Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States.

Hadar, Leon

Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, by Trita Parsi. Yale University Press, 2007. $28.00, hardcover.

By the time this review is published, Israel may have ordered its F15 and F16 fighter-bombers to knock out Iran's nuclear facilities, starting a sequence of events in which the United States had no choice but to join the fray, with Tehran retaliating by striking America's hard-pressed forces in Iraq, launching terrorist attacks against America and its allies, disrupting the tanker traffic through the Persian Gulf and causing global energy prices to soar into the stratosphere.

Or perhaps as you read this review, Washington and Tehran might be following the policy recommendations that author Trita Parsi sketches out in Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States. After recognizing that they have some common interests, including in a stable and united Iraq led by a government they both support, the two governments may have taken steps to a broader negotiation that could result in historic reconciliation between the global superpower and the regional power. Who knows? Perhaps, as Parsi hopes, Israel too may recognize that a U.S.-Iran detente is in its national interest and not try to torpedo it, but even bless it. In any case, Israel may have no other choice but to accept it as one more outcome of the Realpolitik-driven Middle Eastern games that nations play, according to the author and what is perhaps one of the central messages of his study. It's the national interest, stupid! When it comes to relations among Iran, Israel and the United States, realism in the pursuit of the core interest of the nation-state has a tendency to override ideological disposition--whether Islamic fundamentalism, radical Zionism or American neoconservatism.

More likely, as this issue of Middle East Policy comes out, the Bush administration, following a policy promoted by Israel and its neoconservative backers in Washington, will be continuing to pursue its policy of "containing" and weakening Iran through diplomatic and economic means, hoping the regime in Tehran capitulates and accepts American dictates, or that its economic failures and declining popularity cause it to implode--two scenarios that Parsi does not consider realistic.

Hence, it is not surprising that Parsi, the president of the Iranian American Council, has been advocating in Treacherous Alliance, as well as in his numerous commentaries in the print and broadcast media, the ending of the dangerous escalation in the U.S.-Iran relationship. His most original contribution to the debate on American policy in the Middle East and its approach towards Tehran is to stress that a rational and effective U.S. strategy toward Iran requires a comprehensive appreciation of the complexity of the relationship between Iran and Israel and a broader historical perspective of their evolving ties, going back to the Pahlavi dynasty and the Zionist founders of the Jewish state. Or perhaps we even need to rediscover the bonds between Persians and Jews that go back to the romantic liaison between Persia's Xerxes (485-465 B.C.) and Queen Esther.

Fast-forwarding to the early twenty-first century, you would not find Queen Esther in the Oval Office. Instead, it is the Iranian-Israeli rivalry that has been dwelling at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, making it difficult for any White House occupant to adopt a policy towards Tehran that reflects the real U.S. national interest and resists the pressures from interest groups and individuals with a political and ideological ax to grind.

In any case, to characterize Treacherous Alliance as "timely" would be an understatement. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the engrossing plots uncovered by Parsi, who maintains suspense like Tom Clancy, as "ripped straight from today's headlines." My favorite tale of intrigue is in a chapter titled "An Offer Washington Couldn't Refuse." It is a fast-paced account of diplomatic deceptions, bureaucratic double-crosses, twisted love-hate relationships (involving America, Iran and Israel), colorful locales (Washington, Tehran, Tel Aviv, Geneva) and richly drawn characters: a well-intentioned Swiss diplomat, neocon con-men, Mossad agents, Marxist terrorists and even the author himself. One is not only entertained, but also gains insights into why America finds itself in such a bloody mess in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf.

Against the backdrop of the U.S. military "victory" in Iraq and President George W. Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" on the USS Abraham Lincoln, and as reports that the Americans were about to do a "regime change" in Tehran, Iranian diplomats prepare a comprehensive proposal that spells out the parameters of a potential "grand bargain." The plan addresses all the points of contention between Washington and Tehran, including the Israel-Palestine issue and Iran's nuclear program. It also calls for the Americans to hand over wanted members of the Iranian terrorist group based in Iraq, the Muhjahedine-Khalq Organization (MKO), in return for the al-Qaeda operatives the Iranians are holding. The proposal is written by the nephew of the Iranian foreign minister and Iran's ambassador to France, Sadegh Kharrazi. It receives a green light from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei. It is delivered to Washington by the Swiss ambassador to Tehran, Tim Guldimann, the caretaker of U.S. interests in Iran, to both the State Department and to Republican Bob Ney of Ohio. That influential Republican lawmaker favors a dialogue between Tehran and Washington--Parsi is working at his office at that time--and promptly sends a staffer to hand deliver it to Karl Rove, President Bush's top adviser, who calls the document "intriguing." Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage as well as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice favor a positive response to the Iranians. But Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose neoconservative aide Douglas Feith is already devising plans to attack Iran (and Syria), are successful in their efforts to press Bush to rebuff the offer. "In the end, the secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran," Lawrence Wilkerson, a former aide to Powell, tells Parsi.

The author also chronicles other machinations: secret talks between American and Iranian diplomats in Geneva; behind-the-scenes efforts by the Iranians to sell their proposal to the Israelis (General Mohsen Rezai, the former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, tells a group of Israeli officials in Athens that Iran, like Pakistan and Malaysia, was not ready to recognize Israel but would avoid confronting the Jewish state directly or through proxies); the successful attempt by the Pentagon and the neocons to sabotage the "quiet diplomacy" between Washington and Tehran (and indirectly Israel) by accusing Iran of helping to facilitate a terrorist attack in Riyadh by members of al-Qaeda in Iran; and the continuing efforts by the neocons and the Israel Lobby and their supporters on Capitol Hill to provide support for Iranian opposition groups and groom Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah, as Iran's version of Ahmed Chalabi.

Like any good yarn, Parsi's saga has a villain that keeps reappearing at every twist and turn: Michael Ledeen, a neoconservative "policy intellectual" associated with Israeli Labor party leaders and Italian neo-Fascists, not to mention shady Iranian arms dealers and a cast of intelligence operatives. He was believed at one time by the CIA to be "an agent of influence of a foreign government." Ledeen's modus operandi seems to be a never-ending effort to reorient the U.S. relationship towards Iran based on the current interests of Israel. Hence in the 1980s, Ledeen becomes a central figure in the Iran-contra affair as he tries to promote an American opening to a "moderate" Iranian ayatollah as a way of assisting Iran during its war with Iraq--exactly what Israel's Shimon Peres was then advocating. After 9/11, Ledeen emerges as the most prominent pundit (and an occasional schemer in secret encounters with dubious Iranian figures) promoting U.S. military action against Iran that would result in a "regime change" there. Again, there is a policy that seems to reflect the kind of approach that Israeli leaders and their supporters are lobbying for in Washington.

As Parsi points out, there is no touch of irony in Ledeen's and, by extension, Israel's policy of diplomatically and militarily flirting with Yehran in the 1980s, when America (the "Great Satan") and Israel (the "Little Satan") were the main focus of its revolutionary ethos, while attempting to isolate and punish Tehran after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, just when the Iranians were trying to open a dialogue with the Americans, who had just defeated two of their most hated nemeses--the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. In this and other cases, explains Parsi, Israel's foreign-policy harddrive consisted of the so-called Periphery Doctrine, adopted by the leaders of the Jewish state in its early years. It was aimed at strengthening Israel's ties with the non-Arab states on the periphery of the Arab world--Turkey, Ethiopia and Iran--as well as with non-Arab and non-Muslim minorities such as the Kurds in Iraq, the Maronites in Lebanon, and the Animists and Christians in Sudan. When it came to Iran, the relationship that blossomed during the time of the shah was intertwined with the close ties the two Middle Eastern countries had with Washington in its strategy against the Soviet Union and Nasserism. Israel had hoped that closer ties with Iran would help contain the pressure from the hostile Arab "interior" while the Iranians regarded Israel, with its close ties to Washington, as a strategic asset that could help them win American assistance.

The harddrive of the Periphery Doctrine, according to Parsi, survived many crashes, including the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the end of the Cold War and the first Gulf War, although concrete foreign-policy outcomes had taken surprising turns. In the 1980s, the fear that Saddam Hussein's Iraq would defeat Iran had driven Israel's Defense Minister Peres to press the Reagan administration to help Iran's ayatollahs, who, notwithstanding their hostility towards the Jewish state, were encouraging Israel to provide them with military assistance and lobbying in Washington as a way of helping them contain Iraq. In the 1990s, as Parsi sees it, Prime Minister Peres, hoping that the Oslo process and globalization would help Israel make peace with and integrate itself into the Arab "interior," turned the Periphery Doctrine on its head by trying to demonize the Islamic Republic as the leader of a radical Islamic menace that supposedly threatened not only Israel, but America and its Arab allies. This Israel strategy was evolving just when the Iranians under President Rafsanjani were trying to move towards detente with Washington. But the Israelis, according to Parsi, were successful in persuading the Clinton administration to isolate Iran. This approach has remained in place, with the Israelis and their supporters in Washington, as Parsi suggests, trying to sabotage any attempt at rapprochement between the United States and Iran that could threaten Israel's position as America's main ally in the Middle East and elevate Iran to the status of a regional power.

Through this and other provocative observations and intriguing accounts, some of which have never been made public, and which are based on 130 in-depth interviews conducted with Iranian, Israeli and American officials and analysts, Parsi is able to spin complex plots in a very lively way and with an eye for detail and personalities. As I read Treacherous Alliance, I sometimes had the feeling that I was watching one of the critically acclaimed documentaries on BBC's "Panorama" or PBS's "Frontline," in which ex-officials' and pundits' recounts of historical events are punctuated occasionally by news clips narrated by the producer. Indeed, those readers hoping to be introduced to a comprehensive and detailed history of the relationship among the members of the Iran-Israeli-U.S triangle will clearly be disappointed. Even a professional historian digging in old archives in Tehran, Jerusalem and Washington would find it impossible to describe and analyze the rich history of a complex relationship in such a relatively brief study. Moreover, based on the author's PhD dissertation (submitted to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies), the work includes almost no references to new or old declassified documents. As Parsi points out, the study and its conclusions derive mostly from his on- and off-the-record interviews with former officials and experts. Not unlike "Panorama" and "Frontline," the book reads like the work of a journalist, consisting mostly of quotes from, or references to, interviews that are framed by Parsi's brief commentaries and analyses.

"To ensure the reliability of the interviewees and their accounts, an extraordinarily large number of people have been interviewed and their accounts have been cross-checked" (my italics), Parsi notes in the preface to his book. "No argument in the book is dependent on one or two quotes alone," he emphasizes. "The cross-referencing and the large pool of interviewees have also ensured that the accounts presented in the book reflect the essence of the exchanges, even though the exact recollections are difficult to reproduce after twenty years." Some of the interviewees include former high- and mid-level officials (and on the Iranian side, a few current officials, like Iran's UN Ambassador and Deputy Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who is quoted quite extensively), but also (especially on the Israeli side) a few think-tank analysts and old timers whose perspectives and speculations may be interesting and provocative but who lack access to information about current policy making in the three capitals. Moreover, almost all the interviewees have their own political and even personal agendas to advance. It is not clear exactly how their accounts "have been cross-checked," and the author does not always give a clear explanation when he provides us with a quote from this or that source on whether he is introducing us to reliable information about what had happened (that he or others had checked and confirmed) or to interpretations by his sources on what had happened. The bottom line is that we will probably have to wait many years for the main players to publish their memoirs and researchers to gain access to American, Israeli and Iranian archives before having a complete picture of this period.

I also think that Parsi's analytical approach is a bit flawed. He tends to overstate the significance of the centrality of Israel's Periphery Doctrine in shaping the "treacherous alliance." Hence, we are led to conclude that Israeli foreign policy has been dominated by debate between "pro" and "anti" Periphery Doctrine "schools of thought"; at one point, Parsi even describes Israelis who allegedly wanted to use the MKO as part of an anti-Iranian disinformation campaign as "pro-MKO," and he seems to exaggerate the supposed willingness of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his short nine-month tenure as part of a strategy to "return" to the Periphery Doctrine. In fact, the harddrive of Israeli foreign policy has always consisted of its core national-security goal, which revolves around its relationship with the neighboring Arab states. The relationship with Iran, or for that matter with Turkey and even with the United States, is the "software," the changing sources of diplomatic and military power it uses to advance its main foreign-policy goal: managing its relationship with the Arabs, including the Palestinians. For Israel, it's still the Arabs (and the Palestinians), stupid! At the same time, notwithstanding the importance of the role of Israel and its supporters in influencing U.S. policy towards Iran, there is little doubt in my mind that, if and when a U.S. president decides that opening a dialogue with Iran is in the national interest, he or she will resist all domestic and external pressures. President Richard Nixon, a member of the once-powerful "China Lobby," made a similar decision when he went to China.

Leon Hadar, research fellow, Cato Institute, Independent Institute