- I was desperate to find a few scholarly books on Iran so I could probe deep into this ancient civilisation, and get informed into how and why its so central to today's U.S. and Israeli obsessions.
- The 2025 Nasr book is magnificent. It clarifies the power of Iran’s Islamic State, and why Shia Islam is central to it.
- America favours secularism, and Iran has became entrenched as the enemy. Rather than confirm the caricature of an archaic theocracy begrudging modernity and seething at the West, Nasr makes it clear that Iran today sees itself as the inspiration for a global movement of resistance to the U.S. and why America should quit the Middle East and leave Iran alone.
- The Leverett book was published in 2013 but has become a classic. Challenging the daily clamour of U.S. sabre rattling, the Everetts argue that America should renounce thirty years of failed strategy and engage with Iran. America must 'go to Iran' just as Nixon revolutionised U.S. foreign policy by going to Beijing and realigning relations with China.
- In 1962, President Kennedy warned that 'the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought'.
- As the Leveretts make clear 'The prevailing Iran mythology is rarely challenged in mainstream discourse...If the myth of the Islamic Republic's irrationality is not dispelled, Western perceptions that war with Iran is inevitable will eventually turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy'.
- Nasr argues persuasively that Iran as a society is by no means perfect. It's cruel and abusive refusal to recognise the place of women and young people by continuing to enforce its morality rules, women's dress, and observance of the hijab, is angering the majority of its population. And its insistence on resistance and confrontation with the United States has reached its limit of popular support. The problem is not just the hijab, but the entire patriarchal social and legal structures that govern family law, labour relations, and the access of women to jobs and services.
- Both books are thoroughly enlightening. You can skip over a lot of historical details in a number of dense chapters but still get the full picture. I highly recommend both books, but especially Vali Nasr's.
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