Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History

With the current conflict in Iran going, I thought to myself. "How about I learn some more about Iran", other than a book on the Iran-Contra Affair years ago. It was a good book, and shows what the methodology of the Iranian government, and how it came to be, up until I believe 2024, before Trump's second term. Overall it's a slow read, but informative. I skipped the nuclear deal stuff because well... I think I heard enough about it, and felt that while it's good to learn some particulars, I felt I was alright to skip that section. It's a well thought out book, it doesn't extoll any side, and gives a good breakdown of Iranian thought, both politically and some military thoughts. And one thing that stood out was the Second Gulf War, how maybe if Bush didn't lump Iran into the "axis of evil", there would be less US and NATO casualties in Iraq while it was going on, so there's that. I feel that maybe had we just taken the intelligence and ran instead of backstabbing, we may have dealt with less of the forward defense than we did in those years. 5 out of 5 stars.

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