Tag Archives: All Fall Down

We’ve Been Here Before

Gary Sick, an American academic, worked under President Jimmy Carter during the Iranian student takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. He wrote an insightful book about the American/Iranian tragedy, All Fall Down; America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran. I used his book as a reference for the time lines of the crisis when writing my novel If Winter Comes.

Sick has written a thoughtful criticism of President Trump’s response to the Khashoggi murder. As might be expected, he faults Trump’s embrace of Mohammad bin Salman.

Trump, Sick writes, “while careless and ill-informed about every aspect of government, ultimately comes back to his few fundamental convictions: governing is a business, it’s all about profit, and he is the sole stable genius who knows how to make it work.”

Sick faults Trump for treating the U.S./Saudi relationship as merely a business deal to bring in money. The moral dimensions of the relationship escape the president.

Sick reminds us of a similar deal in the 1970s.

“We have done this before. In the 1970s our man was the shah of Iran.

“How did that work out?”

Five Favorite Books

My list of favorite books varies according to what I’m currently reading, but here I list, in no particular order, five books that gave me new insights.

Gary Sick, All Fall Down. Gary Sick was part of Jimmy Carter’s presidential team. He outlines in detail the thinking and events that led to the Iranian student takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, in 1979. Our relationship with Iran since then has been, to say the least, tortured. I referred to this book while researching for my novel, When Winter Comes.

John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life. One of the best biographies I have ever read. It won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. It opened up for me a part of twentieth century American history that still influences us today.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. This book, published in 1996, describes the author’s perspective on major civilizations in the world today and their differing world views.

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. A little book that arose out of Frankl’s experience in the death camps of the Holocaust. He explains not only the philosophy that helped him survive but gave him meaning afterward.

Elizabeth Elliot, A Slow and Certain Light. Elliot was the widow of Jim Elliot, killed while serving as a missionary to the South American Auca tribe. I began reading and rereading this book during a period of purposelessness, a time I thought would never end. It gave me hope until something better arrived.

Understanding Iran

 

Iran, ancient Persia, is a Muslim majority country whose inhabitants speak a derivative of Persian, not Arabic. The recent agreement between the United States, Iran, and five other nations on Iran’s nuclear capabilities is our first significant exchange with the country in over three decades. Iran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for limited sanctions relief. Opinions differ, to say the obvious, on how effective the deal is.

Drop out of the news for a while and read fiction to better understand this unique culture. Digging to America by Anne Tyler, for example, presents a touching international blend of an all-American suburban family and an Iranian-American one. They meet in an airport while waiting for the arrival of their adopted babies from China. The story follows the families through the years, allowing the reader glimpses of the Iranians’ past lives and their adjustment to America.

Or try a nonfiction book. We have not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979, when radical Iranians, followers of the theocratic leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, an official in the Jimmy Carter administration during the Iranian hostage crisis, gives a fascinating blow-by-blow description of the events. The hostages were released literally in the last few hours of Carter’s time in the White House.

Or listen to one of the former hostages, Michael Metrinko, held captive and treated badly at times. He was quoted earlier in the fall as saying, “I happen to like Iranians . . . I had a lot of close Iranian friends and still do . . . I don’t like the government of Iran. Politically, I despise it. But it’s there. Almost 80 million people. Vast resources. We as a country, a government, absolutely have to have relations with Iran. Deal with them in business, international relations, politically. Let people move back and forth. The world is too dangerous a place not to do this. Not doing that is crazy. We have to be able to talk to them quickly if the need arises.”