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.
While “The road to peace between Iran and the US is truly a bumpy one,” détente, if not reconciliation, is not impossible, he writes. “I am confident that the dominant viewpoint inside [the system], including that of the supreme leader, is to end the hostilities with the US based on mutual respect, noninterference and mutual interest.”
“Book by former Iran official looks at Quds Force leader, Saudi king,” Interview with Hossein Mousavian, Barbara Slavin, Al-Monitor, May 19, 2014.
