The Persian Puzzle, And The Labyrinth Of U.s. -iranian...

Alex Kiselev Senior Research Literature Review Dr. Nylen 10/27/2014 Working Title To many observers of contemporary international relations, Iran and its behavior in the international arena appear somewhat perplexing. Kenneth Pollack has described the â€Å"Persian Puzzle,† and the â€Å"labyrinth of U.S.-Iranian relations;† Stephen Walt has described Iran as a â€Å"riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma;† and Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations has testified that â€Å"the Islamic Republic of Iran remains one the most poorly understood regimes in the Middle East,† and that their foreign policy is â€Å"often inconsistent and contradictory.† A Google search of the terms â€Å"Iran enigma† returns dozens of pages of articles exploring the complexities of Iranian statecraft, rhetoric, and ideology. But despite decades of relations prior to the 1979 revolution and an unknown number of undisclosed diplomatic contacts between the United States and Iran post-1979, most Americans—and perhaps more importantly those at the highest levels of government—simply don’t understand present-day Iran on the level required to successfully engage the revolutionary state. Indeed, some former U.S. national security officials, like Columbia University professor Gary Sick, who served on the National Security Council for President Jimmy Carter in 1979, have stated that the U.S. was wholly unprepared to deal with the new Islamic Iranian state, which was a new