Imagining Iran

This book constructs and assembles American foreign policy through the use of Critical Security Studies discourse analysis and Orientalist descriptions of key actors within the Presidential administrations of Lyndon Baines Johnson through Ronald Reagan (1965-1989). The shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, and Iran as a nation served as a Orientalist construction for these administrations. In a sense, the shah was the 'good Oriental' : he modernized, he secularized, he kept his people pliable, if not free, and was in general sensitive and willing to take on the foreign policy goals of the United States. This book is a vital read for those that are interested in learning about how foreign policy making is conducted, how theories directly affect the process of foreign policy making, and finally, it directly addresses the questions many readers have about how the shah and Iran served US interests and the larger question of why the US uses autocratic proxies to pursue its nominally human rights and democracy-based goals. Students of foreign policy, Middle East studies, Critical Security Studies, and Iran experts alike can benefit from a historical deep dive on policy making. The internal conversations, diary entries, and previously classified documents and briefings, tell the story of how the US imagined Iran and why that ideational construction proved to be such a dominant and pernicious image for 26 years, the reverberations of which are still felt today in our modern conception of what Iran is and what Iranians can do through the lens of American foreign policy.