Product Description

Starting from the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, intelligence expert Ronen Bergman details the complex array of political manoeuvring, assassination attempts, arms trading, and suicide bombs that have characterised the secret war between Iran and the intelligence services of Israel and the United States. Drawing on interviews with a plethora of intelligence agents from all sides, this is a riveting exploration of the growing influence of Iran in the Middle East, and the covert activities of the CIA and Mossad to tackle Iran and its political ambitions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #416222 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Review
Israeli journalist Bergman documents convincingly and with a fair amount of balance Iran's backing of Hizballah and other terrorist fronts to undermine Israeli and U.S. policies.Armed with incriminating documents retrieved by Iranian students from the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 - classified information that revealed intensive intelligence collaboration among the shah, the United States and Israel - the Khomeini-led revolutionary regime in Iran vowed "death to Israel" and largely blamed the Jews for the country's turmoil. Bergman chronicles these growing hostilities from the fraught earliest days of the revolution, when Abraham Geffen, an Iranian Jew working for El Al, collaborated with the Mossad to help stranded Jews get out of Iran. The narrative continues through the Iran-Iraq war, successive Lebanese wars and the mid-1980s establishment of Hizballah in southern Lebanon. From the outset, asserts Bergman, Hizballah's goals were to replace the existing Lebanese regime with Shi'ite Muslim leadership, to liberate Jerusalem, eradicate the Jewish state and drive Western forces out of the region. Under the noses of Israeli and American intelligence officials, Hizballah intensified terrorist efforts, perfecting the arts of suicide bombing, assassinations and hostage taking. Efforts to stop Hizbollah (and further other hawkish aims of the Reagan administration) led to the nexus of covert U.S. and Israeli dealings that sparked the Iran-Contra scandal. In the decades-long struggle between Iran/Hizbollah and Israel/America, even the fate of a single individual - Israeli Defense Force airman Ron Arad, shot down over Lebanon in 1986 and never heard from again - could prompt kidnappings, assassinations and terrorist bombings around the globe. Bergman looks carefully at the Iranians' worldwide terrorist connections, drug rings and counterfeit operations, support for al-Qaeda and growing rapprochement with Hamas. His wake-up call ends by asserting that the threat of nuclear war is very real, thanks in part to an Israeli arms trader's lucrative sales of weapons of mass destruction to Iran.Readers who grant the author his Israeli bias will find this a reasoned and perspicacious overview of the Western failure to recognize the Iranian threat. (Kirkus Reviews) --Kirkus

"Ronen Bergman combines a remarkable flair for research and tracking down elusive documents with a talent for exposition which impresses both academic and non-academic audiences." --Christopher Andrew, former Chair of the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge and Official Historian of MI5

"A reasoned and perspicacious overview of the western failure to recognize the Iranian threat." --Michael Oren, author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present

"Ronen Bergman combines a remarkable flair for research and tracking down elusive documents with a talent for exposition which impresses both academic and non-academic audiences." --Christopher Andrew, former Chair of the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge and Official Historian of MI5

"A reasoned and perspicacious overview of the western failure to recognize the Iranian threat." --Michael Oren, author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present

Review
"Ronen Bergman combines a remarkable flair for research and tracking down elusive documents with a talent for exposition which impresses both academic and non-academic audiences."

Review
"A reasoned and perspicacious overview of the western failure to recognize the Iranian threat."

Customer Reviews

Well written and important book.
Bergman has written a piece of work that credits Iran with much success and foresight in fighting Wars against Iraq in the 80's , Israel and the West in the 90's and beyond. Abandoning populist rhetoric Bergman unearths important archives showing how well thought out the Iranian regime has been in laying its roots of influence worldwide. He points out uncomfortable truths for a Western Public not happy to confront its own hypocrisy in its past dealings with the Middle East. A little known story is that of Israeli assistance at a critical juncture of the Iran-Iraq War that helped tip the War in Irans favour.
Also apparent is Irans success in creating Hezbollah, that has acted effectively to advocate for the Shia in Lebanon, providing a Military-Political representation of Shia in a predominantly Hostile Sunni environment.
Bergmans chief shortcoming is his fidelity to Israeli sensitivities which seems to prevent him from explicitly divulging much about Israels real relationship with Iran, which is clearly much more involved than either Government would like to admit, and in this respect the book does suffer from a degree of considerable bias, but the sin is in omission, and what has been commissioned is of excellent quality.

Interesting and frightening.
This is an interesting book, although I didn't think it was easy to read.

The author appears to have copious amounts of inside information about terror, terrorists, their methods, their backers, suppliers, financers etc.

If half of it is true, then the West, and the USA and Israel in particular, have plenty to worry about. Their worries centre both on terror at a low level, and terror at an atomic level.

The book is partial and gives hardly a mention of the Israeli attack on Iran in 1981. There is little information on the shooting down of an Iranian passenger airline by the USA in 1988. This resulted in the loss of 290 passengers including 66 children.

However, there appears to be no doubt that Iran is backing some murderous terror groups.

The author is critical of Israeli activity, although this is based on its inefficiency, rather than any misdeeds.

The cover of the book features a sketch of President Ahmadinejad. However, be aware that he doesn't really feature consistently in the book, until page 322 of 384 pages of narrative. In fact he appears less than Ron Arad (a kidnapped Israeli pilot).

Maybe a reader with more experience in this topic wouldn't find the book so interesting. However, I did like it, with reservations.

Chilling
This is a fascinating book which is well researched, well argued and well written. It tracks the failure of the Western world's intelligence agencies as well as those of Israel to understand and thwart the threat coming from Iran and those it uses as its proxy. Clearly anything written about Iran and radical Islam can excite extreme reactions on all sides, but the writer has tried to steer clear of this - although I fully expect others to disagree with this assertion.
I found it interesting to read not only for what is said, but also for the contrast between those who are prepared to think and act strategically over a 25+ year period, the luxury of a theocracy, and those who are more short termist i.e. Western politicians.
Recommended - but not for the faint hearted