Afshon Ostovar
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199387892
- eISBN:
- 9780190491727
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199387892.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics, Comparative Politics
September 11th opened a window for brief collaboration between Tehran and Washington. Through Iranian diplomats, the IRGC’s Qods Force, and its chief, Qassem Soleimani, provided intelligence to ...
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September 11th opened a window for brief collaboration between Tehran and Washington. Through Iranian diplomats, the IRGC’s Qods Force, and its chief, Qassem Soleimani, provided intelligence to American diplomats on Taliban positions and provided advice on how to defeat their shared enemy in Afghanistan. Any budding trust between the two ended after President George W. Bush’s designation of Iran as a member of the “axis of evil.” However, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban—Iran’s two main enemies—greatly benefited the IRGC. The IRGC utilized ties to Iraqi Shiite organizations and developed a cadre of Shiite client militias to gain influence in Iraq and target US forces. Washington’s pressure on Iran, and allusions to potential war, help legitimize the IRGC’s influence in Iranian and Iraqi politics. The IRGC helped elect President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who became a stalwart patron for the IRGC’s hardline politics and foreign adventurism.Less
September 11th opened a window for brief collaboration between Tehran and Washington. Through Iranian diplomats, the IRGC’s Qods Force, and its chief, Qassem Soleimani, provided intelligence to American diplomats on Taliban positions and provided advice on how to defeat their shared enemy in Afghanistan. Any budding trust between the two ended after President George W. Bush’s designation of Iran as a member of the “axis of evil.” However, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban—Iran’s two main enemies—greatly benefited the IRGC. The IRGC utilized ties to Iraqi Shiite organizations and developed a cadre of Shiite client militias to gain influence in Iraq and target US forces. Washington’s pressure on Iran, and allusions to potential war, help legitimize the IRGC’s influence in Iranian and Iraqi politics. The IRGC helped elect President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who became a stalwart patron for the IRGC’s hardline politics and foreign adventurism.
Fabio Caiani and Catherine Cobham
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748641413
- eISBN:
- 9780748695225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641413.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter introduces the work of al-Takarli through a discussion of his novel al-Masarrat wa-’l-awja‘ (‘Joys and Sorrows’, 1998). The text, whose breadth and ambitious structure make it comparable ...
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This chapter introduces the work of al-Takarli through a discussion of his novel al-Masarrat wa-’l-awja‘ (‘Joys and Sorrows’, 1998). The text, whose breadth and ambitious structure make it comparable to similarly wide-ranging works from foreign literatures, offers among much else a reflection on the impact of reading and writing on the life of a middle-class Iraqi. It includes telling references to key historical events in the modern history of Iraq, and is also the culmination of al-Takarli’s metafictional discourse on the acts of reading and writing, which had preoccupied him since he wrote his first novel Basqa fi wajh al-hayat (‘Spitting in the Face of Life’, written in 1948, but not published until 2000), to which the more mature and ambitious al-Masarrat wa-’l-awja‘ is compared.Less
This chapter introduces the work of al-Takarli through a discussion of his novel al-Masarrat wa-’l-awja‘ (‘Joys and Sorrows’, 1998). The text, whose breadth and ambitious structure make it comparable to similarly wide-ranging works from foreign literatures, offers among much else a reflection on the impact of reading and writing on the life of a middle-class Iraqi. It includes telling references to key historical events in the modern history of Iraq, and is also the culmination of al-Takarli’s metafictional discourse on the acts of reading and writing, which had preoccupied him since he wrote his first novel Basqa fi wajh al-hayat (‘Spitting in the Face of Life’, written in 1948, but not published until 2000), to which the more mature and ambitious al-Masarrat wa-’l-awja‘ is compared.
