Targeting Iran, by David Barsamian, with Noam Chomsky, Ervand Abrahamian, and Nahid Mozaffari. City Lights Books, 2007, 144 pages (paper), $11.95
Targeting Iran is a collection of three interviews conducted by Alternative Radio founder David Barsamian with the Iranian scholars Ervand Abrahamian and Nahid Mozaffari, and Barsamian’s most frequent interlocutor over the years, Noam Chomsky. It is a valuable book in that it covers, in less than 200 pages, many of the essential questions regarding the geopolitics of the Islamic Republic and the ominous specter of a U.S. military attack on Iran.
Abrahamian is one of the preeminent historians of modern Iran . His 1982 book Iran Between Two Revolutions is widely regarded as a work of monumental significance. (The Fellowship of Reconciliation [FOR] uses this book as a key source for preparing participants in its Iran delegations.)
In Targeting Iran, Abrahamian offers useful insights into the folly of U.S. policy toward Iran . On the Bush administration’s double-talk about sitting down with Iran, he observes that “you really can’t go into a negotiating room with a gun, saying that you’re going to shoot at the first opportunity. The other side probably will come to the room with the same type of weapon, and you’re more likely to get a shoot-out than negotiations.” He notes the very real danger of the rhetoric currently emanating from Washington . “The rhetoric itself can determine policy, speed up the tempo, and lead to further escalation.”
One of Abrahamian’s most illuminating observations has to do with Ayatollah Khomeini’s doctrine of Islamic government – a “twentieth-century invention,” says Abrahamian. Contrary to conventional wisdom, “it’s not deep rooted in Shia theory going back centuries.” He regards Ahmadinejad as “not very different from Bush in terms of style, rhetoric, and mentality.”
Chomsky offers his familiar array of arguments about the mendacious and distorted picture of the world generated by the U.S. government and reinforced through the major media, but with specific reference to Iran . The points he makes in this volume echo ones he has made for many years now. For someone who has never encountered Chomsky, this section would be helpful; for those familiar with his work, however, there is little new or surprising here.
The biggest surprise of this book – and a pleasant one – comes in the final section, in the interview with Nahid Mozaffari. Mozaffari is the editor of Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature (2005). Although it is plenty political, Barsamian’s interview with Mozaffari paints a multidimensional humanistic portrait of Iran today, touching on poetry, intellectual life, the literary world, and the women’s movement. Mozaffari notes the amazement of many of her Western friends that tens of thousands of people showed up for the Tehran funeral procession of the poet Ahmad Shamlu.
Those of us lucky enough to have voyaged to Shiraz can easily picture this image. In March 2007, I and other FOR delegation members witnessed first-hand the devotion and reverence Iranians have for their poets when we visited the tomb of the great 14th-century lyricist Hafez, a site to which many newlyweds pilgrimage on their honeymoons.
Mozaffari evocatively and compellingly describes the uphill battles in which campaigners for women’s rights in Iran are currently engaged – battles which we should join Mozaffari in supporting, and which stand to be derailed by a U.S. military strike on Iran.
Originally published in Fellowship magazine (www.forusa.org/fellowship).
Danny Postel is the author of Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran : Iran and the Future of Liberalism (Prickly Paradigm Press) and participated in FOR’s March 2007 delegation to Iran. He is communications coordinator for Interfaith Worker Justice.
