Posted By Laura Rozen
Thursday, April 9, 2009 - 4:23 PM
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Last night, after he had made a grocery-store run, helped put his two kids to bed, and answered reporters’ phone calls about Washington’s decision to join international talks with Iran, Trita Parsi, a protégé of Francis Fukuyama and Zbigniew Brzezinski and a former Hill aide, was surfing the web when he noticed a spike in Amazon sales of his 2007 book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States.
That’s when Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, a group that promotes engagement with Iran, realized what was causing the bump: a new opinion column in the New York Times that calls for President Barack Obama to read his book.
In the latest in a recent series of bracing columns on U.S. policy toward Iran, the Times’ Roger Cohen argues that Israel has been hyping the Iranian nuclear threat going back more than a decade. “You can't accuse the Israelis of not crying wolf,” Cohen writes:
Ehud Barak, now defense minister, said in 1996 that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004.
Now here comes [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, in an interview …spinning the latest iteration of Israel's attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil:
"You don't want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs.When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran."
What’s critical, Cohen continues, “is that Obama view Netanyahu's fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran, as he did Wednesday by saying America would join nuclear talks for the first time … The president should read Trita Parsi's excellent ‘Treacherous Alliance’ as preparation.”
Parsi, 34, who as president of the NIAC and before that as a Hill aide and Ph.D. student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has long advocated for Washington to engage with Tehran. He found himself frequently demonized during the Bush era as an apologist for the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the Bush administration shunned as a charter member of the axis of evil.
With the Obama administration now making a series of recent moves to try to engage Iran, Parsi finds his analysis in daily demand. Parsi, an Iranian-born Zoroastrian who lived in Iran until he was four, and whose father was previously imprisoned in Iran, spent his youth in Sweden before emigrating to the United States.
Of Cohen's mention of his book, Parsi says, "Pretty cool. Will give the president a copy of the book per the NYT's recommendation.”
But the other day, after Obama spoke in the Turkish capital Ankara, Parsi thought he detected evidence that someone in Obama’s inner circle had already read it closely.
"We want Iran to play its rightful role in the community of nations, with the economic and political integration that brings prosperity and security,” Obama said in Ankara.
“This is completely new language for the White House to use, but it sounded awfully familiar to me,” Parsi wrote excitedly Monday. “I went and checked the last chapter of the book where I discuss a strategy of regional integration, and on page 279 I write: "This policy would be based on the recognition that, like China, Iran is a country that the US cannot contain indefinitely, that Iran becomes more antagonistic when excluded, and that the US can better influence Iran by helping it integrate into the world's political and economic structure rather than keeping it out." (Emphasis his).
Coincidence? Whatever the case, Parsi said he would be happy to forward a copy of his book to the White House.
Summary of Treacherous Alliance
The summary of Dr. Parsi's book is that despite the rhetoric, Israel and Iran have worked together in the past, and that now Israel does not want to see an improved US-Iran relations because it would reduce Israel to a Cold War vestige:
"[I]t wasn’t Iran that turned the Israeli-Iranian cold war warm – it was Israel . . . The Israeli reversal on Iran was partially motivated by the fear that its strategic importance would diminish significantly in the post-cold war middle east if the then president (1989-97) Hashemi Rafsanjani’s outreach to the Bush Sr
administration was successful."
And so,
Israeli politicians began painting the regime in Tehran as fanatical and irrational. Clearly, they maintained, finding an accommodation with such “mad mullahs” was a non-starter. Instead, they called on the US to classify Iran, along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, as a rogue state that needed to be “contained.”
Naturally the neo-Cons did not like this book and resorted to ad hominem attacks against Dr Parsi, effectively (and falsey) accusing him of being an Iranian agent:
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.27319,filter.all/pub_detail.asp
To which Dr Parsi replied:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trita-parsi/smells-like-desperation-_b_73575.html
Hass - that AEI link is more substance than argumentum ad hominem.
It's critical - no doubt.
Yet, Dr Rubin includes verifiable sources.
Something for Dr Parsi (as well as Mr Ricks, Mr Woodward Drs Mearsheimer and Walt) to consider
It is indeed one of the better books I've read on this subject.
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” ~George Washington, ~page 269 of The 5000 Year Leap.
“The nation which indulges toward another habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interests." ~ George Washington
"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." ~ Thomas Jefferson
allan green says we should remember Iran's abuses of Americans. Did Iran overthrow a US government, despite the US overthrow of the legal Mossadeqh government in the early 50s and installation of the disastrous Shah? Perhaps it is time we should also remember Israel's abuses of Americans. What about that ship sunk by Israel in the mid-70s with no apology? What about Israel's spies such as Pollard and the AIPAC guy? What about Israel's murder of Rachel Corrie? What about Israel's support for years for apartheid South Africa? And what about Israel's 200 or so nukes, which no one likes to discuss? What about the danger that Israel's continuually reckless actions bring on Americans?
Time to cut massive subsidies of US taxpayers for this reckless nation? If any Americans want to support this recklessness, they can send their money or go fight with them. Ask Madoff, Merkin, and the Goldman bankers to send their money. Ask Bill Kristol and the neo-cons to go join the IDF. Time to cease support for religious fanatics of all stripes.
Your reply shows your arrogance with the "who cares" about shooting up and killing Americans by the reckless and arrogant Israelis. Get over it. I do not support OIC or Bashir either, so there. And you certainly do nothing to support your position by citing Israel's support for corrupt dictators like Mobutu. All I am saying is there is no reason for USA to continue backing Israel's adventures with our blood and treasure and endangering our citizens for the likes of Netanyahu and Lieberman et al.
John Hudson reports on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable.
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