http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/311453/thirty-years-war-michael-rubin
As American diplomats and their international partners prepared to sit down with their Iranian counterparts in Baghdad last May to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, the State Department was aflutter. In conference calls and background briefs, senior diplomats and Obama-administration officials suggested Tehran was on the verge of grasping Obama’s outstretched hand and might agree to deal seriously to end years of crisis.
That the talks would go nowhere was predictable. When Iranian negotiators proposed to hold discussions on May 23, Obama’s team agreed immediately; the White House cared little why the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had picked that date or venue. Iranian history informs, however: May 23 marked the 30th anniversary of Iran’s liberation of Khorramshahr, its key victory during the Iran–Iraq War. “The pioneering Iranian nation will continue its movement towards greater progress and justice,” Khamenei promised at a victory speech, adding, “The front of tyranny, arrogance, and bullying is moving towards weakness and destruction.”
The nuclear talks were the Islamic Republic’s latest but not its last parry in its battle with the United States. While almost every U.S. administration has sought reconciliation with Tehran, first revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and then Khamenei have conceived of themselves as at war with “the Great Satan.”
Against this backdrop, David Crist’s The Twilight War is valuable. Crist, a historian at the Pentagon and a Marine reserve officer who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, pens the history of the more-than-three-decade “secret war” between the United States and Iran.
Jimmy Carter never expected Iran to define his presidency. A foreign-policy novice, Carter hoped to make his mark on Korea, promising a withdrawal of U.S. forces just days after announcing his run for the Democratic nomination. The Iran situation threw the Carter White House into crisis and exposed factional divisions that would undermine Carter’s response and culminate in the resignation of Cyrus Vance, his secretary of state. While Crist adds little new in his examination of Carter-administration diplomacy — former CIA analyst–turned–Brookings scholar Ken Pollack covered that period well nearly ten years ago in The Persian Puzzle – he is an excellent writer whose narrative is a pleasure to read. He illustrates well how the State Department bubble failed to recognize reality until it was too late.
Without access to Persian sources, he does miss pivotal points, however. “Initially, the students had intended to hold the embassy for just a few hours,” he writes, “but the embassy takeover acquired a life of its own.” But what caused the students to change their minds is important for today: According to his Carter-administration colleagues (whom I interviewed for a book of my own), Gary Sick — the Iran director on the National Security Council — leaked to the Boston Globe that Carter had removed military options from the table. When the captors read that
