Going to Tehran: the book that predicted this mess in Iran

In 2013, two former US national security officials – Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett – published a book called Going to Tehran.

In it they argued, on the basis of insider experience, that the United States was making a strategic mistake of historic proportions in its policy towards Iran; that the Islamic Republic was a stable, legitimate, rational political entity; that decades of US sanctions, isolation and threats would fail; that Iran would emerge from any direct confrontation stronger, not weaker; and that the only rational US course was the kind of grand rapprochement Nixon achieved with China in 1972.

The US foreign policy establishment declined to read it. Months into a war on Iran that the US is manifestly losing, every one of the Leveretts’ predictions has come to pass – and the establishment is implicitly conceding it. Robert Kagan in the Atlantic. Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. Dan Shapiro in the Washington Post. In this video I review Going to Tehran, explain its central arguments, and make the case that it is one of the most important unread books of the twenty-first century.

Sources and further reading: • Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Going to Tehran (2013) • Robert Kagan, “Checkmate in Iran”, The Atlantic (May 2026) • Gideon Rachman, “Iran is beating Trump at the art of the deal”, Financial Times (May 2026) • Mohammad Marandi’s interview on multiple channels.