Confronting Tehran.

The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, by Kenneth M. Pollack (Random House, 576 pp., $26.95)

KENNETH POLLACK has a knack for timing. Two years ago, the former CIA analyst and Clinton administration official published The Threatening Storm, making the case for war in Iraq. The book was well received on both right and left; according to The New York Times Magazine's Deborah Solomon, it "persuade[d] many reluctant Democratic policy makers to support" the war.

Now Pollack gives us The Persian Puzzle, a detailed history of U.S.-Iranian relations. Iran is today's big story, owing to U.S. efforts to bring its nuclear-weapons program to the forefront of international attention. Policymakers and outside experts alike are predicting a perilous standoff, and Pollack promises to illuminate the current conflict by looking at its past.

He begins at Iran's beginning, some 2,500 years ago, but quickly fast-forwards to its first major contact with the West--Britain and Russia--during the period leading up to and including World War I. Pollack writes that Iranians emerged from this period convinced that foreign interference was the source of all their problems; this remains a major theme of Iranian foreign policy.

Iran's first sustained encounter with America began during World War II. Pollack describes this early period in a chapter called "The Ugly Americans"--a reference primarily to the Iranian perception of the 1953 coup that overthrew nationalist leader Mohammed Mossadegh. In Iranian political mythology, Mossadegh would come to represent all the wonderful things Iran might have become had he stayed in power; as a result of the coup, Iranians, once hopeful that America would serve as their protector against British and Russian imperial aims (a hope that was not entirely disappointed), came to imagine that, in Pollack's words, "the CIA was ... spending great time and effort manipulating every segment of their society."

Just as the coup against Mossadegh looms large in the Iranian view of Iranian-American relations, most Americans believe the pivotal point in our encounter was the hostage crisis that took place over 25 years and an Iranian revolution later. In 1979, Islamist students overran the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage and keeping most of them for 444 days: That was when the current conflict with the Islamic Republic really began. Pollack is generous in his evaluation of President Jimmy Carter's handling of the crisis, blaming (in large measure) Carter's humanitarianism for an ineffective response that made the U.S. look weak and thus emboldened Iran, Iraq, Syria, and various terrorist groups for years to come.

Pollack's chapters on the Clinton administration are also, not surprisingly, rather favorable; but one anecdote is quite revelatory about that administration's attitudes. In March 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave a speech before the American Iranian Council advocating renewed ties between the two countries. Pollack was, at the time, director of Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council. The purpose of the speech, as he explains it, was to make one "last gesture" to demonstrate to Iran that the U.S. was willing to normalize relations in exchange for improved behavior.

In her speech, Albright apologized for the 1953 coup, expressed regret for U.S. support for the shah who replaced Mossadegh, and criticized as "shortsighted" our tilt toward Iraq in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. She also announced the lifting of sanctions on two of Iran's biggest exports: food and rugs. Pollack and others thought a breakthrough was at hand. Yet two deadly words had managed to creep into Albright's otherwise conciliatory speech: "Despite the trend towards democracy, control over the military, judiciary, courts, and police remains in unelected hands" (emphasis added). After reading a draft, Pollack tried to have the words "unelected hands" excised, but his efforts failed--and so did the attempt to build bridges with Iran.

This story illustrates the Clinton administration's mindset during several years of unsuccessful attempts to reach a rapprochement with Tehran. The Clinton team was encouraged by the 1997 presidential victory of reformist Mohammed Khatami--but Khatami's power ultimately proved limited. This is, indeed, a recurring theme in Pollack's history: The U.S. has often tried to reach out to purported Iranian moderates or pragmatists, only to find those figures unreliable or blocked by more powerful forces. Pollack, to his credit, later came to realize that any rapprochement that could be destroyed by two words wasn't a meaningful rapprochement at all. "Iran," he concludes, "was ruled by a regime in which the lion's share of power--and everything that truly mattered--was in the hands of people who were not ready or interested in improving ties with the United States."

This conclusion is helpful, but one wonders why it took so long in coming. There are several points in this book when one wishes Pollack had gone a few steps further in forming judgments, and policy guidance, from history. For example, he acknowledges that a "key weakness" of the Clinton administration's containment policy was that the "sticks" or threats on which it was based were too small, making it difficult to induce any real change in Iran's behavior. Yet rather than advocate a more confrontational strategy, Pollack continues to opt for engagement. (The Clinton containment policy was also purportedly based on red lines, the crossing of which would provoke American retaliation; but Pollack ultimately defends Clinton's decision not to retaliate against Iran for the 1996 Khobar Towers attack, in which 19 Americans were killed.) What's more, Pollack reveals that our European allies have on more than one occasion proven unreliable when it comes to Iran--trying to entice the rogue state with benefits rather than making the sacrifices necessary to reprimand it. Yet in the end he proposes more American cooperation with Europe (and Japan and China and Russia), advocating unilateral action only if such cooperation again fails.

There are, to be sure, valuable insights in this book. In analyzing not only the origins and complexities of U.S. policies but also the reactions they provoked, Pollack shows just how tricky U.S.-Iranian relations are. He sympathetically explains Iranians' historic fear of foreigners and accounts for, but does not justify, their paranoia about American power. And yet, Pollack admits that he does not read or speak Farsi and has never been to Iran, which may be significant weaknesses. As Richard Pipes has argued about the Soviet Union and Sovietologists, most of whom were caught off guard by that regime's demise, truly understanding such a society requires a humanistic approach: reading the literature, listening to dissidents, understanding the forces that keep a regime alive--and bring it down. Pollack is not devoid of such humanistic grounding, but he could have used more of it.

Pollack concludes with a thorough consideration of many policy options currently on the table. He settles on a "triple track" strategy that includes the possibility of a comprehensive negotiated settlement, a "true carrot and stick approach" if that proves unattainable, and a "new containment regime" if all negotiations fail. Pollack is as articulate and serious a proponent of these ideas as one is likely to find. But as his own history reveals, the mullahs have demonstrated their enmity toward the U.S., and have frustrated American aims, for a quarter century; how is a future settlement likely to change that? How will negotiations, or uncertain red lines, prevent another Khobar Towers-type attack, this time with nuclear weapons? To the extent that he considers the range of more confrontational options available, short of invading Iran--for example, muscular anti-proliferation actions; support for the democratic opposition; and the threat of targeted military strikes, even by Israel--he recommends only anti-proliferation, and even this only as a last-stage measure. And while he does suggest that regime change could be a useful component of a larger Iran policy, and that the U.S. should serve as a beacon of freedom to oppressed Iranians, it is no doubt difficult to encourage a democratic revolution while offering benefits to hardliners and signaling that we've reconciled ourselves to the long-term existence of the current regime.

America, Pollack concludes, needs most of all to "sort through the myriad pieces of our own relationship" with Iran. Well, that's one option. But introspection and joint apology sessions don't usually stop ill-intentioned people from doing harmful things--and that, after all, is U.S. policymakers' foremost aim. For all his subtle argumentation, Pollack never adequately addresses the urgency of that task. America's leaders can't join him in the luxury of avoidance.