Book Review: The Persian Puzzle

This is the fifth of an eight part review series of the Patterson Summer Reading List.

1. Colossus, Niall Ferguson
2. Illicit, Moises Naim
3. The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs
4. The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman
5. The Persian Puzzle, Kenneth Pollack

The Persian Puzzle is the latest from Kenneth Pollack. In the run up to the Iraq War, Pollack’s The Threatening Storm lent cover to a lot of liberal hawks who wanted to believe that invading Iraq was a good idea. The Persian Puzzle, while hardly characterizing Iran in friendly terms, doesn’t go so far as to advocate an attack, and indeed calls for US restraint in the face of the Iranian nuclear program. So, what does Pollack do well, and what does he do poorly?

I don’t know enough about Persian history to vouch for the accuracy of Pollack’s account, but it read well and didn’t set off any obvious alarms. Pollack doesn’t read or speak Persian, but he seems to have a fair grasp of the English language sources. The narrative works well in part because Pollack is careful to note the elements of the history that matter for the relevant current policy debates. I understand that this is poor historiography, but it’s helpful in the context of what he’s trying to do, and helps frame the rest of his discussion.

Pollack gives a characteristically excellent military history of the Iran-Iraq War, perhaps the best I’ve read. This is unsurprising given Pollack’s earlier great work in Arabs at War. The war was characterized by ineptitude on both sides; the initial Iraqi offensive collapsed because of poor training, meagre officer initiative, and exceptionally bad command and control. Iranian offensives based on human wave attacks proved surprisingly successful, although against a competent foe they undoubtedly would have ended in bloody massacre. Pollack details the significance of the military assistance that the US lent both sides, including the weapons sold to Tehran by the Reagan administration. Eventually the Iraqis adopted the French/Egyptian model of carefully scripted attacks, repulsed the final Iranian offensives, and destroyed the bulk of Iranian military capacity. The war was a dreadful disaster for both sides; apparently in 1982 the Iranians turned down a promised $70 billion payment from the Gulf oil monarchies to end the conflict. Iran also rejected an Iraqi offer to help coordinate an attack against Israel in return for peace. One of the brighter points of his history of the war is the discussion of the Iran-Contra affair. Pollack details the manner in which the deal went down, as well as the very real effects of the weapons that the United States sold to Iran. It is still remarkable to me that the wingnutty among us can revere not only the President who decided to sell weapons to a terrorist state in hopes of freeing a dozen or so hostages, but all of the various lieutenants who enabled and executed that decision.

The most unfortunate element of Pollack’s discussion of US-Iranian relations is his concentration on reputation. Pollack wants to tell a very simple story that emphasizes the importance of maintaining a reputation for strength in the face of Iranian aggression. Unfortunately, he can’t manage to make the facts fit the argument. The problem is that Iranian behavior does not change in response to US demonstration of “resolve” or lack thereof. The Iranians do seem sensitive to changes in US capabilities, as the display of American fighting prowess in the Gulf War caused a great deal of concern in Tehran. At other times, however, displays of resolve have no notable effect on Tehran’s behavior. The same could be said of Iran’s relations with Iraq; in spite of multiple demonstrations of Iraqi resolve, the Iranians only gave up the war when the Iraqis demonstrated clearly superior capabilities. Pollack’s discussion of the Khobar Towers attack is simply absurd. That the attack was connected to Iran was beyond question. The United States, notably, failed to attack Iran in return. Iran’s response to this was…. to moderate its foreign and domestic policy. Pollack points out that this was not simply a response to the election of Khatami; the clerical hierarchy and the Revolutionary Guard also favored moderation. Obviously, this makes no sense whatsoever in the context of a discussion of reputation. Demonstrations of weak resolve should result in further aggression, not moderation. Pollack assumes that reputation matters, but is never able to connect any change in Iranian policy to a corresponding change in US stance. As they used to tell us in graduate school, when there’s no correlation, it’s hard to prove causation.

I think that Pollack essentially gets the policy right; Iranian nukes aren’t good, but they aren’t bad enough to justify the costs associated with military action. Steps short of military action ought to be taken to increase the price of Iran’s nuclear program, and thus hopefully to reduce its size and general attractiveness. His book is a useful primer on the history of Iran and the course of US-Iranian relations, although the reader should be prepared to treat elements of his account with a grain of salt.