Ervand Abrahamian writes:

The electoral landscape, however, shifted drastically early this decade. It did so in part because Khatami failed to deliver on his promises: the conservatives in the Guardian Council vetoed many of his reform bills, and he feared that to cross them would provoke retaliation from the revolutionary guards. But the biggest cause of the shift was Bush, wh0 in 2002 named Iran as a member of his Axis of Evil, even though Tehran had just helped the US overthrow the Taliban and instal Karzai in Kabul. This blow was compounded in 2003, when the Bush administration, riding high after its quick victory over Saddam, contemptuously dismissed an Iranian offer to strike a ‘grand bargain’. Although the White House denied it, leaks from the State Department – as well as from the Iranian Foreign Office – confirm that Iran offered to accept additional nuclear inspections, to help stabilise Iraq, co-operate in tracking down al-Qaida, and use its influence to moderate the activities of Hamas and Hizbullah. In return, Tehran sought guarantees that the US would accept Iran as a Gulf power and give up its policy of regime change. In Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader, Kasra Naji provides a detailed and informative account of the decline of the reform movement, though he tends to underestimate the inadvertent role played by the Bush administration. Most observers would agree with Khatami that the White House helped to pull the rug from under the reformers. Once Washington refused the bargain, Tehran, not surprisingly, tried to save face by denying it had ever been offered.

(LRB 6 November 2008)

Tauris | hardback 298 pp. |ISBN: 9781845116361