it's harder to shut the door in your face when you have a great voice, the best reporter and come back with the best tory, when you have stories that affect people and things like that. so, it is hard to say no to somebody who is excellent. i want them to be excellent. >> host: great. think you so much for doing this. we have to wrap this up. a delightful book and conversation. i think you for being here. >> guest: thank you, nia-malika. >> that was "after words," book tv signature program and which authors are interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, legislators and others. "after words" airs every weekend on book tv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12:00 p.m. on sunday and told p.m. on monday. you can watch "after words" on

line. the attack booktv.org and click on "after words" in the book tv series and topics list and the upper right hand side of the page. coming up, director of the iranian studies program at stanford university. ..

>> in a recent review of this book, in fact, in "wall street journal" the reviewer compared the sonic revolution of 1979 in terms of its magnitude to the revolution of 1917 and said that is how important, how consequential that event was, the 1917 revolution we know brought in len non, soviet union, the cold war. it's hard to imagine a more important event. he claims, and i don't think he's off that islamic revolution and the fall of the shah was an event of equal magnitude. understanding the shah is about understanding today and iran today and about understanding why we are where we are today

about domestically in iran and in terms of iran's relationships, troubled relationships with the u.s.. i think if you ask any book reader in the english speaking world, i suspect any part of the world, and ask what are the three major problems about iran, they would point to iran's nuclear program, iran's democratic movement, and they would probably point to events of august 5th, 1953 as a turning point in u.s.-iran relations. august 1953 is when the government was overthrown or dismissed, depending on whose narrative you believe. the shah fled and was brought back to iran and a new phase of

power began. some have pointed to sent 11 -- september 11 of having its origin in that event, that's how pivotal that event is supposed to be, and the iranian democratic movement as i will argue shortly, iran's nuclear program as i will try to argue shortly, and events of august' 53 by definition have all of them at the center of the shah. i think it is extremely or gent that we -- urgent that we understand him. we have to understand the past and really map out the future in understanding why have this tortured path today. if you ask any iranian, any student of iranian politics or

society, what have been the three defining problems of the last century in iran, i would think, again, there is some consensus that the three major problems iran has faced in the last century has been the question of modernity and its fight for tradition. it's the fight of the moderns and the traditionals. very much included in this debate between the traditionists and the modernists is a question of what does it mean to be an iranian, the question of iranian identity. is iranian identity primarily islamic or a hybrid identity or primarily a pre-islamic identity and islamic identity is an

unfitting diseased addition to it that came a thousand years ago and rejected by the body of politics. the question of identity is again the question incumbent in these earlier two issues, the question whether to debate between democracy and desperatism, between progress and authoritarianism, the question of whether you can have democracy and progress at the same time or whether there is something needed in the iran's current political cultural, social, some would say even ethnic makeup that requires or begets these one form after another. how is it that we replaced the shah, the shah's

authoritarianism with a far, far more brutal, more component corrupt islam regime. how is it we got rid of one king to get someone who now has more power than any king ever had and also claimed to speak for god, literally speak for god. recently one of his penchman said going against the word against the king is going against the word god himself. there is no he or she in their language. god is man, and ladies just have to live with the fact that it is a -- in all of these three questions, the domestic question and the international three questions i mentioned, the shah

is prominent. in his period, 1941-1979 is prominent. it is the intention of the book that the iranian democratic movement that we have heard so much about, the green movement that we hear so much about that created some kind of a mythical almost movement by bringing 3 million people in the city of 12 million people who silently marched and asked what happened to my world? that growth movement is in every fundamental composition, the same social forces that brought the shah down, so on defending why ltd shah fell, understanding why the coalition was formed against them and it was a very e stranged coalition, and i will explain why, and why there's

been political unstability in iran for the last 30 years. if american policymakers, for example, had truly studied the case of the shah's nuclear program and how he went about it, they would have managed, i think, the nuclear negotiations with iran in a very different way, and i suspect they might have come to better results, and finally, i, in the book, offer a rather different view of august of 53. my argument is that the event of 53 are far more complicated than those offered by the royalists who claim it was a day of national uprising or others who claim it was an infamous cia coo. i think the really is far, far

more comp my kateed, and i try to explain why it is more complicated and why, in fact, the people who rule iran today, the clergy had far more to do with mossadegh's fall than the cia ever did. the view unquestionable dominant force whose shift of position who completely shifted dynamics in iran were the clergy. you could clearly see in the documents the balance of forces was never against mossadegh. the latest documents is why we need another biography on the shah. there have been about a dozen so far. in my view, all of them have

been commissioned biographies in the sense they were written to demonize the shah by the opponents or others who were directly paid biographies. in one case, they paid a british lady close to half a million pounds in that time. she came to iran, spent very little time in iran, the embassies, she spent most of her time in iran in her hotel in the company of young handsome iranians who were eager to meet with this lady and did very little and got basically the money and repeated almost verbatim everything else that everybody else had written in the earlier biographies of the shah. the biographies have not done justice to the shah and partly

they have not done justice to the shah because part times they are commissioned and emissioned, but part of them is because it has not been possible to write, in my view, completely though roar document -- thorough documented views because the documents we needed were declassified both in the american archives and in british archives. there is a 30 year rule, most of the documents are classified for 30 years, some are classified for 70 years, and they get declassified in a sequential fashion and essentially i had to wait until 2009 for some of the most important documents to be declassified. literally, the part about the

nuclear program, the documents that i needed, that i have used to write the history of the shah's nuclear program were declassified about three months before the book went into print. i had the great obligation to rewrite the entire chapter because about 1,000 pages of new documents were suddenly available. it is now urgently needed for reasons that i have explained, and it is now more than ever, i think, possible if one doesn't want to demonize him, and i have tried to do neither. i have tried to rely on what the documents indicate. the book is composed of 20 chapters. some periods of the shah's life are treated much more quickly. some periods because they are deemed in my view more important in understanding the revolution

are covered in greater depth. for example, there is three full chapters of maybe about 100 pages that cover 1959-1963 because i think that's a pivotal period in iran. that's when the shah with pressure from the americans, pressure that begun with the eisenhower administration and was augmented through the kennedy administration forced the shah to undergo changes. some of these changes were very much changes he had wanted to do all along, but was not powerful to do it until then like the land reform. to his credit, the shah had been talking about the land reform since the di a took the thrown, but others were mandated pressures by the kennedy administration and earlier by the eisenhower administration. it is remarkable how worried the

american administration of eisenhower and kennedy were about the future of iran in 1958, 59, and 60. they really thought the revolution was around the corner. they believed unless something drastic is done, and i've quoted some documents, it is truly remarkable how anxious they were and how correct they were. essentially they missed it by 20 years. they were right in everything they predicted, but then equally remarkable is how far cia is off the mark in 1978. in 1958, they we predicting a revolution, and in 1978 when iran was burning, they decided they were not in a prerevolution state. [laughter] the shah is here to stay,

opposition is decimated and nothing will challenge the shah. this is mid-78. mid-58, the same cia is saying unless we do something yesterday, tomorrow there will be a revolution and there won't be any shah. these changes, the changes that came about and were called the revolution essentially prepared the ground for the revolution in this country. the ideas behind this revolution was very much the modernization idea popular in the american social science communities. the idea that you need to modernize the society, modernize the infrastructure, educate people, you need to enfranchise women, all of this you need to increase urbanization, and if you have a middle class, an enfranchised woman, if you have

the in charge of a bureaucracy that is confident, then there is progress, and then democracy can come. it was essentially a package deal. the shah was going to jettyson his social base of power. shah's base of power, and everybody understood this in 1958, the shah's base of power was the futile arrosocity, the power that supported him, the military, and some elements of iran's industrial middle or upper class. the idea was to create a larger middle class, do away with the futile system, the idea was to create tech any karattic educated middle class to be the shah's base of support. what happened, unfortunately, was that in the process of

change, the united states and iran both underwent important changes. 1965, the price of oil begins to change. from 1966, the shah literally no longer needs american aide. if in 1962 he comes to the white house and says i want a military of 150,000, kennedy says no, a military of 120,000, kennedy won the argument because kennedy was paying for the military. the united states was essentially underwriting iran's military development. iran was the biggest recipient of u.s. foreign aid from 1953-61, and it is estimated that the u.s. gave the shah more than $1.5 billion in aid. it was a remarkable sum in that period.

from 65 on, the shah no longer needed this. in fact, from 74, it was the west that now needed the shah's money. the shah lend on what the cia called the lending bench, gave away about $1.5 billion who came begging, from london's mayor asking money to rebuild the water system in london to zimbabwe, to pakistan, anybody who came. france, american companies, american companies on the verge of bankruptcy came, got their moneys, and they went back. with this economic independence, came political independence. the shah no longer needed to heed american pressures to democracy. moreover, nixon had come to power in the united states, and nixon had implement the what was

called the nixon doctrine, and i argue in the book about the develop of the doctrine and how shah was very much influ enissue in the -- influential in the doctrine, but it said give the shah what he wants, as much military as he wants, and don't bug him about democracy. bugging the shah about democracy is something that every u.s. administration from roosevelt to kotter had done with the exception of nixon, and it is precisely during the nixon era where this economic changes of the shah was bringing about, were blooming iranian society or blowing iranian society into a new social fabric, a new modern middle class was coming. the agriculture revolution had completely changed the fabric of iranian countryside and cities.

the best example if you want to know what that revolution did to iran is follow the life of ac ahmadinejad. i've written an article in "boasten review -- "boston review" and it captures what i'm talking about. the family was living in a small village. by early 1960, they decided they can't survive in the village because there was a change, feud ended, in structure of support, they come to teheran, were dwellers in the new neighborhoods, they sang the song of revolution in their ears was the clergy, and why is it only the clergy who sang the songs of revolution? because every other force in iran from the left to the right was decimated by the shah's

authoritarianism. he believed his power was the step to necessary progress, and iran made remarkable progress in this period. iran during the early 70s was sometimes registering 20% increase in gnp. it's a remarkable change. given some statistics on iran in 1925 when the dynasty took over in iran in 1978 when the crisis begins, and it is a remarkable transformation of a country on the verge of complete collapse to a country with an emerging economy and an industrial base competitive with south korea, with an industrial base that is competitive with turkey at a time, and look at every social indicator in that period, iran is very much in the same league and the same ballpark as

turkey. this is a remarkable change, but it had come at the price of democracy. it had come at the price of no political opposition allowed in the country. the only group allowed to organize and mobilize, the only group allowed to create social co-ops for themselves, they didn't call it social co-ops, but they called it a mosque. they called it schooled to teach koran. they didn't call them training seminars, but summer camp. the clergy created from 1941 to 1979 a remarkably subtle complicated multifaceted network of organizations that went everywhere from the most legal terrorist organization led by a

young man to the most benign classes studying the classes. this network encouraged by the shah was the only force ready, capable of holding the country together in late 1978 when the u.s. and britain both about the same time, october 78 is when both countries decide the shah cannot any longer stay in power, and he can't stay in power primarily because he is given to indecision in times of crisis. the shah has shown he cannot with stand pressure in 1953. shah had shown he's not able to stay in the ring and fight it out. he was not saddam hussein, but much more likely to flee the scene of the crisis if a crisis arose. he welcome left the country five

times before 1953, and in 1978 when the british and the americans began to see the rise of the muslims in iran and began to see the shah incapable of making decisions, they began to look for what the british prime minister called the way to reinsure. they wanted to look for somebody who they could form a pact with, they could allow the country who emerges on the scene? the clergy. this network they have created, and who plays his hand brilliantly? a man by the name of khomeni. he opposed women's right to vote, opposed land reform and an agreement with the united states, by using rhetoric

against israel in 1962. he was exiled in 1964, lived in exile, and he wrote some of the most remarkably antidemocratic, antimodern treaties as ever penned in modern persian language. nobody in iran was allowed to read them because he was a banned person. his works were banned, and no iranian except the very few radicals had ever a chance to read what khomeni intended to do. he said very clearly what he was going to do that in late 78 very ease institute politician he was, he recognized that was not going to win him the day. iranians wanted democracy.

every indication is that the 1978 revolution was not about economics. as i told you, their progress was remarkable. it wasn't about anything else other than political freedom. there was more cultural freedom in iran in 1978, 77 than any other muslim country in the middle east. iranians were essentially free to live their private lives any way they wanted. for the first and last time in history of iran, jews, christians, and even members of the other religion prosecuted by the regime before achieved more or less legal equality with everyone else. some of iran's greatest industrialists of this period were of faith. iran had 150,000 jews living in

iran. today, still, iran has more jews than all of the other muslim countries put together, 20,000-25,000 people live there, but in 1975, there was 150,000 people. they had more or less religious equality. there was -- women were beginning to get equal rights under the law. they were beginning to get the right to vote contrary to islamic prescriptions, but these were not what the people were interested in. people wanted political freedom. they wanted to share in the political decision making. shah had made a bet, and i don't say this metaphorically, he almost literally made the bet that by giving the iranians an economically prosperous lives, he is going to quiet them from demanding, going to release them

from demanding the political rights. he was trying to do in iran in 1975 what we today call the china model. what china is doing today, the shah did in 75 and failed which is give people, you know, great deal of economic freedom, give them some prosperity, and then when return, the men that day do not engage in equal power sharing in the political domain. people got the economic reel fair -- welfare that was created as a result of the hike in the price of oil, and that the shah of many to -- much to do with, but nevertheless they were not interested in these things, the rights of women. the left casetized these things

as merely there. he said to everybody, including to the americans which he volunteers to contact. i have found some remarkable documents about the extent of the current regime's leaders, contacts with the american officials in the months before the revolution. the same regime that today is putting people in prison because they simply quote, for example, an american official who was actively seeking and establishing contact with the americans both in paris and his allies in teheran. they realized that what the americans were looking for was force that could hold the country together, keep the

communists out of the iran, soviet union was still the soviet union in those days, and keep the oil running. in a letter he writes to the u.s., he more or less says what i told you. what do you want? you want oil to flow, the country to be held together, don't want the communists? we'll do that. tell the government to stop supporting. that's what the american government did. they intercreeded on -- interceded. the adversary was involved in telling the iranian leadership that the u.s. will not support the favor of the shah, that the future belongs to this new regime, and i must say it was the ignorance, not the viciousness. sol lo mon was the american

ambassador to iran at the time, and i think he really believed khom d khomeni was going to create a regime. he talked to the democrats and intellectuals, and he told what khomeni was saying publicly. khomeni promised more than once, in fact, more than dozen the times, he gave more than 110 interviews in paris in the three months he was in paris. he gave more than 110 interviews to foreign cor correspondents. not once does he mention the rule or the guardianship of the counsel, the clearly, the iranian regime today.

not once, in fact, repeatedly when he was asked whether the government of iran is going to be a government of the clergy, he said, absolutely not. he said, i, myself, will go to the city seminary school not far from teheran and will leave all power to the people. the first constitution that was drafted for iran while khomeni was now back in iran, the shah had already fled the country, the regime had already fallen. the first constitution that was developed was profoundly democratic constitution, but then the war with iraq, the occupation of the american embassy was used by khomeni to gradually, but brutally and efficiently sideline and marginalize the democratic forces one by one, and the

constitution that was written at the period now had at its center the concept of the khomeni party, the rule of the guardian. one of the first decisions he made was to stop the shah's nuclear program. in the same period where iran's rise in income gave you what you might remember from those days talking about the democracy of the blue-eyed world is about to collapse. during that period they decided to have a nuclear program. within a short span of time, they developed a program that stipulated iran to have 20 reactors. now, contrary to the claims of this regime, and i have again documented this with some detail, the united states was not in full agreement with the shah in the nature of the

nuclear program. in fact, there was much tussle, diplomatic tussle behind the scenes between the shah and the u.s. about the nuclear program. the u.s. believed then that the shah might be going towards potentially military nuclear program, and they did everything they could behind the scenes to try to get assurances from the shah that this would not happen. the shah would not give assurances. he would repeatedly say we do not want to bomb yet. only by 77, late 77 early 78, was the carter administration willing to allow u.s. companies to sell iran's nuclear parts and nuclear reactors. in the meantime, europeans had jumped in, and like they have in the last few years, jumped in

and quartered the market essentially. there were sign agreements with iran to start reactor in the city. that retack tore was supposed to start in 81. they decided that iran's nuclear program was garbage, that the shah was a lackey of the u.s. and that's why they decided to have a nuclear program, and they stopped the program on which iran spent billions. saddam hussein in the world bombed a place several time, but by 1984, khomeni changed his mind. by 1984, khomeni changed his mind because in that war, saddam hussein used chemical weapons against iranian soldiers, and to their shame, i think, the international community and the reagan administration did nothing, essentially nothing to

punish saddam for his egregious crime. the regime decided if the international community allows saddam to use weapons of mass destruction against the iranians, they must develop their own. they started their nuclear program, but they did it this time secretly. they kept it from the international community. they kept it from everybody because they were worried that israel would do to iran's nuclear program what it had done to iraq and recently syria. by the time the international community learned of the program, it was already a fairly developed program. i can talk much more detail about this. we don't have time. i need to stop.

the short version of it is that many of the same problems that have existed between this regime and the international community existed between the shah and the international community. one big difference was the shah was trying to solve them within the context of the npt, within the context of the existing international law, not in defiance of international laws. it is a remarkable sign of incompetence i think. something that hadn't been much discussed in any media that a program iran could have had in 1981, iran still does not have after billions of dollars, after economic losses that are remarkably more than the mind can easily configure because of

their incompetence. first, without discussion, and then the decision to restart it secretly, and then their decision to lie and cheat every way, every step of the way creating the current impasse where their word is not taken seriously by the international community and the international community is worried with iran's developing virtual capacity for the bomb which i think is what they are trying to do, in other words they are trying to do what the shah was trying to do, to have everything in place to be able to go nuclear at very short order. it's almost verbatim what the shah told officials in iran and western officials. they say we don't want to bomb now, but if the neighbors become a nuclear state, we are not beginning to be far behind.

the shah was particularly worried from 1959 about the possibility of an attack by iraq. it is really fascinating to see how his thinking changes after the change in iraq and the rise of a new regime. let me stop here and try to answer some of your questions. [applause] >> thank you abbas. we have a number of questions that deal with the relationship with the shah and --. they are unclear what the relationship was and why were the clergy anxious to see

mossadegh overturned. >> okay, this will take a three minute response. i hope you can bear with me. mossadegh was a member of the parliament, a nationalist leader. 1951 he becomes a prime minister through a democratic process, and one of his first steps is to nationalize iran's oil industry. that was until then in the monopoly coal -- control of britain. before he comes to power, the united states begins to worry that there will be a nationalist uprising in iran on the oil issue because the agreement was so unfair to iran. i have found really remarkable documents in exchange between

the u.s. and britain with the truman administration telling britain to give in a little bit before something more serious happens. the british were air gaunt and thought the americans were stupid and didn't know how to deal with these natives, and then mossadegh comes to power, and the british's first instinct was to try to attack iran. the truman administration said no. then they tried to organize against mossadegh. it pushed the shah to use extra powers and the military to overthrow mossadegh and the shah said no. we need to find a democratic process to -- we need to find o legal process, not a democratic process. i'm not going to do anything

illegal. when the british attacked mossadegh and when the communists attacked mossadegh, he became the head of this very powerful nationalist movement. everybody lined up behind him. the iranian middle class was squarely behind him. the iranian merchant class came completely in support of him, and the clergy became supportive of him because they thought he is caused fighting and leading a nationalist cause. the clergy were divided into two camps. one was a very political clergy and became eventually the speaker of the parliament. much of the clergy were of a school that we called the quietness school of shiaism. they don't believe in seizing

power. they did not want to seize power, but he was subtly clearly supporting mossadegh in this fight. the shah had apparently relations and behind the scenes, they were at each other's throat. they despised one another and trying to limit one another's power. the shah would not oppose him publicly. by august 53, something had happened. the united states had by november 52 reached a conclusion that there is no deal that mossadegh would take. mossadegh they believed was uncompromising and there is no deal to satisfy him. he wants 100% and nothing less, and now the british were going to give him 100%. the united states begins to change its position.

until november essentially september of 52 they were against overthrowing mossadegh. after that, they were getting convinced they had to get rid of mossadegh. one the other reasons they decide they have to go against mossadegh is the increasing rise to the come mewist party -- communist party in iran. some say the turning point came in june when june 1953 when the tudeh party brought out 100,000 people in remarkable discipline to teheran. that scared the bejesus out of americans. because of economic hardship,

the clergy began to worry that mossadegh was depending too much on the communists and worries that iran might go communist. now the british and the cia we know in this period had very sophisticated program where they would send ones to pretent they were communist two protect them from a radical view. it worked. the clergy themselves and they further contributed further adding to the risk was that he was an aggressive leader and felt that mossadegh had stayed in power basically because of

khomeni's support. he began to have veto rights on legislation, began to demand the right to appoint ministers. he began to demand the implementation of islamic law, began to demand the implement laws against the majlis in iran. they changed sides and decided to now work with mossadegh's critics. all of these factors worked hand in hand and made mossadegh a much more isolated figure so in the elections that he himself had organized, the results of the election were not very much to his liking, so he stopped the election halfway, and decided to have a referendum to dismiss the

parliament. many of the allies told him that first of all, there is no constitutional basis for this. second of all and more importantly, if you dismiss the parliament, the shah has established right to make recessed appointments. he has made many such recess appointments. he will make another one dismissing you and another one appointing someone in your place. mossadegh bets the shah doesn't have the guts. well, the shah believed that desolving the parliament as mossadegh had done gives him the constitutional right to make the appointment, so he wrote two orders, one appointing sahedi as replacement and the other dismissing mossadegh. mossadegh had been then learned of the moves. instead of abiding by the order, he arrested the messager.

he believed the shah was now seriously engaged in a regime change seshtly. he fled the country, went to iraq, from iraq to rome, and in rome began to plan for a life as a gentle farmer in connecticut. [laughter] on august 19, the tide change. on august 19, crowds began to gather an the attack, mossadegh housed the attack and took over. rented crowds by the cia as the cia claimed? or were they jen actually worried crowds as the shah claimed or is it a combination? my research, everything i have done, and i wrote the chapter on

the coo last because it was most difficult for me to write. my conclusion is it's really a combination of all of these factors. the cia was involved, but had much less of a role than it later claimed and later claimed it was the only force that played this role because it has had a series of defeats. this is really the only major success they had in a series of difficult remarkable, read the legacy of ashes, and you can see how many difficulties they had before this. that was more than three minutes. [laughter] >> yeah, i noted that, but it was interesting anyway. there are a number of questions here also just to leap forward a little bit in time. regarding iran's nuclear program, the weapons development, and the so-called peaceful development activity, and did you come across

documentation that may have given proof one way or the other of what they are really planning to do and to broaden this question a little bit is what the united states should be doing? are we handling this correctly? should we leave all the options on the take to use a popular phrase or not? >> well, let me gip with the easiest -- let me begin with the easiest which is the last one. i don't think iran's nuclear problem has a military solution. i think it is too far developed. it is too far dispersed. the innocent lives that would be, the collateral damage is simply too great, and without u.n. map date, -- mandate, without u.n. decision for the united states or israel to once again attack a third

muslim country for the united states unilaterally i think is a fiasco, and i don't think it will be militarily successful in this attempt to delay this program. iranians now have learned how to build and have enriched uranium. they built these communities and it is under 25 feet of cement and dirt. it has been heavily fortified. there are three centers for enriching uranium, each the size of six football fields, and they have the capacity to have a cascade of 50,000. nobody in their right mind believes a country wants a peaceful nuclear program when it

builds a cascade of 50,000. you just don't need 50,000 cascade if you're going to enrich ewe uranium 3%. for that, 5,000 cascades is enough. 50,000 gives you 5%. i think in my view, iran has trying to become what is called the latent or a virtual nuclear state, that is have the capacity, established known capacity to build a bomb at short order, and have the world considerate as a latent nuclear state. they want the world to know that they can be a short while away from a bomb, and they are working on ways to deliver it. they are working on designs. they are working on every aspect

of this except i think the decision to take that last final step which is to weaponnize this enriched uranium. now, the united states, i think, made several various strategically important errors. in 2003, when the u.s. had just defeated saddam hussein, the u.s. had just defeated literally in eight days an army iran had not been able to defeat in eight years, the clergy regime in iran were worried the united states might attack. in washington they were singing the song that boys did to baghdad, men did to teheran. this song had reached teheran as well. iran at that time was very much

willing to negotiate. it had suspended its enrichment, although it had suspended it temporarily, and it felt like it was in a very weakened position, that the united states now had almost -- this was before whatever you want to call it, the uprising, the civil war, the disservice, whatever you want to call what happened in iraq, that's before it began. the united states had almost 250,000 forces on iran's borders. they had easily defeated two of iran's biggest challenges, and the regime was worried. they were willing to make a deal, and the bush administration decided they are not going to negotiate with these guys, and i think that was very, very important opportunity. now, the bush administration i think has been, you know, overly

criticized. some people claim the regime was willing to give up everything in this period, willing to recognize israel, give up nuclear program all together, willing to give up support for hezbollah, all for the promise that they would be treated well. i think that was a bogus argument. i don't think that argument or that deal was really ever on the table, but they were in much more negotiating mood then. now, they feel like they have achieved the upper hand. they have, you know, it used to be the policy of the united states not to negotiate with iran. if there was one center fuse and there are now 8,000, and the united states and the international communities are willing to negotiate, so tactically the regime has won. strategically, they are really

buckled it up. like i said, something iran could have had in 1981, iran still does not have, and even if it gets started with all this virus business and all the buying of material in the black market, nobody knows whether it's going to be safe. >> well, i hate to do this, but we've run out of time and perhaps abbas is willing to stay around longer while signing books to answer additional questions. i'm just going to ask one final one. as you know, i was in iran last year for a very short tourist visit, found the people to be very friendly on the streets. we didn't really interact with any government people, so that was a characteristic i would give. one of the questions here has to do with -- actually two pieces of it, but how did the iranian

people react on 9/11? there's a short answer to that. also, are you able to return to the country again? >> i can return if i accept it will be a one-way trip. [laughter] the idea of a two-way trip, i can't. they have, in fact, named me and stanford as coconspirators in that indictment. i wrote about it in an article in "new republic". iranians as far as i know are the only muslim country where the people spontaneously took to the streets, lighted candles, and organized a vigil in memory of and support of americans. the united states is very much popular there. in the wikileaks there's an

interesting document. the u.s. bad mitten team was supposed to visit iran, and the last minute harmony pulls the plug on it, and the explanation