Title: Republics of Myth: National Narratives and the US-Iran Conflict by Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, and John Tirman (review)
Abstract: Reviewed by: Republics of Myth: National Narratives and the US-Iran Conflict by Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, and John Tirman Nader Entessar (bio) Republics of Myth: National Narratives and the US-Iran Conflict By Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, and John Tirman Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022, 418 pages, hardcover $29.95, e-book $29.95 Ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the relationship between Washington and Tehran has seemingly been frozen in enmity which is bolstered by mutual distrust and acrimony. Surveying the tumultuous relationship between Iran and the United States in the past four decades, this book seeks to prognosticate the future direction(s) of this relationship, while providing new insights on how to chart a positive scenario based on the principles of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect, and nonintervention in order to avoid the recycling of the familiar trajectory of the acrimonious relations between the two countries. The book also highlights the importance of dynamic interactions between Iran and regional countries and other powers on the tortuous path of U.S.-Iran relations. The book's authors – Hussein Banai of Indiana University, Malcolm Byrne of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, and the late John Tirman of the Center for International Studies at MIT – combine decades of research and writing on American foreign policy and U.S.-Iran relations to offer a fascinating and rigorously researched book that can benefit scholars, policymakers, and journalists who focus on contemporary U.S. foreign policy in West Asia and beyond. The authors' main thesis is that the current enmity between the U.S. and Iran is derived from contrasting and competing narratives that have shaped American and Iranian politics and vision of their destiny in the world. The authors identify the dominant American narrative in terms of the "myth of the frontier" with its focus on taming, assimilating, and ultimately shaping Iran in Washington's image. Iran, the authors contend, has formed two dominant myths that have shaped its relations with the U.S. The first is the narrative of a proud nation whose lineage dates to Cyrus the Great. The second is derived from the betrayal of Imam Hussein, the much revered third Shi'a Imam, whose betrayal and martyrdom in the Battle of Karbala in October 680 CE (Muharram in the year AH 61 of the Islamic calendar) by the army of the Second Umayyad Caliph Yazid I. Both of Iran's narratives have continued to nurture the notion of a detestable, unrepenting outside force that has been the main source of Iran's misfortune and problems throughout [End Page 115] history. The authors posit that the clashing American and Iranian narratives have continuously enhanced the acrimonious relations between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic. By relying on various sources, including newly declassified documents and discussions with policymakers, the authors analyze how the two sides' clashing narratives have led the two countries to ignore an array of missed opportunities to improve their relations in the past forty years. The book has twelve chapters. In the introductory chapter, the authors place the American and Iranian myths in historical perspectives and offer a framework for understanding the genesis and development of each country's well-formed yet very different narratives. They explain the ramifications of the two clashing narratives and concomitant "narrative trap" for the current state of U.S.-Iran relations. In addition, they review the changing nature of U.S.-Iran relations from the 1940s to the onset of the Iranian Revolution of 1978-1979. The overthrow of the democratically elected nationalist government of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 by an Anglo-American engineered coup was a seminal event that solidified Iran's foreign policy narrative. According to the Military Intervention Project dataset developed by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the U.S. has undertaken almost 400 military interventions since 1776, half of which was undertaken between 1950 and 2019. Notwithstanding the enormity and repetitiveness of U.S. interventions throughout the world, very few of them have had the lasting impact that the 1953 coup in Iran has had on American foreign...
Publication Year: 2023
Publication Date: 2023-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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