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Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States | 
 enlarge | Author: Trita Parsi
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
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Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 105077
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0300120575
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.5694055
EAN: 9780300120578
ASIN: 0300120575
Publication Date: October 1, 2007
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Product Description
In this era of superheated rhetoric and vitriolic exchanges between the leaders of Iran and Israel, the threat of nuclear violence looms. But the real roots of the enmity between the two nations mystify Washington policymakers, and no promising pathways to peace have emerged. This book traces the shifting relations among Israel, Iran, and the United States from 1948 to the present, uncovering for the first time the details of secret alliances, treacherous acts, and unsavory political maneuverings that have undermined Middle Eastern stability and disrupted U.S. foreign policy initiatives in the region. Trita Parsi, a U.S. foreign policy expert with more than a decade of experience, is the only writer who has had access to senior American, Iranian, and Israeli decision makers. He dissects the complicated triangular relations of their countries, arguing that America’s hope for stability in Iraq and for peace in Israel is futile without a correct understanding of the Israeli-Iranian rivalry. Parsi’s behind-the-scenes revelations about Middle East events will surprise even the most knowledgeable readers: Iran’s prime minister asks Israel to assassinate Khomeini, Israel reaches out to Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War, the United States foils Iran’s plan to withdraw support from Hamas and Hezbollah, and more. This book not only revises our understanding of the Middle East’s recent past, it also spells out a course for the future. In today’s belligerent world, few topics, if any, could be more important.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Outstanding Book By America's Brightest Emerging Scholar August 29, 2007
Clayton E. Swisher (Washington DC)
84 out of 97 found this review helpful
Based on exclusive interviews, new information, and gritty investigative work, Trita Parsi's book provides the evidence anyone on President George W. Bush's team should look at to rationally understand why confrontation between the US and Iran is NOT inevitable.
This masterpiece demonstrates fresh analysis and keeps up with Dr. Parsi's proven credibility here in Washington for objectively and (at times) unconventionally calling out developments in the US-Iranian relationship, regardless of which neoconservatives or pro-war hawks might cringe.
Treacherous Alliance is tightly written and readable for all levels of the public who are moderately informed and interested in foreign policy. Academics will mine through the numerous exclusive quotes provided and timeless high-level quotes obtained, as well as the many pages of footnotes (and even leaked documents!) for those looking to do spinoff research and analysis.
At a time when drumbeats by DC policy dead-enders persist for a new military confrontation with Iran, finally a credible, air-tight book arrives to preempt their arguments for the next global disaster.
For those who don't read Dr. Parsi's book, fortunately the major American and international news outlets, including CNN, BBC, and al-Jazeera are on to him and host him as a frequent guest expert.
This book deserves a Pulitzer.
insight into one of the most mis-understood international relationships September 26, 2007
Babaktalebi (McLean, Virginia)
39 out of 46 found this review helpful
Unlike the first reviewer who obviously didn't even skim the book, I would attest that this revealing and insightful book is brimming with historical facts, anecdotes, and analysis that simply can not be found elsewhere. (The author interviewed dozens of high-ranking Israeli, American, and Iranian officials inside Israel and Iran - the analysis never comes across as conjecture)
The basic premise of the book, based on over 130 first-hand interviews with the highest ranking officials in all three countries, is that the basic geo-political and national interest concerns of Iran and Israel have guided their foreign policy from one of convergence to divergence.
It further paints a clear picture of why the conventional wisdom regarding the dominance of an ideological driving force in their bilateral dealings is a false one - and shows how it can and has lead to miscalculations in the United States' foreign policy in the region.
The book is also a very easy read for those unfamiliar with the intricacies of international relations yet manages to provide a ton of new facts and anecdotes for even the most ardent student of modern middle eastern political history.
I highly recommend this book to any and all who are curious about Iran and Israel's role in the middle east over the next few decades, particularly with the heightened tensions that seem to point to a military conflict in the near term.
 An excellent and timely book October 7, 2007
F. Alizadeh (New York, NY USA)
36 out of 38 found this review helpful
Trita Parsi has written a compelling book, cutting thorough ideological and political propaganda emanating from the three countries he has focused on (US, Israel, and Iran), and going right through the core issues involving geopolitical and regional hegemony aspirations of the three governments. What is fascinating is that Parsi reveals that such political calculations transcend the particular ideology of the governments in these three countries. Whether it is Likud or Labor in Israel, Democrats or Republicans in the US, or The former Shah's regime or the reformists or hardliners of the Islamic government in Iran, the decision making process remarkably follows more or less the same logic, and the same priorities are at play. When a shift in policy takes place, Parsi reveals that again the political faction of the government involved is irrelevant. In fact, amazingly, the very same people who were advocating one set of policies, often advance a diametrically opposite set a few years later. Parsi underlines this point by revealing how Israeli Labor leaders, the late Itzhak Rabin and Shimon Perez were lobbying the Reagan administration to disregard virulent rhetoric from Iran and try to open up channels of communication with them, while just a few years later these two men were warning about the Iranian menace in every domestic and international speech. He points out how the neo-conservatives dominating the Bush administration were the very same people who were advocating supporting Iran in the Iran-Iraq war and opening channels in the eighties in the Reagan administration. And how the former hostage takers in Iran are now mostly leading liberals advocating negotiations and moderation in Iranian policies.
Parsi narrates this story in a linear historical context, starting his book from 1948 when Israel was created all the way to present day (summer of 2007). The central theme of the book is that before 1991, Iran and Israel were natural allies, while afterwards (which was coincident with the fall of Soviet Union and defeat of Iraqi President Saddam Hossein's invasion of Kuwait and his subsequent weakenining) the two countries became rivals and perceived each other as threats.
The main shortcoming of the book as I see it, is that while Parsi underlies the geopolitical underpinnings of the triangular relationship of Iran, Israel and the US, very little is mentioned in terms of economic reasons for these "treacherous" alliances and rivalries. What corporations or industries benefit from continued hostilities between Iran and the US and which ones benefit, and how much influence and clout each has on the direction of the US policies? Who benefits in Iran for continued belligerence towards Israel or towards the US, and who is hurt, and how much influence they have on the Iranian government? Some economic analysis is given for Israel's attitude towards Iran: Oil investments and sales from Iranian side, and military sales and training from the Israeli side when relations were good; and an Arab-Israeli common market in the Middle East (which would exclude Iran) when relations were bad. But these economic incentives are treated as secondary at best. I wish more and deeper economic analysis was presented from Iranian and American, as well as Israeli perspectives.
All in all I recommend this book strongly and advise that anyone, right-wingers who advocate military action against Iran (Israeli or American) or moderates advocating political dialog and negotiated approach should educate themselves by reading this book before further opining on US or Israel policies vis-a-vis Iran.
 Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States January 18, 2008
Michael Rubin (Washington, DC)
20 out of 46 found this review helpful
The trilateral relationship between Israel, Iran, and the United States is complex. Alas, Treacherous Alliance does not explain it. Based on the Johns Hopkins University doctoral thesis of Trita Parsi, best known as a Washington-based Iran lobbyist who trades on his connections to officials within the Islamic Republic, the narrative wallows in half-truths and conspiracy rather than fact.
Parsi begins, for example, by stating that neoconservatives "desperately wish" for a U.S. war with Iran. Perhaps Commentary founder Norman Podhoretz does, but he is in a minority. Further, Parsi suggests that foreign policy hawks worry about Iran itself, rather than the Islamic Republic's covert nuclear program and terror sponsorship, an obvious mistake.
Basing his research largely on interviews, Parsi picks and chooses what he wants to include. The result is a hodge-podge.
He emphasizes Iranian pragmatism and dismisses the role of ideology. Iranian support for Hezbollah, in his rendering, has more to do with regional power ambition than ideology--this would come as a surprise to Hezbollah, which defines itself in opposition to the Jewish state and whose secretary-general, Hasan Nasrallah, on October 23, 2002, encouraged Jews all to gather in Israel, thereby saving Hezbollah "the trouble of going after them worldwide."[1]
Parsi breaks no new ground in his treatment of the early relationship between Iran and Israel, offering little more than a potted history. He omits the role of Ziama Divon, the first Israeli to visit the shah and Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion's confidential assistant.
He treats as a primary source the views of Lawrence Wilkerson, chief-of-staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, without ever bothering to ask whether Wilkerson has direct knowledge of events he describes. Had Parsi asked, Wilkerson would have had to admit he attended none of the interagency policy meetings and lacks first-hand knowledge of them.
Parsi suggests that in 2003 Tehran offered to disarm Hezbollah, but this is false. He makes much of a freelance proposal by the Swiss ambassador Tim Guldimann in Tehran that did not win the support of the Iranian regime,[2] which at that time was in fact accelerating its support to Hezbollah. This incident suggests that Parsi's Iranian interlocutors view him as a mechanism for disinformation.
Parsi's manipulation of data undercuts his work. He argues that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" was mistranslated and instead renders the phrase more benignly that Israel should be "eliminated from the pages of history." But the Iranian state-controlled news agency used the former translation.
As documents and correspondence are declassified, Yale University Press will appear foolish for publishing this volume, as will Francis Fukuyama, Parsi's academic adviser, who appears to have been AWOL in his supervisory duties.
Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2008
1. Daily Star (Beirut), Oct. 23, 2002.
2. See Michael Rubin, "The Guldimann Memorandum," The Weekly Standard, Oct. 22, 2007.
Sladerous and outdated August 29, 2007
Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel)
19 out of 110 found this review helpful
From the cover of the book, which sensationalistically includes the Ayatollah and religious Jews at the western wall, this book proceeds to posit an extreme and rediculous theory that Iran and Israel 'manipulate' the United States as they try to 'dominate' the Middle East.
First of all the cover and various statements in the book imply that Judaism as a religion is somehow in competition with Iranian/Persian Shiism. This is a far fetched argument given the fact that every Prime Minister and President of Israel has been secular, not Orthodox, while Iran since the 1980s is specifically modelled on a theocracy where women are ordered to dress a certain way. Religion permeates everyday life in Iran in a way it does not in Israel, hangings, stonings and anti-gay and anti-abrotion laws are merely the tip of the ice berg.
But the idea that Israel and Iran are secretly colluding is so far fethed as to be laughable. The author implies that Iran's development of nuclear weapons is 'pragmatic' and that Ahmadinjed's outburts about 'whiping Israel from the map' or his conference on Holocaust denial, is merely 'realpolitik.' The outdated references to Iran-Contra, when Israel, the U.S and Iran actually were part of a triangle of financial dealings, is used as 'evidence' of the situation in 2006, which ignored the last 20 years of history between the three powers.
Seth J. Frantzman
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