Iran and the United States: A Cold War Case Study

About this book

Richard Cottam served in the U.S. embassy in Tehran from 1956 to 1958 and was consulted by the Department of State during the 1979 hostage crisis. This book draws upon his expert personal knowledge of Iranian politics to describe the spiraling decline of U.S.-Iranian relations since the cold war and the political consequences of those years U.S. policy he argues is flawed by ignorance inertia the tenacity of a cold war mentality a quixotic tilt toward Iraq and the blatant inconsistency of the Reagan administrations arms-for-hostages scheme that produced the Iran-contra scandal.