Scott Peterson is one of the most well traveled and experienced foreign correspondents of his generation. An OPC member, he was Moscow bureau chief and is currently the Istanbul bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor. As evidenced by his book jacket photo, he is also a photographer for Getty Images.
Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran – A Journey Behind the Headlines [Simon & Schuster, September 21, 2010] is the result of more than 30 extended reporting trips to Iran since 1996. This book gives a colorful and incisive portrait of a complex, contradictory and volatile nation. Iran is a diverse society that is largely, and often deliberately, hidden from Western eyes. A bastion of revolutionary radicalism, Iran also has the most pro-American population in the Muslim Middle East. Peterson has heard the ritual shouts of “Death to America” but also has witnessed a crowd of Iranians spontaneously prevent an American flag from being burned by militants.
Iranians are fiercely proud of their Persian heritage and cultural traditions. Some endure the political theocracy by embracing it in the name of Allah and others turn to the western extravagances of nose-job clinics and shopping malls. Perhaps most unexpectedly, Peterson finds that Americans and Iranians are remarkably similar in mind-set and belief which could make them natural allies. Peterson has found that both nations share a spiritual model, a natural arrogance, a black and white worldview, the frequent need of an “enemy”in political discourse, and a belief in their own exceptionalism.
How can the Obama administration begin to wipe away 30 years of antagonism between the two nations? Iran was a charter member of Bush’s Axis of Evil and is now often portrayed as a nuclear nation with a taste for the Apocalypse. Quietly Iran helped the U.S. in 2001 in the war in Afghanistan and yet in Iraq it seems to have supported the insurgents who thwarted U.S. operations. This book could be a crucial guide as Americans and Iranians attempt to overcome their bitter estrangement.
“Journalist Scott Peterson has written a marvelous chronicle of Iran’s policies and politics. Drawing on an unparalleled body of interviews with both the mighty and the powerless, he paints a picture of a country in all its fascinating complexity and color. Peterson is a persistent and sympathetic interviewer, but he is also a sophisticated observer of Iranian history and politics. There is simply no better portrait of the tumultuous past fifteen years in Iran – from the intrigues at the top to the attitudes of ordinary people trying to live their lives in the turmoil of the Islamic Republic.” This blurb was written by Gary Sick, senior research scholar at Columbia University SIPA Middle East Institute and he will act as interlocutor at the OPC Book Night on Monday, September 20. Sick was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and he, like Peterson, has a depth of knowledge about the enigmatic country of Iran.