Tom Fudge: If geopolitics were a bad movie, written by American politicians, Iran would play the bad guy. President Bush has gone so far as to call the Islamic Republic a member of the Axis of Evil. And now Iran says it wants to build a nuclear power plant, that's what they say. But we all know how to write that scenario into the screenplay. What they really want are nuclear weapons so they can destroy Israel.
The notion of Iran as an irrational, highly ideological player in the Middle East has been promoted by the U.S. ally Israel. And the current President of Iran has been more than helpful when it comes to reinforcing the view. A book by Trita Parsi seeks to dispel many of the conclusions we've drawn about how the U.S. should regard and deal with Iran. His book also points out the long history of cooperation between the Jews and the Persians. Parsi says that history shows that the Middle East's two non-Arab countries have a lot more in common than you would think.
Guest
- Dr. Trita Parsi , author of Treacherous Alliance - The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States . Dr. Parsi has served as an adjunct professor of International Relations at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
