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Iranyana: Un Agente Segreto Nel Cuore Dell'impero Di Ahmadinejad (2010)

by Robert Baer(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

8856606062 (ISBN13: 9788856606065)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Piemme

review 1: With the current political situation today, and the politicians beating the war drums about Iran, Robert Baer seems to be a very drowned out voice of reason, but also a speaker of truth. His experience as a CIA agent who is extremely familiar with Iran, it's culture and history, he lays out a very very well reasoned analysis as to why our positions toward Iran are counterproductive, and why war with Iran would be an absolutly terrible idea. Even thought it was written in 2008, the general truths remain the same as to the nature of the threats coming from Iran, their attitudes, our attitudes, and exactly how dangerous the nation can be. He explains with a lot of facts and analysis as to why Iran is not run by a bunch of religious wackos, but rather by a group of extremel... morey intelligent, calculating, dangerous people, who are also very rational actors. He analyzes Iran's defensive strategies, their investments in people and partners, their ability to act through proxies, and just how dangerous they can be if they are not approached properly. This is not just a good read, it's a must read for any politican or anyone interested in foreign affairs with respect to the Middle East.
review 2: Baer doesn't know much about IranThe New York TimesThe Devil We Know Dealing With the New Iranian Superpower By Robert Baer 279 pages. Crown Publishers. $25.95.As the end of the Bush era draws near, it is clear that its policy of treating Iran as a country that must be weakened, punished and perhaps even overthrown has failed. Suddenly it has become fashionable to say that Iran must be recognized, respected and dealt with as the increasingly powerful nation that it is.Earlier this month Henry Kissinger, who as secretary of state helped arm and prop up Iran's monarchy in the 1970s, said there was "no reason for the United States to resist a strong Iran" today. The goal should be to restore the old regional balance of power based on the pillars of two countries friendly to the United States, Israel and Iran, he added.In his new book, "The Devil We Know," Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer turned author, goes further. He paints a picture of Iran as a disciplined, strategic, monolithic "police state" and military power driven by imperial ambitions. "At the bottom of Iran's soul is a newfound taste for empire," he states.Baer, who is fluent in Arabic and says he has rusty Persian, spent years in the Middle East. He certainly knows places like Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia well. But Arabia is not Persia, and the lens of the Arab world can distort Iran rather than bring it into sharp focus.Baer's Iran doesn't care about international boundaries or accept Western definitions of how the world should be organized. His Iran has "effectively annexed" the entire south of Iraq and could gain control of Iraqi oil. His Iran wants control of Islam's holiest sites, Mecca and Medina."I witnessed firsthand Iran's seismic shift, its rise from anarchy to statist power," Baer writes. But most of his eye-witnessing was done from afar. Baer says he was in Iran for a week in late 1978, just before the victory of the revolution. He visited again in 2005 - he doesn't say for how long - as part of a British television documentary team.On that visit, he laments, he "couldn't find a single good restaurant in Tehran." He was invited to parties, which he heard were as "wild and hip" as anything in the West, but worried that he had "pressed his luck" and stayed away. Anyway, he adds, "I couldn't stay up that late."Readers who enjoyed George Clooney's performance in "Syriana" (the character was modeled on Baer) might be disappointed that in real life Baer was too timid and tired to go to a party in a private Iranian home. He might have met some real Iranians there. And did he really have so few sources on the ground in Tehran that he could not find a good restaurant? (There are many.)Perhaps Baer is unaware that Iranians operate in two worlds, the public and the private, and that just about everything meaningful in social and political life happens behind closed doors. Some of the best conversations - and the best meals - are in private homes."Iran is a culture completely alien to ours," he writes. But behind those walls are a lot of regular people from different backgrounds who want much the same things Americans do: a decent standard of living and secure futures for their children.At times Baer describes Iran in sweeping absolutes. "For the last 15 years, Iran has demonstrated a consistent, coherent strategy: It tests its strategy, vets it proxies, judges who is serious and who isn't, and makes plans accordingly," he writes.The statement ignores the fact that Iran's leadership sometimes behaves in unpredictable ways. Iran is a country of raw, often raucous politics where different points of view - within the ruling elite - are expressed, debated and accepted or rejected.Then he shifts course, saying that Iran's lines of power and authority are "almost impossible to follow.""They seem to change between morning and night," he continues.Baer correctly points out that Iran is a place of checks and balances, where the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, "rules by a consensus obscure even to outsiders." But then he says with authority that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is merely a "figurehead," ignoring that he is an important player whose public declarations that Iran will never bow to the will of others in its nuclear program have been accepted as policy.One of Baer's most honest assertions in "The Devil We Know" is toward the end, when he finally admits, "At all levels Iran is never what it seems."Throughout the book readers may find themselves asking, "How does he know?" How does he know that in a secret address to Iran's National Security Council in October 2000, Ayatollah Khamenei put both hands on the conference table, looked around the room and announced, "Lebanon is Iran's greatest foreign policy success" and said that success would be repeated "until all of Islam was liberated."Did the CIA have a secret video camera in the room? A spy?How does he know that Iran's military is still a formidable, combat-hardened fighting force because of its experience on the battlefield in the Iran-Iraq war? That conflict ended 20 years ago.Just because Iran thinks of itself as the pre-eminent power of the Gulf (look at its size, population and location) doesn't mean that it is bent on establishing an empire from the Middle East to South Asia. Just because Iran has based its military doctrine on a defensive strategy of asymmetrical warfare doesn't mean that it has expansionist designs.Baer calls Iran "the only stable, enduring state in the gulf" and "a rational actor with fixed reasonable demands." The only real option, he adds, is to sit down together at the negotiating table, treat Iran as the power it has become and see what it has to offer.The United States should also guarantee Iranian international security, conduct joint patrols in the Gulf, establish direct military-to-military communications there, ease sanctions so that Iran will not lust after Saudi oil and give Iran a defined security role in Iraq and Afghanistan, he writes.Many of these ideas sound reasonable. Indeed, Iran is the most powerful and stable country in the Gulf, and the United States has for too long often treated it as an unruly child to be ignored or a criminal to be punished. But Baer undercuts the force of his argument when he throws out a list of more ambitious recommendations that would require the reshaping of the Middle East.The United States should leave Iraq and "drop the mess" into Iran's lap. The partition of Iraq should happen as quickly as possible. Iran should not be prevented from being allowed to administer the holiest sites of Islam with Saudi Arabia. Jordan should be turned into a Palestinian state. Why not hold a referendum in Bahrain to determine whether it wants to return to its status as an Iranian island? Why not redraw the borders of the Middle East in both Israel's and Iran's favor?These proposals could be the subject of Baer's next book. Perhaps he could begin it by explaining why he seems to hold the Iranians in such awe and the Arabs in such contempt. As he writes at one point, the Arabs "lack the spiritual and intellectual depth of Iranians." How does he know? less

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