(pp. xi-xii):

The current enmity between the two states [Israel and Iran] has more to do with the shift in the balance of power in the Middle East after the end of the Cold War and the defeat of Iraq in the first Persian Gulf War than it does with the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Though the Iranian revolution was a major setback for Israel, it didn't stop the Jewish State from supporting Iran and seeking to improve its relations with the Khomeini government as a counter to Israel's Arab enemies. Ironically, when Iranian leaders called for Israel's destruction in the 1980s, Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington lobbied the United States not to pay attention to Iranian rhetoric. Today, even though Iran's revolutionary Islamist zeal is far from what it was in the 1980s, things have changed quite a bit. The Iranian government, in turn, has pursued a double policy throughout this period: In the 1980s, Iran made itself the most vocal regional supporter of the Palestinian cause. Yet its rhetoric was seldom followed up with action, since Tehran's strategic interest -- reducing tensions with Israel and using the Jewish State to reestablish relations with the United States -- contradicted Iran's ideological imperatives. After 1991 and the efforts by the United States and Israel to create a new Middle East order based on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and on Iran's prolonged isolation, however, Iran's ideological and strategic interests overlapped, and Tehran decided for the first time to become a front-line opponent of the Jewish State. At this stage, both Israel and Iran used their influence to undermine U.S. foreign policy initiatives that they deemed beneficial to the other. Iran worked against the peace process, fearing that it would be left isolated in the region, and Israel sought to prevent a U.S.-Iran dialogue because it feared that Washington would betray Israeli security interests if Iran and the United States were to communicate directly. To this day, that logic prevails in both capitals, and it is fueling the tensions in the region.

(p. 8):

Some two hundred thousand Iranian Jews and their descendants live in Israel. Some of them belong to the highest levels of the Israeli political elite. In the Islamic Republic, these individuals would never have been able to excel in their careers. Long before reaching prominence, they would have been stopped by the glass ceiling that separates religious minorities, seculars, and disbelievers from those considered to be capable of being loyal to the Islamic Republic. Current Israeli President Moshe Katsav and Deputy Prime Minister (and former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] and Defense Minister) Shaul Mofaz were both in Iran. The recently resigned IDF chief of staff, Dan Halutz, was born to Persian immigrants.

(pp. 8-9):

Since the Iranian revolution there has been an unwritten understanding between Iran's Jewish minority and the Iranian authorities. As long as the Jews of Iran oppose Zionism and the Israeli state, they would be protected in Iran and given a great deal of religious freedom. "This arrangement, which makes a clear separation between being a Jew and being a Zionist, was the community's idea; they brought it to the Khomeini regime after the revolution," noted David Menashri, Israel's most prominent expert on Iran, himself an Iranian-born Jew. Khomeini issued a "fatwa," a religious decree, declaring that Jews were to be protected.

Few Iranian Jews take Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel rhetoric seriously, and they point to the fact that little has changed for Iranian Jews under him. "Anti-Semitism is not an eastern phenomenon, it's not an Islamic or Iranian phenomenon -- anti-Semitism is a European phenomenon," Ciamak Morsathegh, head of the Jewish hospital in Tehran, explained. Iran's forty synagogues, many of them with Hebrew schools, haven't been touched. Neither has the Jewish library, which boasts twenty thousand titles, or Jewish hospitals and cemeteries. Still, Iran's Jews have not sat idly by. The Jewish member of the Iranian Majlis, or parliament (most religious minorities are guaranteed a seat in the parliament), Maurice Mohtamed, has been outspoken in his condemnation of Ahmadinejad's comments. "When our president spoke about the Holocaust, I considered it my duty as a Jew to speak about this issue," Mohtamed told the Guardian. "The biggest disaster in human history is based on tens of thousands of films and documents. I said these remarks are a big insult to the whole Jewish society in Iran and the whole world." Haroun Yashayaei, the chairman of Iran's Jewish Council, quickly followed suit, sending Ahmadinejad a strongly worded letter protesting his remarks. The Jewish community won support from Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad's more moderate predecessor. "we should speak out if even a single Jew is killed," the reformist president said in widely published remarks in early 2006. "Don't forget that one of the crimes of Hitler, Nazism and German National Socialism was the massacre of innocent people, among them many Jews."

Iran under the Shah refused to officially recognize Israel, but maintained close relations in many concrete ways (pp. 25-26):

Iran preferred to keep most of its collaboration with Israel out of the public eye. On the one hand, the Shah believed that overt relations with Israel would harm Iran's standing with the Arab nations and fuel Arab opposition to Iranian policies in the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, he needed Israel in order to balance the threat from the Soviets and pro-Soviet Arab states. To minimize the visibility of his Israeli dealings, the Shah decided to have interactions with Israel handled by Iran's dreaded secret police -- Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar (Organization of Information and State Security, or Savak). In 1957, the Shah ordered the Iranian intelligence service to establish relations with the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, and manage Iran's sensitive dealings with the Jewish State, which often kept the Iranian Foreign Ministry in the dark. Iranian military and secret police operatives were secretly trained by Israeli intelligence officers in both Iran and Israel. Israel also trained four hundred Iranian pilots, paratroopers, and artillery men and sold Iran high-tech military equipment. According to one former Iranian ambassador, the Mossad also trained the Savak in torture and investigative techniques as well.

(pp. 50-51):

Regional primacy has been the norm rather than the exception for Iran throughout its three-thousand-year history. Between 550 B.C. and A.D. 630, Persia was one of the world's leading powers, defeating the armies of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Athens, and Rome. The Persians established the world's first empire, stretching from Libya in the west to Ethiopia in the south, Bulgaria in the north, and Indian in the east. In the empires of the Parthian and Sassanian dynasties, mighty Rome found its match. Iran has vast natural resources, a unique geostrategic position, a vibrant culture, and a population that dwarfs those of most of its neighbors. Well aware of these advantages, the Iranians have consistently aspired to the role of primus inter pares in regional politics. These realities did not escape the Shah, who dreamt of resurrecting Iran's past glory and turning it into the mighty power it had once been. Only under Iranian supremacy, the Shah believed, could the region flourish and find an escape from war an bloodshed. Iran was the "only nation capable of maintaining peace and stability in the Mideast," he wrote on his deathbed in Answer to History. In the minds of the Iranians, their country was the natural hegemon in the Persian Gulf; the weakness of Iran's neighbors disqualified them from legitimately aspiring to that position. "No one could match Iran's power, Iran's culture, or Iran's history," explained Gholam-Reza Afkhami, former adviser to the Shah. "It's important to realize this in order to understand why [the Shah] did what he did. And also why everyone else in the world said that he was arrogant."

Washington was well aware of the Shah's aspiration for imperial grandeur and found Iran's motivation legitimate even though its ambitions often clashed with those of Washington. The Shah's ambitious economic reforms, as well as his lavish military spending, were all aimed at actualizing Iran's potential as the region's most powerful nation. By the early 1970s, there were clear indications that Iran had reached this position. During the 1960s and 1970s, Iran quickly outgrew its neighbors in terms of economic and military strength, making it the "obvious major power in the region." On February 12, 1971, the Shah's minister of court wrote in his diary that Iran was "rapidly assuming leadership not only over the Persian Gulf but over the Middle East and the entire oil-producing world." Iran's oil revenues jumped from the millions into the billions. Much of this oil revenue was used to modernize and expand Iran's military, as well as to grant loans to Iran's Arab neighbors.

In 1973, during and after the Egypt-Syria war with Israel (p. 47):

Yet, at the same time, Iran refused to join the Arab oil embargo against Israel and continued to supply Israel with oil throughout the conflict. Iran had an official policy of disallowing the use of oil as a political weapon. "We never accepted oil embargoes against any country," explained a former Iranian ambassador. "We didn't believe in using that weapon." This policy enabled Tehran always to be in a position to sell oil to all parties of a conflict. In addition, Iran also supplied the Israel Defense Forces with arms, including badly needed heavy mortars.

Israel developed close relations with Kurdish leader Mullah Mustapha Barzani, supporting his struggle with Iraq. Iran was able to use this relationship to put its own pressure on Iraq (p. 53):

In spite of the Shah's hesitations, Israel managed to bring both the Iranians and Barzani -- who had his own apprehensions about the Shah's motivations -- on board after several months of lobbying. The United States was informed about the cooperative efforts and agreed to lend limited clandestine support. Iran, too, wanted its role in the collaboration to be inconspicuous.

The first agreement was sealed in May 1965, in Mustapha Barzani's own headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan. Dressed in traditional Kurdish costumes, Savak, the Shah's secret service, and Mossad officials crossed the Iraqi border by foot to reach the headquarters o the Kurdish guerrillas. Israel offered to train, fund, and arm Barzani's forces in order to stage a large-scale offensive against the Iraqi army. The funding and the arms shipments were to be channeled through Savak, which also provided the Israelis with a land corridor into Iraqi Kurdistan. Iranian cooperation enabled a steady flow of Israeli arms, doctors, medical supplies, and instructors to make their way to Iraqi Kurdistan from Israel via Iran.

Having pressured Iraq, the Shah then turned around and cut a deal with Iraq that undercut the Kurds (pp. 54-55):

In March 1975, however, the Kurdish operation came to a sudden end as Iran pulled the rug from under Israel and its primary lever against Iraq. Algeria's president, Houari Boumédienne, had informed the Shah that Iraq's de facto ruler, Saddam Hussein, planned to attend the OPEC summit in Algiers in order to negotiate an end to Iraqi-Iranian hostilities, including their border dispute over the Shatt al-Arab/Arvand Rud waterway. On March 3, 1975, the Shah left for Algeria, and, three days later, Boumédienne announced that the conflict between Iran and Iraq was over. The two countries reached a border agreement that called for each side to refrain from interference in the other's internal affairs and that established a division of control over the Shatt al-Arab/Arvand Rud waterway, a long-standing territorial objective of Iran. Through this Algiers Accord, the waterway dispute was clearly resolved in Iran's favor and was initially hailed by many as one of the Shah's foremost triumphs, as it boosted Iran's status as the paramount power in the Persian Gulf. [ . . . ]

The agreement took Israel and the United States by complete surprise. The Shah neither consulted nor informed his Israeli and American allies about the negotiations with the Iraqis, not did he indicate that the collaboration with the Kurds was in jeopardy.

(p. 63):

The Shah himself was known for his suspicions of -- and at times contempt for -- Israel and world Jewry. The Iranian monarch had an exaggerated belief in Jewish influence in Washington, believing that American Jewry controlled the U.S. media, among other things. His overblown estimation of the Jewish lobby's influence caused many headaches for Israel, but it also provided Israel with a degree of deterrence. "The Shah believed -- quite erroneously -- that every op-ed in the New York Times was the work of Israel -- so he didn't want to antagonize Israel," commented a senior Israeli official stationed in Iran. As the image in America of the Shah's rule deteriorated in the 1970s and was increasingly characterized by human rights abuses and lack of democracy, the Iranian emperor's need of the Jewish lobby's good offices grew. This enabled Israel to offer Iran the support of the Jewish lobby in return for Iranian concessions. But according to Ambassador Hoveyda, former head of the Permanent Mission of Iran to the UN, Shimon Peres gave the Shah only empty promises. Offering the support of the Jewish lobby "was a cheap trick on the part of Shimon Peres. It didn't cost him anything. He would [offer help], but he would do nothing."

(p. 75):

The Iraqi acquisition of Scud ballistic missiles prompted the initiation of one of the most secretive and controversial collaborations between Iran and Israel -- Project Flower. The Shah instructed Gen. Toufanian to turn to the Israelis for missile technology. The Israeli response went beyond just a sale of American missiles. Tel Aviv proposed a collaboration that would use Iranian funds and Israeli know-how to develop a missile with a range of two hundred miles. Israel contended that Tehran needed indigenously produced ballistic missiles in its arsenal, and the Shah was all ears. "You must have ground-to-ground missiles," Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman told Toufanian. "A country like yours, with F-14s, with so many F-4s, with the problems surrounding you, [must have] a good missile force." The initial discussion had already begun under the Rabin government. The Shah and then-Defense Minister Shimon Peres signed an agreement in April 1977 in Tehran, together with five other oil-for-arms contracts totalling $1 billion. The objective was to extend the range of an existing Israeli missile and replace American-supplied parts so that Israel could legally export it without Washington's approval. The Israeli missile included American-made inertial navigation equipment and a guidance system that Tel Aviv was forbidden to make available to other countries.

Further down, Parsi notes (p. 76): "A critical aspect of Project Flower was that the missiles could be fitted with nuclear warheads, although this possibility wasn't pursued at the time." The project ended with the 1979 revolution.

(p. 95):

In early 1980, only months after the eruption of the hostage crisis, Ahmed Kashani, the youngest son of Grand Ayatollah Abol Qassem Kashani, who had played a key role in the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951, visited Israel -- most likely the first Iranian to do so after the revolution -- to discuss arms sales and military cooperation against Iraq's nuclear program at Osirak. Though he presented himself as a "concerned private citizen," his trip resulted in Begin's approval of the shipment of tires for Phantom fighter planes as well as weapons for the Iranian army. Begin's decision completely contradicted U.S. interest and Washington's explicit policy of isolating Iran to secure the release of the American hostages. Carter was infuriated by Begin's insensitivity toward the trauma America was undergoing. After a harsh exchange between the two tough-minded leaders, Carter reprimanded Israel by putting on hold future sales of spare parts to the Jewish State.

(pp. 95-96):

Increasingly it was becoming clear that Iran's rhetoric against Israel did not match its actual policy. At the same time that Iran was secretly dealing with the government of Israel, it was openly condemning the Jewish State and questioning its right to exist. For instance, on August 14, 1980, the Iranian Foreign Ministry called for an end to oil sales to countries that supported Israel. After much fanfare, the threat was never acted upon. "The ideological opposition to Israel," explained a Tehran-based expert on Iranian foreign policy, "played a role for this regime before the revolution." Once in power, the revolutionary government's foreign policy was "rhetorial opposition to Israel but practical collaboration . . . with the Jewish State."

In 1980 Iraq attacked Iran, which underscored the fact that Israel and Iran shared a common enemy; also, initial encounters between the PLO and revolutionary Iran soured quickly, so Iran was never tempted to translate anti-Israeli rhetoric into concrete PLO support (p. 100):

Out of Iran's strategic dilemma, with ideological and strategic forces pulling its foreign policy in different directions, emerged a multilayered strategy that continues to bewilder political analysts and foreign leaders alike. Instead of opting to balance the Arabs by aligning with Israel, or to seek accommodation with the Arabs by taking the lead against Israel, Tehran chose to do both by differentiating between its operational policy and its rhetoric. On the other hand, Iran collaborated secretly with Israel on security matters, and, on the other, it took its rhetorical excesses against Israel to even higher levels to cover up its Israeli dealings.

(p. 102):

In a three-hour conversation with his close associates during the early days of the war [with Iraq], Ayatollah Khomeini spelled out the Islamic Republic's approach to the Palestinian conflict. According to the Father of the Iranian revolution, and the person embodying its ideology, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was primarily a Palestinian issue. At the second level, it should involve the Arab states neighboring Israel, and only at the third level should it involve Iran and other Islamic states. As a result, Iran should never be more involved in the conflict than the Palestinians themselves and their Arab neighbors, and Iran should not be a frontline state against Israel. Direct confrontation with the Jewish State should be left to the Palestinians themselves and their immediate Arab neighbors. "We never wanted to get directly involved in the fights against Israel," explained Ali Reza Alavi Tabar, who belongs to the reformist faction of the Iranian government. Khomeini also told his associates that in the event of an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis, Iran should lend its support to the agreement by standing behind the Palestinians.

During the early years of the Iraq-Iran war, Khomeini was given ample opportunity to demonstrate Iran's differentiation between rhetoric and operational policy. On June 6, 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, several leaders of Lebanon's Shia community, including the head of what later became the Lebanese Hezbollah, were in Tehran for a conference. News of the attack came when the conference was in session, and the Shia leaders immediately turned to Iran for help. Khomeini agreed and sent a high-level delegation, including the Iranian defense minister and some elite troops, to Syria to look into Iran's potential role. On June 11, the Iranians arrived in Syria, but they soon concluded what Khomeini had suspected all along -- that the Lebanon war was a diversion to take Iran's focus away from Iraq. Saddam had on the eve of the Lebanon war offered peace with Iran and called on Tehran to join Baghdad in fighting Israel. Khomeini had refused. [ . . . ]

This wasn't an isolated incident. In 1986, fighting broke out between Hezbollah and the pro-Syrian SSNP (Syrian Social Nationalist Party) as a result of Syria's efforts to bring Hezbollah under its control. This put Iran's ally in Lebanon at odds with Iran's ally against Iraq. Tehran chose the latter.

(p. 111):

Southern Lebanon had traditionally been the home of Lebanon's disenfranchised Shia Muslim community. The Shias initially welcomed the Israelis because of their own competition with Palestinian refugees for local resources and their resentment of the PLO's often heavy-handed rule of the south. But the Shias wee dismayed when the Israelis overstayed their welcome by creating a "security zone" in the south. They soon turned against Israel as it blocked the Shias' access to northern markets and began dumping Israeli goods into their local economy, causing indigenous economic interests to suffer. In addition, Israel's invasion had been immensely destructive and only added to the misery of Lebanese who had already been suffering from seven years of civil war. Close to 20,000 Lebanese were killed in the invasion, and another 450,000 were displaced. In September 1982, under Sharon's direction, a Lebanese Christian militia unit entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. With tacit Israeli approval, the militia raped, killed, and maimed as many as several thousand civilian refugees. Approximately one quarter of those refugees were Shias who had fled the violence from the south.

The plight of the Shias under Israeli occupation made them receptive to Tehran's message. Faced with a mighty Israeli opponent, the Shias desperately needed an external ally, and Tehran was more than willing to play the part -- not so much to act out its anti-Israeli sentiments but rather to find a stronghold in an Arab country. Tehran badly needed progress in exporting its revolution. It had failed in Iraq and Bahrain, in spite of the majority Shia populations of those countries. Now, thanks to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Iran was given the opportunity to plant the seeds of an Islamic revolution in the Levant. Out of the Israeli invasion emerged a new and invigorated Shia movement, inspired by Iran's revolution. Initially just a small number of armed groups of young men organized under the banner of Islam and dedicated to fighting the Israeli occupation, over time they banded together -- through Iranian help and assistance -- into what has proved to be one of Israel's most formidable foes -- the Lebanese Hezbollah.

The beginnings of the Iran-Contra scandal (pp. 117-118):

After Peres' intervention, Reagan gave his approval to conduct a secret investigation of the proposed move and assigned it to Michael Ledeen, an American University professor who in Nomrodi's words was "known as a true and warm Zionist who often attended public events on behalf of Israel." Asked by McFarlane to keep both the State Department and the CIA in the dark, Ledeen arranged a meeting with Shimon Peres in Tel Aviv on May 6, 1985. Known today as one of Washington's most ardent opponents of any form of contacts with the Iranian regime, Ledeen belonged to the opposite camp back then. Ledeen told the Israeli prime minister exactly what he wanted to hear: America's lack of intelligence on Iran was deplorable and it needed Israel's assistance in establishing dialogue with Tehran. The Israeli prime minister "willingly granted the request," according to Nimrodi. "We have been approached by senior members of the Iranian regime, through middlemen, concerning sales of military equipment," Peres told Ledeen. The Israeli prime minister suggested that it might be useful to send a trial balloon to Tehran -- one arms shipment, to test the intentions of the Iranians. Even thought he CIA was largely kept in the dark about the dealings with Iran, it supported the idea of reaching out to Iran to prevent it from falling into the Soviet Union's orbit and even recommended arms sales to Iran through a third country to strengthen Iranian moderates and improve U.S. intelligence on Iran.

(p. 128):

But Israel wasn't discouraged by these failures. Israel's worldview, which remained remarkably unaffected by the changing realities of Iran and by Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, was still dominated by the periphery doctrine -- by the fear of Iraq and the promise of Iran. Defense Minister Rabin often invoked the Iraqi threat to justify the need to reach out to Tehran. At a press conference in October 1987, he deplored skirmishes between the U.S. and Iranian navies in the Persian Gulf and told reporters "that the United States had been manipulated by Iraq into attacking Iran in the Persian Gulf War, and . . . that Israel had not changed its own longstanding tilt towards Iran." He went on to reveal in the starkest possible terms Israel's unfazed view of Iran as a strategic partner." Iran is Israel's best friend and we do not intend to change our position in relation to Tehran, because Khomeini's regime will not last forever."

These were not empty words. Close advisers to Rabin testify that, in private, he often spoke of Iran with great nostalgia. He told U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering on numerous occasions during his tenure in Israel between 1985 and 1988 that "the United States has to find a way to develop closer relationships with Iran." According to Pickering, "despite the then recent Revolution in Iran, he was very much interested in Iran and thought it was very important to develop a change in the relationship." Other prominent Israelis echoed these sentiments.

The "periphery doctrine" was the theory that Israel could find allies among non-Arabs in the Middle East, especially nations on the outer edges of the Arab bloc that had traditional rivalries with the Arabs. Turkey and Iran were the main examples, but Israel pursued relationships with other non-Arab groups like the Kurds, and with minority Arab groups like the Marionites in Lebanon and the Druze within Israel itself.

In 1990, after Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait (pp. 140-141):

This new political dynamic -- in which Israel was a liability rather than a strategic asset to the United States -- was most worrisome to Tel Aviv, even though the destruction of Saddam's war machine greatly benefited Israel. Much to Israel's anger, both the United States and the United Kingdom used the promise of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict as a carrot to convince the Arab states to join the anti-Iraq coalition. To make matters worse, William Waldegrave, British minister of state at the Foreign Office, stated in Parliament that, in the new Middle East order, Israel had ceased to matter. Waldegrave told the House of Commons that the United States should learn that a strategic alliance with Israel "was not particularly useful if it cannot be used in a crisis such as this. . . . [N]ow the U.S. knows that an alliance with Israel that is of no use for this situation is useless."

(p. 149):

With U.S.-Arab relations already warming, a breakthrough in U.S.-Iranian ties could wipe out what little strategic significance Israel retained. Unlike Israel, Iran was strategically located right between the world's two largest reservoirs of oil and natural gas: the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Iran bordered the newly freed but landlocked central Asian states, which sat on major reserves of oil and natural gas and held the promise of becoming major markets for Western goods. With a population of more than sixty million, Iran itself offered a market that was ten times larger than that of Israel. As the Cold War ended, the Jewish State wrestled with the question of how to prove its strategic utility to the United States.

Washington's eagerness for Middle East peacemaking after the Gulf War pushed U.S.-Israel relations to a new low. The United States was at the apex of its power and needed to show the world that it would use its diplomatic muscle to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue once and for all. "It was time to seize the moment because . . . something potentially significant [was] stirring among the Arabs," Secretary of State Baker felt. The new attitude of the Arabs could convince Israel to opt for peace, he optimistically believed. But Baker was in for a surprise. Shamir and Israel's Likud government were not in the mood to be convinced, nor were they excited about Washington's new confidence in Middle East peacemaking, suspecting that it was fueled by the Bush administration's debt to Syria and Egypt for their support in the Persian Gulf War. "There was a feeling that there was an inherent danger in this," explained Halevi, the former head of the Israeli Mossad. "The United States might feel a necessity to tilt towards the Arabs. . . . The conditions of peace would be such that it would not be acceptable to Israel."

The Bush administration organized a multilateral peace conference in Madrid, pointedly excluding Iran (pp. 154-155)

The noninvitation to Madrid was in many ways the last straw for Rafsanjani's policy of détente with Washington. Already, Iran felt that its policy modifications and outreach had failed to be recognized and appreciated by the Bush administration. First, Washington chose to keep Saddam in power and let a good portion of the Iraqi Republican Guard remain intact to balance Iran. "This was done on purpose," explained Col. Lawrence Wilkinson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff. "Just enough of the troops were kept not to be a threat to Iraq's neighbors, but well enough to balance Iran." Second, Washington preempted the creation of an inclusive security architecture for the Persian Gulf. "It was the first time that Iran did a grand gesture. It sold on credit, [and] it got nothing in return," Namazi recalled. "[Iran] clearly felt that the policy of isolation would be in place no matter what it did." Rafsanjani's goodwill gestures carried significant domestic political risk, and fewer and fewer officials around the Iranian president were willing to pay the cost of flirting with the United States. [ . . . ]

As soon as it became clear that an invitation to the conference wasn't forthcoming, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, gave a green light to Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour -- one of the cofounders of the Lebanese Hezbollah who during the 1980s had lobbied Ayatollah Kohmeini to actively confront Israel -- to organize a conference in opposition to Madrid. This was a watershed moment, as Iran for the first time started to seriously reach out to rejectionist Palestinian groups, in spite of the Shia-Sunni divide and their enmity dating back to the Iraq-Iran war. Only a year earlier Iran had even reduced its financial support to Hezbolah in Lebanon. Iran took the political lead against the Madrid conference, a position it wouldn't have taken had Washington invited it to participate, according to Ruholla K. Ramazani of the University of Virginia, the foremost expert on Iranian foreign policy.

(p. 160):

By the summer of 1993, the PLO was near collapse. It had failed to translate its tactical gains from the Intifada into political capital on the international scene. And with its financial support dried up, bankruptcy was just around the corner. In its hour of desperation, the PLO simply had to make a deal with Israel. "If they didn't we would overrun them entirely," asserted Israel's former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevi. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis agreed to peace precisely because the PLO was dying: the Palestinians were too weak to seek an alternative solution, and the Israelis were so strong that a better deal could hardly be found. It was better for Israel to save a weakened PLO than to destroy it, the Labor Party argued. "The neighbors were weak, the Palestinians were broke, Syria had no backer, Egypt was out of the game, so we had a great window of opportunity to make peace," said Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). To Peres, it was nothing short of an opportunity to turn the tide of history.

If Israel missed this opportunity, it would risk facing a radicalized Palestinian population in the future, possibly led by Hamas.

Israel finally turned on Iran following the lead of Ephraim Sneh, Amod Gilad, and Uri Lubrani, who argued that Iran, with their long-term potential for developing a nuclear weapons program, had become Israel's greatest threat (p. 162):

Rabin was a skeptic at first. He didn't appreciate Sneh's efforts, asking him to tone down his rhetoric and refrain from making Iran a legislative focus. But only a few months into his reign as prime minister -- and two years before Iran became directly involved in Palestinian terror against Israel -- Rabin's skepticism was replaced with passion and enthusiasm. The doctrinal shift was a reality.

Swiftly, a campaign was organized to convince the United States and the EU that Iran was a global threat. Peres and Rabin made sure that Israel's new fear of Iran wouldn't escape anyone's notice. By October 1992, they began echoing Iran's inflammatory rhetoric. Repeating their slogans at every opportunity, the Labor leaders adopted an unprecedented tone against Iran. Peres accused Iran of "fanning all the flames in the Middle East," implying that the failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was rooted in Iran's meddling rather than in the shortcomings of Israel and the Palestinians. Rabin accused Iran of having "megalomaniac tendencies" and that it sought to become the "leading power in the region." He told the Knesset in December 1992 that Israel's "struggle against murderous Islamic terror" was "meant to awaken the world which is lying in slumber" to the dangers of Shia fundamentalism. "Death is at our doorstep," Rabin concluded, even though only a few years earlier he'd called Iran a strategic ally.

(pp. 163-164):

Israel based its case on a number of factors. First and foremost, Israel accused Iran of seeking nuclear and chemical weapons. Warning the international community that Iran would be armed with a nuclear bomb by 1999, Perest told France 3 television in October 1992 that "Iran is the greatest threat [to peace] and greatest problem in the Middle East . . . because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militantism." You can't deter a fanatic, terrorist state with nuclear weapons, the Israeli foreign minister argued. And if the nuclear-armed Shia theocracy acquired ballistic missiles as well, Iran would become a greater threat than the Palestinians. (Israel wouldn't learn of the extent of the Iranian missile program until late 1994.)

Second, the nature of the Iranian regime wand its anti-Israel ideology was a threat in and of itself. Coexistence with such an irredeemable regime was impossible. Iran was "insane," Peres and Rabin declared and added that Khomeinism was the only ideology left that bleieved that ends justified means. "Khomeinism without Khomeini" was Rabin's mantra as he spoke of Israel's new security environment. The veteran Israeli politician, who "never missed an opportunity to blame Iran," argued that Khomeini's fundamentalist ideology continued to live on even after the ayatollah's death and that it had replaced Communism as an ideological threat to the West. Rabin repeated his mantra on Khomeinism in "every single speech he gave when he traveled," Makovsky noted. "I think he said it a thousand times. He was really focused on Khomeinism." And Iran, after all, did question Israel's right to exist.

(pp. 165-166):

But however passionately Peres and Rabin spoke of the Iranian threat, the numbers weren't on their side. The skepticism that met their accusation was rooted in a rather simple fact -- no one believed that Iran overnight had turned into a major threat to the region. Though Iraq's demise had benefited Tehran, it had also led to an unprecedented buildup of the armies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Saudi Arabia in particular stood out. Its military spending dwarfed that of Iran. The Saudis spent more than $40 billion on arms in 1991, at a time when Iran's military expenditure stood at $6.7 billion. Iran's aging military was less of a threat to the Arabs than the Arabs' sophisticated U.S.-built weaponry was to Iran. Israel itself did not let the optimism for peace reduce its military budget. On the contrary, the threat portrayal of Iran helped justify Israel's military expansion. With a military budget of $8.7 billion in 1992, Israel, with a population of four million, outspent Iran, with a population of sixty million. (Rafsanjani cut Iran's military spending from $6.7 billion in 1991 to $4.2 billion in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.) During his very first meeting with Clinton, Rabin changed Israel's annual arms request from tactical F-16s to modified F-15e's that could reach Iran. Israel ordered twenty-five of these, for $85 million each.

(p. 167):

Some Israelis say that Israel needs an existential threat. It could be a country, like Iran; an ideology, like Islamic fundamentalism; or at other times it could be a tactic -- terrorism. "You have to recognize that we Israelis need an existential threat. It is part of the way we view the world. If we can find more than one, that would be preferable, but we will settle for one," an Israeli Iran expert explained to me. This phenomenon is deeply rooted in the Jewish experience. After centuries of persecution, a Holocaust that almost wiped out the entire Jewish population in Europe, and fifty years of statehood punctuated by frequent wars, such thinking is understandable. When facing an existential threat, countries tend to work from worst-case scenarios. Everything that happens is then judged against that worse-case scenario. "When you are always prepared for the worst, you can pass off subpar performances as the best thing that ever happened," the Iran expert joked. [ . . . ]

"It's much easier to give worst-case scenarios. It usually serves the personal interest of the planner. Because if you are giving the worst-case prophecy, then when it is not realized, everyone is happy. No one remembers it. But when it is realized, you can always say, 'I told you so.'" [Brom] laughed as he said this, but I got the feeling that his levelheadedness had not been popular at the Israel Defense Forces. He had been part of the Israeli intelligence apparatus when it systematically overestimated, and at times exaggerated, Iran's nuclear capabilities. "Remember," he said mockingly, "the Iranians are always five to seven years from the bomb. Time passes but they're always five to seven years from the bomb."

(p. 175):

News of the meeting was leaked to the press on August 27 [1993], and less than three weeks later, with much fanfare, the Declaration of Principles was signed by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO official Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) at a White House ceremony. The deal was symbolically concluded with a historic handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin -- the two former enemies. Against all odds, and in complete secrecy, the Israelis and Palestinians had succeeded in brokering a peace deal that could push Iran to the fringes of regional politics in a way that Madrid never could. Iran reacted swiftly and harshly. It elevated opposition to Israel into high policy by increasing its rhetorical opposition to Israel and announcing in the hard-line newspaper Ettelaat that Iran would offer limitless support to the opponents of the Oslo agreement. Almost overnight, the cold peace that reigned between Israel and Iran in the 1980s turned into a cold war. [ . . . ]

Peace between the Arabs and the Israelis wasn't a threat to Iran per se. Only when combined with the Israeli-American effort to isolate Iran -- depict it as a threat and exclude it from regional decision-making -- did peace make Tehran nervous.

(p. 177):

In spite of [Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar] Velayati's denials, Israeli intelligence pinned the blame on Iran for a spree of mid-1994 terror attacks targeting Israeli interests worldwide. On July 18, 1994, a bomb blew up in the headquarters of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires. Eighty-six civilians were killed and more than three hundred wounded in what was the worst terrorist attack to date in Argentine history. Nobody has been convicted of the attack, but few in Israel doubt who the culprits are -- Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Two years earlier, on March 17, 1992, a bomb had destroyed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people. Though other groups had claimed responsibility for this bombing, Israel still suspected a Hezbollah link. According to Israeli accounts, these terror attacks were retaliations for Israeli operations in South Lebanon. Israeli forces had assassinated the leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Abbas Mussawi, and his family a month before the embassy bombing. Three months before the AMIA attack, Israel had bombed a Hezbollah camp deep inside Lebanon and kidnapped Lebanese Shia leader Mustafa Dirani in an attempt to extract information on a missing Israeli soldier. "There is no doubt that the [embassy] bombing was connected to the Mussawi operation and that the government at the time was unaware of possible consequences for Jews abroad," said Avinoam Bar-Yosef, the director general of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a Jerusalem think tank affiliated with the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Israeli government.

As Rabin and Peres escalated their anti-Iranian propaganda, Israel came more and more to see Iran's hand behind these bombings, which as far as I can tell still aren't clearly linked even to Hezbollah.

(p. 193):

Needless to say, Rabin's tough stance added new friction to an already tense relationship. "He wasn't the ultimate diplomat," Hordes recalled. What helped soothe relations was Iran. Israel's new push against Iran provided AIPAC with an opportunity to reinvent itself in the Oslo era, when its traditional function of countering Arab influence in Washington had become obsolete. "AIPAC made Iran a major issue since they didn't have any other issue to champion," said Shai Feldman of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. "The U.S. was in favor of the new peace process, so what would they push for?" AIPAC needed a new issue, and Israel needed help in turning Washington against Iran. It was a win-win situation.

(p. 185):

By October 1994, Washington started to adopt the Israeli line on Iran. In response to Israeli pressure -- and not to Iranian actions -- Washington's rhetoric on Iran began to mirror Israel's talking points. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher told an audience at Georgetown University in October 1994 that "Iran is the world's most significant sponsor of terrorism and the most ardent opponent of the Middle East peace process. The international community has been far too tolerant of Iran's outlaw behavior. . . . The evidence is overwhelming: Iran is intent on projecting terror and extremism across the Middle East and beyond. Only a concerted international effort can stop it."

(pp. 186-187):

In his attempts to expand Iran's economic relations with the international community, Rafsanjani had for years fought to reopen Iran's oil industry to foreign companies. The symbolism of this move was significant. The oil industry had played a central role in the Iranian revolution and in the country's economic and political development earlier in the twentieth century. Iran opened bidding for production agreements for two of its off-shore oil fields to international companies in 1994. The first oil contrract after the revolution, worth $1 billion, was expected to go to the French-owned Total. However, after having negotiated with Conoco, Iran announced on March 6, 1995, that the contract would go to the Americans. The deal was approved by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself and was intended as an olive branch to Washington, the Iranians say. To ensure the blessing of the White House, Conoco had kept the U.S. government closely informed of its negotiations. The State Department had repeatedly reassured Conoco that the White House would approve the deal.

For AIPAC, the Conoco deal "was a coincidence and a convenient target." The organization went into high gear to use the Iranian offer not only to scuttle the Conoco deal, but also to put an end to all U.S.-Iran trade. In a report that it released on April 2, 1995, titled "Comprehensive U.S. Sanctions Against Iran: A Plan for Action," AIPAC argued that Iran must be punished for its actions against Israel. "Iran's leaders reject the existence of Israel. Moreover, Iran views the peace process as an American attempt to legalize Israel's occupation of Palestinian, Muslim lands," it said. Pressured by Congress, AIPAC, and the Israelis, President Clinton swiftly scrapped the deal by issuing two executive orders that effectively prohibited all trade with Iran.

The decision was announced on April 30 by Clinton in a speech before the World Jewish Congress.

After Rabin was assassinated, new Israeli prime minister Netanyahu shifted Israel's enemy focus away from Iran and back toward the PLO (pp. 196-197):

Much to Gilad's frustration, Netanyahu focused on PLO leader Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian threat instead of on Iran, and he put a complete end to Israel's confrontational rhetoric against Tehran. It was a major policy shift that affected all levels of Israel's planning vis-à-vis Iran. "Until the Netanyahu government, there was a proliferation of Israeli statements trying to deter Iran, warning Iran, the long arm of the Israeli air force, etc. That was stopped, to his credit, by Netanyahu," said Ehud Yaari of Israel's Channel 2. According to Dore Gold, who served as Netanyahu's UN ambassador, the new Israeli prime minister wanted to avoid the mistakes of his predecessor. "There was a sense that perhaps some of the rhetoric of the previous Peres government might have damaged certain relationships in the region. For example, by talking about the new Middle East and Israel having an economic role," he said. Several of Netanyahu's advisers went so far as to argue that Israel and Iran shared mutual interests, beyond the disagreements between them. Israeli media sympathetic to the Likud government's shift on Iran argued that the previous Labor government was to blame for the escalation with Iran, citing Israeli envoy Lubrani's efforts to convince the Clinton administration to finance a coup d'état. The publication of the Labor initiative had "caused huge damage to Israel," unnamed Israeli intelligence officials told Israel's Channel 2. "If in the past the United States was the great Satan and Israel the small Satan, then today the Iranians regard Israel as the Satan that sits inside the brain of the big Satan and activates it." [ . . . ]

But Netanyahu went beyond just lowering the rhetoric. He tried to reach an understanding with Iran through the help of prominent Iranian Jews, he stopped Israeli attacks on Iran within international organizations, he arranged for meetings between Iranian and Israeli parliamentarians to reach out to their Iranian counterparts at meetings of the Inter-Parliamentarian Union.

(p. 199):

Thirdly, from a domestic political perspective, Netanyahu aimed to turn the Israeli public against the Oslo process and end the land-for-peace formula. But he couldn't direct Israel's anger toward Arafat and the Palestinians if Iran was seen as the source of the terror. "Blaming the Iranians for Palestinian terrorism would be counterproductive to his message that terror was coming from the Palestinians," Weissman of AIPAC explained. Just as the idea of an Iranian threat served Peres and Rabin's desire to convince the Israeli public to support reconciliation with the Arabs, that idea undermined Netanyahu's efforts to convince Israelis to oppose that very same reconciliation.

(p. 201):

For Iran, however, Likud's political agenda and opposition to Oslo were good enough. The Iranians preferred Likud over Labor for the same reason that Likud blamed the Palestinians and not Iran: An Israel that didn't pursue a peace based on Iran's isolation wouldn't need to turn Washington and the international community against Iran. "In Iran, the perception was that Likud wasn't serious about peace [with the Palestinians], so they did not need a scapegoat," an Iranian political strategist told me bluntly. "Labor, however, needed a scapegoat."

Of course, when Likud later decided they wanted a scapegoat, they found Iran as useful as Labor had earlier.

(pp. 221-222):

But while Israel accused Iran of funding Palestinian terror, the Palestinians themselves complained about empty Iranian promises. Clearly, Iran's rhetoric still conveyed a sense of Iranian obligation toward the Palestinians. Iran's supreme leader told the head of Hamas that "the holy war for Palestine is for the honor of Islam and Muslims, and we will continue our firm support for the Palestinian people despite all the political and economic pressure, and that the issue of Jerusalem was "not a Palestinian problem, but one for all Moslems." But it was easier for Iran to offer rhetorical rather than practical support. The Iranian slogans were rarely followed up with concrete actions, even after the outbreak of the second Intifada. While the Iranians took the lead in making grandiose speeches about the Palestinian cause, they seldom tried to live up to the standards they set in their statements. European diplomats in contact with representatives of Islamic Jihad and Hamas who visited Iran after the Intifada broke out reported that both groups were utterly disappointed with their Iranian hosts. Tehran provided them with neither money nor weapons. A joke in the streets of Tehran reflected Iran's pretense: "Why aren't there any stones left to stone the adulteress? Per the order of the Supreme Leader, all the stones have been shipped to Palestine as Iran's contribution to the Intifada."

(pp. 223-224):

In both capitals, it was thought that if Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, they would continue the Clinton administration's Middle East policies: strong support for Israel and the Middle East peace process, along with significant pressure to sanction and isolate Iran (even though Clinton, toward the end of his presidency, sought to reach out to Iran). Rightly or wrongly, the Iranians believed that Clinton's greatest mistake was that he let Israel dominate America's foreign policy in the Middle East and that he unnecessarily linked Iran's long-standing but resolvable problems with the United States to Iran's bitter rivalry with Israel.

It was thought that a George Bush-Dick Cheney White House, on the other hand, could bring back the foreign policy approach of the elder George Bush -- pressure on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories, greater sensitivity to the intrerests of Washington's Arab allies, and an energy policy that wouldn't cut off American oil businesses from major markets such as Iran. After all, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush's vice-presidential running mate, had as the CEO of the American energy service company Halliburton severely criticized the Clinton administration's economic sanctions on Iran.

The Iranians were wrong about Bush and Israel, but after 9/11 they found common ground on Afghanistan (p. 226):

Having a staunchly anti-Iranian and anti-Shia government in Afghanistan hardly undermined the Clinton administration's overarching goal of isolating Iran. That policy came back to haunt America a few years later. But now, the Iranians were eager to offer their help to Washington and show America the strategic benefits of cooperation with Iran. "The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States," recalled Flynt Leverett, then senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council. The plan that had been prepared by Powell called for cooperation with Iran that would be used as a platform for persuading Tehran to terminate its involvement with anti-Israeli terrorist groups in return for a positive strategic relationship with Washington.

The plan incensed Israel. Suddenly, much like after the end of the Cold War, events in the Middle East risked making Israel a burden rather than an asset to the United States, while giving Iran a chance to prove its value to America. If a U.S.-Iran dialogue was initiated, there would be "a lot of concern in Israel," Yossi Alpher, an adviser to Barak and a former Mossad official, told me. "Where are we [Israel] in this dialogue? Will the U.S. consult with us about our needs and fears? Will we be part of some package deal with Iran and if so, what part?"

(p. 227):

Israel and U.S. neoconservatives, who had found their way back to the corridors of power after Bush's election, had a different plan in mind. America should put all the actors it accused of supporting terror on notice -- particularly Iran and the Palestinian Authority. In a letter signed by forty-one prominent neoconservatives, including William Kristol, Richard Perle, and Charles Krauthammer, Bush was urged to target not only al-Qaeda, but also Hezbollah and demand that Iran and Syria immediately cease all military, financial, and political support for that organization. If they refused to comply, Bush should "consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism." Starting a war with Iran and Syria could overstretch the United States, but it would also put America and Israel on the same side of the war and increase -- rather than decrease -- the United States' need for Israel.

(pp. 228-229):

The talks progressed better than expected. The discussions focused on "how to effectively unseat the Taliban and, once the Taliban was gone, how to stand up an Afghan government," and the Iranians gave extensive assistance to the United States in the war, unaware of what was about to unfold after the success in Afghanistan. The Iranian diplomats impressed their American and European counterparts tremendously with their knowledge and expertise about Afghanistan and the Taliban. And Iran's help was not negligible. The Iranians offered their air bases to the United States, they offered to perform search-and-rescue missions for downed American pilots, they served as a bridge between the Northern Alliance and the United States in the field against the Taliban, and on occasion they even used U.S. information to find and kill fleeing al-Qaeda leaders. [ . . . ]

Nowhere was the common interest of the United States and Iran more clear than during the Bonn Conference of December 2001, at which a number of prominent Afghans and representatives from various countries, including the United States and Iran, met under UN auspices in the capital of Germany to decide on a plan for governing Afghanistan. The United States and Iran had carefully laid the groundwork for the conference weeks in advance. Iran's political clout with the various warring Afghan groups proved to be crucial. It was Iran's influence over the Afghans and not America's threats and promises that moved the negotiations forward. It was also the Iranian delegation -- and not Dobbins -- that pointed out that the draft of the Bonn Declaration contained no language on democracy or any commitment on behalf of Afghanistan to help fight international terrorism. Curiously enough, Dobbins instructions contained nothing about democracy.

Bush thanked Iran by including them in his "Axis of Evil."

(p. 241):

But once they concluded that the minds of the neoconservatives in the administration were set and that President Bush would go to war with Iraq no matter what, Israel changed its tactics. By late spring 2002, a new wave of Israelis approached the White House. "It was the most curious thing I ever saw," recalled Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff. The message of the second wave was rather different: Iraq was a threat, they argued, and they provided new intelligence to back up their sudden change of heart. But so was Iran, they said, and Washington should not stop at invading Iraq. Iran should be the real target, but the Iranian threat could not be addressed unless Iraq was first neutralized. The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon saw the invasion of Iraq as a necessary step to a follow-up war against Iran. In early November 2002, Sharon revealed the Israeli objective when he urged Washington to invade Iran "the day after" Iraq was crushed.

The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) is a terrorist organization dedicated to overthrowing the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was long supported by Saddam Hussein. When Israel turned on Iran in the early 1990s the MKO made numerous overtures to Israel for support. The US had put MKO on its official terrorist organizations list, and Israel was initially cautious, but against the Axis of Evil, the MKO started to collect supporters (pp. 245-246):

In the White House, the Iranian terrorists were protected by Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the other neoconservatives, who saw the MKO as a potential asset in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime. After the U.S. invasion, the secretary of defense had decided, much like Saddam himself had done, to use the MKO fighters to keep the Iraqi population in check. He let the MKO keep their weapons and ordered them to man checkpoints in southern Iraq alongside U.S. troops. When Powell argued that the United States could not cozy up to a terrorist organization in the midst of America's own war on terror, Rumsfeld replied that he did not have enough troops to disarm the MKO.

The hawkish defense secretary's position on the MKO was an open secret in Washington. In late May 2003, ABC News reported that the Pentagon was calling for the overthrow of the Iranian regime by "using all available points of pressure on the Iranian regime, including backing armed Iranian dissidents and employing the services of the Mujahedin-e Khalq." (though Powell finally managed to close the MKO's offices in downtown Washington, D.C., in August 2003, the group is still active in the United States and Iraq. In January 2004, members organized a major fundraiser at Washington's MCI Center, with Richard Perle, a key figure in neoconservative circles, as one of the key speakers. The MKO's spokesperson and top lobbyist, Ali Reza Jafarzadeh, has since found employment as a terrorism expert for the Fox News network.)

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq was launched, Iran came to the US with a proposal to settle all differences (pp. 249-250):

Hard-liners in the Pentagon and vice president's office interpreted the Iranian proposal -- probably correctly -- as a sign of weakness. Iran could have made this offer -- one that blatantly countered its official ideology -- only because it was weak and desperate, they argued. These officials opposed a deal with Iran no matter what the ayatollahs offered, because, they said, America could get what it wanted for free by simply removing the regime in Tehran. If, on the other hand, talks were initiated and America accepted Iran's assistance, Washington would be put in the awkward situation of owing the ayatollahs. Why talk to Iran when you could simply dictate terms from a position of strength? After all, the swift success in Iraq showed that taking on Iran would not be too complicated. Only a month earlier, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith had briefed Defense and State Department officials on how the war in Iraq could be continued into Iran and Syria in order to replace the regimes there. The plans were quite extensive and far-reaching. "It was much more than just a contingency plan," Wilkerson recalled. But just saying no to the Iranians was not enough. The Beltway hawks apparently wanted to add insult to injury.

(pp. 251-252):

But the neoconservatives in Washington and hard-liners in the Israeli government did not want any "quiet contacts." The victory in Iraq and the rebuffing of the Iranian proposal energized them, and they redoubled their efforts to convince the White House to target Iran. "The liberation of Iraq was the first great battle for the future of the Middle East," wrote William Kristol, a leading neoconservative and the founder of the Project for the New American Century, in the Weekly Standard, in early May. "The next great battle -- not, we hope, a military battle -- will be for Iran. We are already in a death struggle with Iran over the future of Iraq." Arguing that success in Iraq would "spell the death knell for the Iranian revolution," Kristol joined other neoconservatives in promoting the notion of a domino effect. As Iraq became a democracy, other dictatorships in the Middle East would either follow suit or perish under the weight of the demands of their own peoples. "Popular discontent in Iran tends to heat up when U.S. soldiers get close to the Islamic Republic," wrote Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in the same magazine.

(pp. 253-255):

The newly created alliance between AIPAC and evangelical Christian Republicans on Capitol Hill turned out to be particularly helpful for this cause. Senator Sam Brownback, an ambitious second-term evangelical Republican from Kansas, had in the early spring of 2003 taken the lead in the Senate in undermining any U.S.-Iran dialogue. Knowing Powell's inclination to seek a dialogue with Iran and a grand bargain, Brownback worked to place political obstacles in Powell's p