Miron Rezun, ed. Iran at the Crossroads: Global Relations in a Turbulent Decade (original) (raw)

1992, Journal of Conflict Studies

This book on post-revolutionary Iran's relations with the superpowers and its Arab and non-Arab neighbors provides a wealth of information on continuity and change in Iran's international relations. Most of its contributors are well-known academics and media analysts of the Middle East The book consists of eleven chapters organized in six parts. The first section, with articles by Miron Rezun and Roger Savory offers an historical perspective as background for the internal and external causes of post-revolutionary Iran's "irrational" behavior in the international arena. Both articles, while providing insightful information, suffer to some degree from certain weaknesses, inaccuracies and debatable claims. For example, Rezun emphasizes Iran's alleged historical desire to dominate East Asia through the "east-west" expansion of the Trans-Iranian Railway under the last Shah. He argues that mis expansion was intended to redirect "die flow of Afghan trade away from the Soviet border back to the markets of South Asia and the Middle East." (p. 13) One must question the significance of the "Afghan trade" as justification for an eastward railway expansion. Moreover, Iran's limited eastbound railways were mostly related to industrial and intercity transportation, and they actually did not extend to the Afghani border. Rezun also asserts that for centuries "Iranian clergy [have acted] as the most vocal opponents of unpopular monarchs." (p. IS) In fact, however, since the sixteenth century when the Safavids established Shia as the official religion of me state, Shiite clerics have sometimes been supportive of imperial courts and at other times, passive and apolitical. Occasionally, they have raised voices of dissent, most notably with the opposition to the last Shah led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Roger Savory is more focused and comprehensive in his chapter on how Iran, caught between two colonial powers-Russia and Britainfollowed a policy of "equilibrium," playing one against the other, while at times trying to find a "third power." He identifies and elaborates on the political and economic "imperatives" of Iran's foreign policy. However, he