Has America Forgotten the Lessons of its First War With Iran?

Bruce Riedel is a Washington insider, a top specialist on the Middle East and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. While in government, Mr. Riedel was a senior adviser on Middle East policy to three U.S. presidents. Since leaving government service in 2006, he has written and spoken widely on U.S. policy toward the Middle East and Southwest Asia, while continuing to advise Barack Obama, first as a presidential aspirant, then as the U.S. president. Mr. Riedel’s latest book, on which he collaborated with BSIA faculty members James Blight and janet Lang, is Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988, which has just been published by Rowman & Littlefield.