Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show.

Today's episode is a conversation with the author, Scott Anderson, about his new book,

King of Kings, The Iranian Revolution, a story of hubris, delusion, and catastrophic miscalculation.

Basically, we can list this week as foreign policy week on the realignment as we enter the end of

the summer August period.

Today's conversation really builds upon the fact that I originally found out of this

book when the US and Israel were striking Iran, so I wanted to do what the realignment

does best and take a look back at history and get a good understanding

of the role that the U.S. played in both the rise of the Ayatolls and the previous period with

the Shah between his return to power in 1953 and the end of his reign over the country. Scott and I

drive into the Shah's contradictions, the rise of religious fundamentalism,

the Carter administration's blind spots, and the enduring question of how the U.S. should

approach regimes like Iran. This is a great conversation about history, policy, and the dangers

of misreading both. Hope you all enjoy the conversation. Scott Anderson, welcome to the realignment. Thank you, Marshall.

It's to be here. I'm really excited to discuss your new book with you, King of Kings. I got the

initial press push for this right as the Israeli bombings on Iran started. So I'm less interested in sort of prognosticating

on what the future is going to look like in Iran, but I do have to ask, what was it like

writing or preparing to release a backwards-facing piece of history as this moment was happening?

I'm really curious. Yeah, it was very, it was very odd.

And of course, quite unexpected. Iran has a way of, you know, periodically kind of percolating

up and onto the international consciousness. But I certainly didn't expect anything like this.

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