AMERICAN PURPOSE
Lessons from the Past
by Michael Mandelbaum
March 1, 2021

…Whatever Biden decides to do, the decision will necessarily form part of a broader policy toward the Islamic Republic. To be effective, that policy must take into account the nature of the Iranian regime and the history of its relations with the United States. For this purpose, a broader historical perspective is required, and a new book provides a most useful one. The Last Shah: America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty by Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, concerns the monarch whom the clergy who now rule Iran overthrew in 1979. From the book emerge some important enduring features of the regime, and of Iranian-American relations, that bear on the current effort to thwart the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions. READ MORE