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François Picard welcomes Scott Anderson, journalist, war correspondent and best-selling author of "King of Kings: The Fall of the Shah and the Revolution That Forged Modern Iran". For Anderson, there is a striking parallel between 1979 and 2026: Washington’s persistent misreading of Iran, and the consequences that follow. So how did that not occur to the Trump administration in starting this war?” Now, nearly seven months into the US war with Iran, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has delivered a defiant address to the UN General Assembly, accusing the United States of “terrorism” a day after President Donald Trump threatened to “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if a deal could not be reached.
Yet Pezeshkian also left the door open to diplomacy, insisting that Iran was ready for negotiations while refusing to accept “the language of force”. His message to Trump was unequivocal: “Yes they did hit us, but we did not bend the knee.” But Anderson’s analysis goes well beyond an intelligence failure. He portrays history as profoundly contingent.
The Islamic Republic was not the predetermined destination of the 1979 revolution: liberals, leftists, nationalists and religious forces competed over what would replace the monarchy, while Ayatollah Khomeini proved far more politically adept than many of his allies and adversaries had anticipated. The revolution, in Anderson’s telling, could have taken many different paths. Nearly half a century later, however, the Islamic Republic no longer depends on a single revolutionary leader.
It has become an entrenched political system, with institutions and constituencies invested in its survival. Anderson’s warning, then, is not that history simply repeats itself, but that the persistent misreading of Iran, its internal dynamics, sources of resilience and capacity for resistance, carries its own dangers. The outcome may be very different from 1979, but the consequences of getting Iran wrong could prove equally far-reaching.
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