be taking into account.  She portrays Iran as a country that both adores and fears America and has a deeply rooted sense of its own historical and regional importance. Despite government propaganda that portrays the U.S. as the "Great Satan," many Iranians have come to idolize staples of American pop culture while clinging to their own traditions. This is clearly not a relationship to be taken a face value. The interplay between the U.S. and Iran will only grow more complex as Iran moves toward becoming a nuclear power. Distrustful of each other's intentions yet longing at some level to reconcile, neither Tehran nor Washington know how this story will end.
作者简介 BARBARA SLAVIN is a senior diplomatic correspondent for USA Today. She lives in Washington, DC.
媒体推荐 Praise for Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies
 
"Rarely has a book been more necessary or more timely. Drawing on decades of experience in the Middle East, Barbara Slavin has produced a masterful study of today's Iran. From the dusty streets of Qum to the highest government offices, Slavin has used her finely honed reporter's instinct to gain access to every level of Iranian society. Often surprising, always accessible, it is an indispensible book for anyone concerned with the direction of United States foreign policy."-- Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of March
 
Praise for Barbara Slavin
 
“Barbara Slavin has had a unique opportunity to follow the difficult recent history of the United States and Iran and extraordinary access to high-level officials on both sides. She is a seasoned journalist and foreign policy expert whose insights about Iran should help Americans understand Iran and U.S. options for dealing with a fascinating, complicated, and crucial country.”—Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State
 
“Barbara Slavin is uniquely qualified to address in-depth and with insight a uniquely complex and significant challenge facing U.S. foreign policy.”  —Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor
 
 “I know Barbara Slavin as an accomplished, well-sourced journalist, who not only has a way with written words, but is equally eloquent when discussing foreign affairs during her frequent appearances on television.”—Caryle Murphy, Washington Post reporter and author of Passion for Islam
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly

The American-Iranian relationship has been fraught for years—indeed, for far longer than most Americans realize—USA Today diplomatic correspondent Slavin shows. Interweaving history with current events, she demonstrates how decades-old American perfidy continues to color Iranian expectations, much as the 1979 hostage crisis continues to affect Americans today. Without losing sight of the brutality with which the Islamic Republic was established—and is often maintained—Slavin skillfully presents its surprisingly multifaceted culture and political establishment, where mullahs are sometimes on the side of reform, and Western-minded businessmen might support systematic corruption and repression. The driving theme, however, is one of decades of missed opportunities, on both sides, to achieve rapprochement. Providing little-known details of the various contacts and arguments both between and within the American and Iranian leaderships, Slavin argues that the Bush administration badly misjudged Iran's leadership; by the time it offered to talk with Iran about its nuclear program, Iran had been so emboldened by other U.S. policies that it felt little pressure or inclination to accept. This articulate study helps clear the fog between two nations that have long and systematically demonized each other. (Oct.)
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文摘 Excerpt 
It was a gorgeous day for a demonstration. 
  The mild February air, unusually clear of smog, made the mood more like that of a picnic than a protest. Hundreds of people walked in long columns toward Tehran’s Freedom Square, where a towering, arched, white concrete monument erected by Iran’s deposed leader, the shah, commemorated twenty-five hundred years of Iran’s existence as a unified nation. Peddlers hawked candy and red balloons, while organizers from the government passed out anti-American posters and green headbands proclaiming Iran’s “obvious right” to nuclear energy. On the periphery of the square, buses disgorged workers from factories and students from local schools who had been given the day off but were obliged to spend half of it at the demonstration.
An annual ritual for more than two decades, Revolution Day (February 11) is the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Fourth of July, marking the fall of the shah’s last government. But instead of the fireworks most Americans look forward to on that holiday, Iranians are accustomed to verbal pyrotechnics: slogans burned into their brains since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the beetle-browed leader of the revolution, returned to Iran from exile on February 1, 1979. “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” are perennial favorites, with calls to bring down some other government occasionally added for variety. On this particular holiday there was a new attraction: a new president, a blacksmith’s son named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Clad in his customary antielitist attire (a cheap black sports coat over a black shirt, beige sweater vest, and gray pants), Ahmadinejad delivered an hourlong harangue about Iran’s mistreatment by the United States.
A small man on a large stage, he sought to benefit from a confluence of events: the twenty-seventh anniversary of the downfall o
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