Entessar, Nader, and Kaveh L. Afrasiabi. Trump and Iran: From Containment to Confrontation.

• Author: Mehranian, Yeprem

Entessar, Nader, and Kaveh L. Afrasiabi. Trump and Iran: From Containment to Confrontation. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020.

Nader Entessar and Kaveh L. Afrasiabi's most recent scholarly collaboration--Trump and Iran: From Containment to Confrontation--sheds light on the political and military-strategic ramifications of the Trump administration's rescindment of his predecessor's short-lived nuclear agreement with Iran, an abrupt turnabout the authors attribute to Trump's "mercurial" nature, "highly fluid... controversial... prone to policy reversals and even 'flip-flops'" (3). The book compels the reader to question the notion that the chronic conflict between the United States and Iran is mainly a disagreement over the nature of Iran's policy of developing a nuclear industry. The book highlights the multidimensionality of the conflict for all contenders. For the United Sates the challenge would be to find a solution simultaneously capable of preventing post-revolutionary Iran from militarizing its nuclear industry, while resolving the escalating rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia in a way to...