Unabridged Audiobook
Overall, this book gives a good history between the United States and Iran. However, the author appears to be very biased. The author is overly antagonistic to the Shah and extremely sympathetic to the Islamic regime and its actions post-1979. For example, the author makes multiple negative inferences against the Shah for weighing his options as one who can’t make up his mind but gives the benefit of the doubt to the Islamic regime for the same conduct as being pragmatic. The author does this in multiple contexts and it is a common theme throughout the book. The author, moreover, overlooks the horrific atrocities that the Islamic regime has caused the Iranian people, including deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iranians during the Iran Iraq war that could have ended in 1982 but which the Mullas extended for political gain. The author very quickly alludes to this but justifies it as revolutionary fervor. Relatedly, the author focuses on political prisoners during the Shah as an atrocity but fails to do the same during the Islamic regime, which engages in the same practice at a much larger scale. The author, furthermore, overlooks the dictatorial nature of the Islamic Republic by putting great weight on elected officials and presidents, but does not focus that those eligible to be elected have to first be selected by the authoritarian Mullahs thereby not giving the people a real choice. Nor does the author make reference at all that the Islamic regime routinely holds anti-American rallies and that students at schools are told to chant death to America thereby indoctrinating anti-American feelings. The same chants also occur at every Friday prayer led by the regime. Rather, the author tries to paint a picture that the Islamic regime has tried to have good relations with America, has often outsmarted the west and it is America that has fumbled the opportunities to build good relations with Iran. As one last example, the author completely ignores the financial condition in Iran that gave the people a much higher living standard under the Shah than under the Islamic regime. In this context, although the author discusses uprisings during the Shah in part for financial inequity, the author categorically fails to discuss the multiple uprisings during the Islamic regime and the brutal put down of those uprising by the regime. Indeed, the author downplays the uprisings and the force used by the regime to put them down. As such, even though this book provides a good overall history, it is very biased and should be read with that in mind.
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