Book by former Iran official looks at Quds Force leader, Saudi king
In a new book, former Iranian negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian details previously unpublicized Iranian overtures to the United States and Saudi Arabia.
For the last few years, Al-Monitor's Seyed Hossein Mousavian has been among the most prolific Iranian writers in the United States promoting US-Iran reconciliation and trying to explain his complicated and often maligned country to American audiences.
In a new book, "Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace," Mousavian continues this mission while revealing new details of fruitless overtures by Iranian leaders to ease hostilities over the past two decades.
For students of this bitter history, the book — co-authored by Shahir ShahidSaless, a political analyst and freelance journalist who, like Mousavian, is also an Al-Monitor contributor — is most interesting for its vignettes and quotes from senior Iranian officials at crucial moments in US-Iran relations. For example, Mousavian puts the reader in the room with Qassem Suleimani, commander of the shadowy Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, at the time that Iran was deciding to work indirectly with the United States to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The United States was only interested in tactical cooperation, Suleimani warned at a meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. If something more emerged, “The dreams of you Westoxificated diplomats would come true,” and if not, the two sides would still have eliminated one of Iran’s worst enemies, he said. If the United States decided to betray Iran afterward, the Quds Force leader warned, the Americans would become trapped like the Soviets before them and eventually leave Afghanistan in defeat.
