Reading the Shah, and Ayatollahs in Tehran and What the U.S. Should Learn from the History

Huffington Post- What has been the root of the U.S’. inability to develop a sustainable policy or strategy on Iran for the last 30 years? What was not learnt from the Shah’s fall in 1979 and the nature of the revolutionaries who hijacked a pro-democracy freedom movement? And what are the parallels between the Shah’s regime and the current Islamic government in Tehran?

These are the types of questions that have been raised in my extensive interview with Dr. Abbas Milani, author of the recent book, The Shah, and the Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University in California.

While the Iranian government continues to curb social and political freedom in Iran, particularly after the post-presidential unrests which resulted in killing of dozens and arresting thousands of people, the author of a recent book, The Shah, provides a comprehensive image of parallels that contributed to the fall of the Shah and is now being perpetuated by the Islamists in Tehran.

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Hostage Diplomacy: Roxana Saberi and the Three Jailed Iranian Diplomats

In response to a piece in which I thoroughly criticized the Iranian Intelligence regarding the arrest of American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi, I was contacted by an Iranian diplomat who asked, me; if it’s all about human rights, why isn’t anybody talking about the three Iranian diplomats who have been taken hostage by the U.S. forces in Iraq since 2007?

What was he implying? What is the connection with the arrest of a journalist in Tehran and those three Iranian diplomats in Iraq? And is that the reason why the United States has been tragically unsuccessful in helping to release Saberi or other American-Iranians in prison? Read more