The Ayatollahs' Democracy An Iranian Challenge [Paperback]

Hailed as one of the year's best foreign policy books, Hooman Majd's latest offers dramatic perspective on a country with global ambitions, an elaborate political culture, and policies with enormous implications for world peace. Drawing on privileged access to the Iranian power elite, Majd gives a harrowing description of the aftermath of the 2009 presidential elections in Iran (Haleh Esfandiari). This nimble take on Iran's fraught political landscape (Its insights may startle Americans who think of Iran purely as a fundamentalist Islamic state.Like a nonfiction novel, going beyond hard facts to enter people's consciousness.Regardless what you happen to think of Majd's political analysis (I happen to mostly agree with it), he has the most detailed and gripping reporting of the Iranian elections to date&. I encourage the White House to get a copy of Majd's book. And for Dish readers to pre-order it.No writer knows more about modern Iran than Hooman Majd. Nor does any other commentator write more cogently, or more beautifully, about this complex and sometimes opaque culture.The first fifty pages of this book would make a Sundance-winning film, but the meat of the book explores, in vividly readable style, the evolving concept of Islamic democracy, the widespread support for nuclear power, and the historical pride and resistance to western intervention. A well-connected insider with the eye of a master psychologist, Majd gives us a nuanced, in-depth portrait of a country both far more sophisticated and far less rigid than western policymakers have yet appreciated.Hooman Majds penetrating new book, One of America's most astute revealers of Iranian culture and identity. -Reza Aslan,