September 1989, Page 46, 47

Book Reviews

The Shah's Last Ride

By William Shawcross, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. 416 pp. $19.95.

Reviewed by Afshin Molavi

One can only sigh and shake one's head in wonder at the complex character and whirlwind life of the late Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The student of Shakespeare would view the shah as a 20th century King Lear, a man who committed enormous follies, yet evoked sympathy in the end as one "more sinned against than sinning."

Whatever perspective the reader brings to The Shah's Last Ride, he will find that author William Shawcross has searched deeply into the effects on Iran of the roller coaster 38-year reign of the shah, one of this century's most enigmatic leaders.

Widely regarded in the West as a megalomaniacal, obsessive, and arrogant leader who surrounded himself with sycophants, the shah stirred a peculiar interest in commentators, analysts, and specialists alike. Shawcross echoes many widely held beliefs about the shah, but he goes further by attempting to provide explanations for the Shah's actions and attitudes.

He is depicted as sincerely dedicated to his country, but misguided by excessive pride, military obsessions, xenophobic paranoia, and above all, oblivious confusion. When the people revolted, the shah could not understand their grievances. But, according to Shawcross, the shah had never understood his own people.

The Shah's highly visible exile, as depicted by Shawcross, was a journey through a world of fragile political alliances, backroom diplomatic dealings, and the shattered pride of a fallen king.

When the shah fell ill, President Jimmy Carter was faced with a difficult political question: Should the United States grant assylum to the Shah, thus risking the lives of US diplomats in Iran, or should the US turn its back on a fallen ally, thus lowering its credibility with other allies? Carter first opted for keeping the ailing shah at a distance, thus opening himself to intense criticism from such US defenders of the shah as Henry Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller, and Richard Nixon. Then, when the shah's rapid deterioration from cancer enabled these same Americans to pressure Carter into accepting the shah for treatment, the stage was set for a mob takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran and the 444 days of captivity that followed for its American staff.

Carter's heavy involvement with Iran was, by no means, unprecedented. US involvement in Iran has had a long and sordid history. Prior to 1953, most Iranians viewed the United States as a benign protector against British and Russian hegemony.

Then, the 1953 CIA-backed overthrow of nationalist leader Mohammad Mossadegh and the US-sponsored return of the shah from his first exile in Rome planted the first Iranian seeds of resentment at US intervention. The seeds were nourished by the failure of the shah's land reform program and the widening gulf between poverty of the urban peasants and the well-documented overindulgences of the Pahlavi court.

Resentment reached its climax at the excessively lavish party for state visitors from all over the world at the ruins of Persepolis celebrating 2500 years of Persian monarchy.

In a chapter devoted solely to the late Ayatollah Khomeini, Shawcross enumerates the misjudgments of the Western world toward the revolutionary ferment. "For a long time it seemed as if [Khomeini's denunciations] were merely the rantings of a bitter exile," Shawcross wrote. "Certainly few people in the West, even the intelligence agencies whose job it is to monitor such dissidence, had much idea of the latent forces that this voice in the wilderness represented in Iran itself."

Excessive pride permeated the Shah's actions, attitudes and lifestyle. Shakespeare's King Lear achieved true insight before he died; the shah did not. He did not understand why he was refused refuge by his former allies. He did not understand that the people were fed up with the Pahlavi monarchy because of the brutality of SAVAK, enforced modernization and the conspicuous corruption of the Pahlavi court. That the shah simply did not understand was, according to Shawcross, the main problem.

On the shah's deathbed, one of his last orders was to "commend the great Iranian people into the hands of the Crown Prince. God protect him." Even then, the shah simply could not understand that his wishes, no matter how sincere, could not influence reality in Iran-a reality and a country he never really understood.

Afshin Molavi, born in Iran and living in the US, is a journalism major at the University of Maryland and a publications assistant at the American Educational Trust.

For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel

By Ian S. Lustick, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 1988. 244 pp. $11.95

Reviewed by George E. Irani

"The worldview of Jewish fundamentalism is based on myths of Jewish choseness, mission, and territorial sovereignty similar to those that shaped Jewish politics before the Roman expulsion. Now, as then, establishment of Jewish political sovereignty over the Land of Israel constitutes the vital focus of zealous action. . ."

"Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), according to Doron Rosenbloom, has often succeeded in transforming 'the criminal to the crazy, the crazy to the odd, the odd to the mistaken, the mistaken to the good, the good to the excellent, the excellent to the accomplished reality, and the accomplished reality to the consensus view.'"

These two quotations eloquently summarize the phenomenon of Jewish fundamentalism which has pervaded Israeli politics since the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967 and October 1973.

Ian Lustick's excellent treatise on this important trend in Israel increases understanding of some aspects of the radicalization in Israeli politics. Lustick, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, wrote this book "to add substance to the debate over Israel's future by explaining what Jewish fundamentalists want."

In the first chapter, the author details the contemporary origins of Jewish fundamentalism. The euphoria and the pride the 1967 war generated in Israel and the depression provoked by the Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack in October 1973 are the two most important components of Jewish fundamentalism-Gush Emunim.

Gush Emunim, an umbrella organization of 10,000 to 20,000 followers, justifies its extraparliamentary activities with the slogans "The Land of Israel for the People of Israel, according the Torah [Bible] of Israel." Gush Emunim's success is due to its close relationship with the Likud, Israel's major right-wing political party.

One of the principal political aims of Gush Emunim is to ensure that Israel's hold over the occupied territories is never relinquished. "The whole Eretz Israel is now in the hands of the Jewish people, and just as we are not allowed to give up the state of Israel, so we are ordered to keep what we received there from Eretz Island."

According to Lustick, Jewish fundamentalists hold seven basic beliefs: 1) The Jewosh people are unlike any other people as a result of the covenant between God and the Jews at Mount Sinai. 2) The Palestinians have no legitimate claims to nationhood or to any part of the land of Israel. 3) Israel's isolation in the international community is proof of the Jews being the Chosen People. 4) Land for peace is an impossible option and contradicts the imperatives that that God has placed upon the Jewish people to inherit the land. 5) The land and the people of Israel are "one vital and integral unit." 6) Jewish fundamentalists believe that they posess a special and direct access to transcendental truth-God is the ultimate judge, the real estate agent. 7) And, finally, the road to redemption is based on the "single-minded faith and spiritual discipline of the Jewish people as a whole."

Jewish fundamentalists consider peace with the Arabs impossible until Jewish control has been extended over the whole of Eretz Israel. Gush Emunim leaders do not want to repeat in the West Bank the forced evacuation of their settlements in Sinai following the Egyptian-Israeli peace accords in 1979. Moreover, Jewish fundamentalists hold an incredible weapon in their hands: the threat to blow up the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque to build the Third Temple in Jerusalem. Such an eventuality might unleash a violent backlash and undermine any attempt at reconciliation between Arabs and Jews.

Lustick concludes his book with a word of advice to the US government. Washington should stress that America's special relationship with Israel is based on the cluster of "democratic, libertarian and universalistic values our two countries have always shared."

The coming years will test this relationship as the United States confronts Jewish fundamentalist messianism, and its aim to thwart any attempt to exchange land for peace.

The only drawback in this book is the lack of comparison of Jewish fundamentalism with Islamic and Christian brands of fundamentalism. Lustick's analysis, however, is must reading to all those concerned with the fragile, peaceful coexistence between the children of Abraham.

George E. Irani is ann Arab-American Catholic scholar. His book The Papacy and the Middle East is available in paperback through the AET Book Club at a discount rate of $7.95 per copy (list price $10.95) for Washington Report subscribers; two copies for $10.95.