E-mail a friendMark Bowden
airdate May 1, 2007
Author-journalist-screenwriter Mark Bowden has won many national awards for his writing. He's not only reported for The Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 20 years, but is also a national correspondent for The Atlantic and an adjunct professor at his alma mater, Loyola College of Maryland. His best-selling books include Black Hawk Down and the award-winning Killing Pablo. In his latest, The Best Game Ever, Bowden tells the story of how a single NFL championship game changed the history of American sport.
Mark Bowden
Tavis: Mark Bowden is a national correspondent for "The Atlantic Monthly" and a columnist for "The Philadelphia Inquirer." He is also a bestselling author whose previous books include "Black Hawk Down" and "Killing Pablo." His most recent book is now out in paperback, and it is called "Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis, the First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam." Mark Bowden, nice to have you on the program.
Mark Bowden: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me start by asking what it is that we have learned - and I say learned; not learned, maybe, is a better way to put it - from our first battle with militant Islam?
Bowden: Well, I think there are lessons to be learned, but I'm not sure that we've learned them. Certainly, the takeover of the American embassy in 1979 resulted in large part, I think, by a misreading of what was happening inside of Iran. And not only did we fail to foresee the Iranian revolution in February of 1979, but we maintained an embassy in downtown Tehran in the sort of hopeful effort to retain ties with whatever kind of government was going to take shape.
And that embassy became a target for the revolutionary guards, the more radical elements in the revolution. I think that was something that we could have foreseen, but we didn't.
Tavis: Are we, to your point, misreading what's happening inside of Iran today - and the parallels are almost eerie, given that we just saw Iran take these, what, 15 British hostages some weeks ago. Are there parallels between what we did not read then and what we're not reading now about what's happening inside of Iran?
Bowden: I think so. I think Iran is a particularly complicated country, and even though they have a theocratic regime, it's still a very diverse society, politically. And so if our interest is in de-legitimizing the mullahs and supporting the potential for democratic evolution in Iran, I think there are ways to go about it other then calling them a member of the evil empire.
Tavis: And a better way to go about that would be, perhaps?
Bowden: I think to engage with Iran. I do think it's a good idea to have tried to put pressure on them to stop building a nuclear weapons program through the U.N. and through an international partnership rather than with the kind of tough talk that the current administration seems to prefer.
Tavis: For those who were not around in '79 or don't remember what happened in '79, what was the friction? What was the tension between the U.S. and Iran about then, and over the years has that tension or the reasons for that tension changed at all? Metamorphosized at all?
Bowden: Well, in 1979, the tension grew out of the fact that the United States had essentially overthrown the legitimate elected government of Iran 25 years earlier and installed the Shah on the throne. And the Shah had functioned as an American puppet, essentially, and the people of Iran were paying the price for America's geopolitical priorities in that part of the world.
So when the revolution happened and the Shah was thrown out, many Iranians feared that the United States would step back in, destroy their revolution, put the Shah back on the throne, and there was also a great deal of anger toward the United States for having engineered the overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq and for propping up the Shah for 25 years.
So the revolution itself was deeply rooted in suspicion and anger at the United States. And I think today, things have evolved but there remains a great deal of anger toward the United States and also the people who are running Iran are the same people who were involved in taking over the American embassy. So -
Tavis: I was about to ask you, what do you make of that? The people - you say running, literally, the president of the country.
Bowden: And not just the president of the country but the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was an active participant in the holding of hostages, any number of people who were in key both elected and appointed positions in that country. So they're the ascendant political faction there right now.
Tavis: So that reality - that is to say, the reality of the persons who run the country now and their connection to having been students back in the day as a part of this hostage crisis, that reality, coupled, Mark, with the president putting them in that axis of evil trilogy means what, portends what, for our relationship with them in the near future, in the near term?
Bowden: Well, either we're going to engage with Iran or we're going to confront them. And I'm hopeful that the engagement piece of it is what will happen, but the regime that we're dealing with in Iran is a provocative regime. They thrive on confrontation with the west, and particularly with the United States.
They portray themselves as the revolutionary saviors of Iran against the authoritative heel of the United States. So any of this confrontation that takes place, in my opinion, strengthens the very people who we would like to weaken in that country.
Tavis: I'm having some work done on my house right now here in Los Angeles, and it just so happens that the lead contractor and many of the guys who work with him on the project - some of them, at least, happen to be Iranian. And I learned after a couple of days of them being on the project that if I wanted my house to be completed I should not raise the subject of what they thought about the situation in Iran.
But on the couple of occasions that I've done that (laughs) and gotten engaged in these three-hour conversations both times, I'm fascinated to hear their take, as people who are everyday people from Iran - of course, here in the States. But the take that they give is dramatically different than what we get from the people who run the government, which leads me to ask how different you think what the Iranian people think of us is from what we think the leaders think of us is?
Bowden: Right. Well, I can't obviously say with certainty, because you can't take polls in Iran. But I traveled there a number of times researching this book, and I would say that the average Iranian has a very warm feeling about the United States. There's a real kinship, I think, between our countries. There was a very close relationship for 25 years.
Most Iranians, I think, are very unhappy with the religious rule that they've lived under for the last 25 years, and I think that there is a wide variety of political opinion in that country, but most of it - if I had to guess - would prefer to see that country evolve into more of a real democracy than what exists there today. And in that sense, I know that there was one poll taken by, in fact, a former hostage taker who's in prison because he published it, and the results were that upwards of 75% of Iranians wanted to renew ties with the United States.
Tavis: Is it possible, given that they are the people - although not running the government - is it possible to read any hope into that poll?
Bowden: I do think it's possible, and I think - we went through a period in the 1990s where there was a real push in Iran to get rid of religious rule and establish a genuine democracy. I think what's happening now in Iran is the pendulum has swung in the other direction and the mullahs have cracked down on the reform movement.
They've thrown the reform politicians out of office. So we're dealing, at the moment, with sort of the most hard-line elements in the Iranian government. I think it would be a mistake to assume that that's the nature of that country. I think it's a regime that is increasingly unpopular, and if we can buy time, if we could apply pressure to that country through international partnerships, we might end up with a much more pragmatic and even more democratic leadership in that country.
Tavis: How do you do that, though - to your initial point - how do you do that if they're on the list of people that we don't want to talk to?
Bowden: Well, I think it's wrong that they're on that list, and I think it's actually very heartening that the new round of negotiations over Iraq are going to include Iran and Syria. We have had dealings with Iran, sort of below the table, on numerous occasions over the past 25 years, and in some instance, they've actually been very helpful to the United States.
And there's some indication that some of these pragmatic elements in the Iranian government actually made a very significant overture to the United States about two or three years ago to try and renew talks and relationships, but the Bush administration ignored it. I think reality is forcing this administration to be a little bit more realistic in their dealing with Iran, because it's important for anything you want to accomplish in that region.
Tavis: Since you've mentioned Iraq, and now more expressly the region, let me offer this question because the two are clearly connected. You can't talk about Iran these days and not talk about Iraq, or vice-versa. What's your sense of the mess that we are in in Iraq?
Bowden: Well, it clearly is a mess, and it was a mistake to go in to begin with. And we are paying a very heavy price, as are the Iraqi people. I think that it's - I'm very glad that the national conversation is now primarily about how to extricate ourselves from Iraq. A lot of the sort of pie-in-the-sky fantasies of reforming that country and creating a democracy and the whole neoconservative philosophy of how that was going to affect the region has been abandoned.
I am hopeful about these talks that involve Iran and Syria. It seems to me to be the most likely path to go, if there is going to be any kind of stability there. And I also think that General David Petraeus is making significant strides and sort of - trying to sort of calm the levels of violence throughout the country. And I don't think that you can solve the problem in Iraq through that kind of military effort, but I think it's an important part of an overall political solution.
Tavis: It's out in paperback now. It's called "Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis, the First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam." It is written by Mark Bowden, same guy who wrote "Black Hawk Down." Mr. Bowden, nice to have you on the program.
Bowden: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Bowden: My pleasure.
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