Iran, Israel, and the United States

This work examines the triangular relationship between the United States, Israel, and Iran in relation to questions of political legitimacy (for Israel) and regime security (for Iran), approaching the issues from a decidedly pro-Israeli (and pro-American) and anti-Iranian perspective (with many of the unsettled questions about, for example, Iran's nuclear program being presented as not just settled, but beyond question). Individual chapters are presented on Iranian and Israeli domestic politics as they relate to the above questions and regional affairs; the issue of nuclear weapons (with the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons--for which the International Atomic Energy Agency has found no evidence--highlighted and Israel's widely known but officially unacknowledged nuclear arsenal downplayed); the relevance of recent conflicts involving forces seen as Iranian proxies including, as the author terms them, the "2006 Hezbollah War" (the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon following the capture of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah on either Lebanese or Israeli soil, depending on which party one listens to) and the "2008 Hamas War" (the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip dubbed Operation Cast Lead by the Israeli military); and, as mentioned above, issues of political legitimacy and regime security. The analysis is marred by pro-Israeli and pro-American obfuscations and outright falsehoods, such as the ludicrous contention that "the United States and the British organized and assisted in nationalizing Iran's oil industry," when in fact the exact opposite is the case; the US and the British organized a coup against the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran in order to subvert the nationalization of its oil industry. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Jalil Roshandel, PhD, is associate professor and director of the Security Studies program at the Department of Political Science, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC.