Facing down Iran.

• Author: Weitz, Richard
• Position: Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States - Book Review

Ilan I. Berman, Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States (Lenham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 224 pp., $24.95.

THIS CONCISE book represents a well-integrated compilation of Ilan Berman's writings on Iran, supplemented with new arguments and information. Its main thesis is that the United States lacks a coherent policy to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. Although the analysis is deliberately stark, Tehran Rising makes an essential contribution to the ongoing debate about how the United States should respond to the Iranian challenge.

Mr. Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council and the editor of the Journal for International Security, begins by reviewing Iran's support for international terrorism since the advent of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Berman stresses the unswerving commitment of the regime's leaders since Ayatollah Khomeini to providing such assistance. Like the early Bolsheviks, they have seen exporting revolutionary principles (albeit Shi'a Islamic fundamentalism rather than Marxism-Leninism) as their core mission. Like Moscow during its heyday, Tehran has hosted myriad would-be revolutionaries and provided them with military training, financial assistance and other support. The regime's closest terrorist ally, Hizballah, drove Western and Israeli military forces from Lebanon and became an influential player in Lebanese national politics. The text underplays, however, the weak performance

of Iranian-trained revolutionaries in most other countries, and the negative blowback Tehran has experienced from its subversive policies--including protracted pariah status, a paucity of allies during its eight-year war with Saddam Hussein, and now the apparent spill-over of violence from post-Saddam Iraq into Ahvaz and other Iranian cities. Only in recent years have Iran's leaders, by renouncing their external revolutionary ambitions, largely succeeded in mending overt relations with Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern governments.

Berman then moves on to present a comprehensive summary of Iran's extensive nuclear-related activities. He cogently argues that Iranian behavior fits a country seeking nuclear weapons, rather than one exclusively developing a civilian nuclear energy program. In their complex negotiations with Britain, France and Germany, Iranian officials have given the concept of a "phase transition" a bad name by constantly freezing and unfreezing their uranium enrichment program. One fact suggesting Iranian interest in nuclear weapons that the text does not mention is the nature of Iran's ballistic missile programs. Thus far Tehran has devoted resources toward improving their range rather than their accuracy, making these missiles most suitable for carrying nuclear, rather than conventional, warheads. While Berman does highlight the assistance that foreign states and...