The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran

by Yossi Melman and Meir Javedanfar

Book Overview

Inspired by hate and surrounded by fundamentalist leaders in a country that may soon possess nuclear weapons, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad poses the most serious threat to world peace, even while he shrewdly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786718870
• ISBN13: 9780786718870
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
• Length: 285 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great Book

This book is very well done, the research conducted, the sources and the people involved in this book are great. The author has done an excellent job in portraying Iran and the threat that it represents to the western world. Its a great book if you want to get good insights and new information on Iran and the threat it posses.

Informative and Worth Reading, Needs Editing

This is an informative book which is worth reading, although the cover and title are a bit misleading and the book needs editing before the next publishing, as I assume the publisher has noticed. The front cover gives the impression that it is somehow a biography of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with an emphasis on his role in Iran's nuclear and foreign policies. Actually, it is more like two short books on different but related topics attached to one another. The first third of the book is a pre-election biography of Ahmadinejad, and the remainder is a description of Iran's nuclear program with some analysis of how to deal with it. Ahmadinejad is barely mentioned after page 72. It was like they wanted to write two books, but wanted to rush this while it was timely, so decided to cut material and combine them into one. (Most of the book will be of purely academic interest if we bomb Iran.) One of the authors is a Israeli expert on Israeli intelligence who writes for Haaretz. The other is an Iran expert of Iranian origin (not Arab, as one of the other reviewers suggests). The first four chapters dealing with Ahmadinejad's life are certainly good reading, as they include facts not widely known which bear on his performance as president of Iran. Ahmadinejad comes from a rural background, and through the sacrifices of his parents, he was able to attend school and become an engineer. He eventually obtained a PhD in traffic planning (don't laugh, traffic is a huge issue in Iran, especially in Tehran). His religious development included an association with the Hojjatieh society, a messianic movement within Shia Islam which is obsessed with the Mahdi and the apocalypse. Most importantly, Ahmadinejad came under the influence of Ayatallah Muhammad Yazdi and his followers. Yazdi is the most prominent of the messianic Shia clerics, and he believes that while Muslims cannot force the return of the Mahdi and the end of the world, they can "strive to hasten it," as the authors put it. (In Islam, the Mahdi is a messianic figure, but not Jesus himself, as Jesus is believed to return after the Mahdi. Apocalyptic thinking is less prominent in Islam than Judaism or Christianity generally, but actually quite important in Shia Islam.) The remainder of the book focuses on the twists and turns of the Iranian nuclear saga, in which ruse after lie after deception has been exposed as IAEA investigators, opposition groups and Western intelligence agencies have pressured Iran on its "peaceful" nuclear program. The authors do an excellent job at narrating this history, although little of it - other than perhaps a few comments about Mossad's role - is likely to be new to readers already familiar with the issue. The book does need some serious editing, however. Numerous less than artful phrases remind the reader that neither of the authors is a native speaker of English. There are some punctuation errors, and a good number of sentences which would have benefited from a well-placed c

Helpful in understanding the internal Iranian reality

This book is presented to be a biography of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current President of Iran, and point- man of the global Jihad against the West. It does tell us much about this ambitious and hate- filled Messianic dreamer but a good share of the book provides information and insight into current Iranian reality, Ahmadinejad or not. It gives a picture of a society in which north Tehran is filled with middle - class and even luxury homes, and south Tehran a third- world village, a society in which the corruption of the Shah's people has been transcended by the even greater corruption of the Islamic imams, a society in which massive unemployment combines with inflation to make even in a time of high- priced oil, the poor , poorer. It does this while telling the story of the rise to power of an impoverished extremely devout ironmonger's son, who presents himself as the savior of the poorer classes. It traces the questionable and sketchy war record of Ahmadinejad in the Iran- Iraq conflict. It says that there is no decisive evidence as to whether he was , as has been alleged, one of those who stormed the U.S. embassay in 1979. It explains his political maneuvering and strategy, and how he defeated for the Presidency his great rival Rafsanjani. And how to this day they are doing battle within the power- centers of the regime. Rafsanjani has a stronger position within the oil - industry, the key Iranian industry and has recently defeated a number of Ahamadinejad parliamentary initiatives on oil policy. The authors tell how Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Khatami loves the ship-of- state , bird- in- flight analogy and how he believes it always necessary to balance one wing ( Raftsanjani) against another ( Ahmadinejad) to keep the thing going. But they do not clearly and decisively answer the question of who is the ultimate power in Iran, and how much of Iranian nuclear - policy depends on Ahmadinejad alone. They do however make it clear how Iran has continually deceived the world- community in regard to its nuclear program. And how errors in judgment of the I.A.E.A. 's Mohammed Baradei have enabled the program to speed ahead when it might have been stopped earlier. They sketch Iran's nuclear program and leave no doubt as to the absolute determination of the Iranians to achieve nuclear weapons. They also present the 'twelveth Mahdi theology' of Ahmadinejad in a clear way. Ahmadinejad believes there has to be global catastrophe and chaos if Iran as prelude to Iran achieving its goals of destroying Israel defeating the United States and making Islam the ruling faith of mankind. The authors while clearly exposing Ahmadinejad's goals, do not go into detail about Western political, diplomatic and economic options for regime- change in Iran, or for deterring the Iranian nuclear power. They do not trace the consequences of what a nuclear Iran might mean for mankind, or explain in detail the Middle East nuclear- arms race which might bring the world to

Very interesting information about Iran

I'm an open minded person and will not come to a conclusion without looking from all sides of a situation. This book gives a pretty good insight into how Iran evolved to what it is today. You have plenty of references to draw from and shouldn't conclude that it's onesided since the writers are Jewish and Arab. It really makes you think and fills in the gap with information on why Iran's president is the way he is. The media makes it hard to get an understanding on this guy, but this book has given a lot of insight on how he could be. I give it 5 stars because of the well documented references so you can trace why the authors came to their conclusions.