You can watch them on our website, booktv. Org. Good evening. Welcome to the Richard Nixon president ial library. Just a few announcements before we introduce our special guest. Please join us for the reopening of the new Nixon Library on october 15 and 16th. It will be spectacular. The exhibits will be a must see. They tell president nixon story in a new and exciting way. It will be an unforgiving experience for all visitors. Please check that out. Now to our distinguished speaker , president Richard Nixon were important Strategic Partners during the cold war, working together together to keep the soviet union from dominating the persian gulf which was and remains a critical source for the Worlds Energy needs. The words are timeless because they bribe why iran is so top of mind for u. S. Policymakers print this is what he said but he said when we think of where iran is, this place place in history going back 2500 years, its placed geographically and also to the middle east, when we think also of the very strategic place that iran occupies in that critical error of the world which many believe is the most asked dose of part. The whole area of the middle east and the indian ocean, i can only say that those who want these as you want to and i want it and as all of us in this room wanted, those of us who believe in peace, we are fortunate that your majesty occupies the place of leadership that you occupy. Those are the words of president nixon in 1973. Our distinguished speaker today is here to discuss with us irans strategic importance in the world, specifically during the reign. Scott cooper is an adjunct Professor Columbia University and his research has appeared in news outlets at cross the world in the New York Times and the guardian. Is also the author of two important books, one is called how the u. S. And around change the balance of power in the middle east and his newest book is called. [inaudible] ladies and gentlemen, its my honor to bring to the podium andrew scott cooper. [applause] jonathan, thank you very much for your warm introduction. This is an amazing setting. Its very president ial and any historian who is standing here would be incredibly flattered to be in this wonderful room. Im delighted to join you here this evening. Thank you so much for driving such long distances to come here tonight. Earlier i had an opportunity to view the magnificent new exhibition space. The Nixon Library, the nixon family, Nixon FoundationNational Archives and everyone associated with this wonderful project ought to be commended for their efforts to preserve our historical record while finding creative new ways to make the nations history assessable and relevant to a new generation of americans. In the introduction to her pulitzer prizewinning history book, the American Experience in china, Barbara Tuchman wrote i am conscious of venturing into the realm of americas china policy. Nevertheless, as china is the ultimate region for our involvement in southeast asia, the subject is worth the venture even though the ground is hot. I think its safe to say, judging by my posterior, that the ground is as hot today as it was for tuchman 45 years ago when she wrote about china. There has been an intense reaction to my book the fall of heaven which recounts the final days of the 1978, 79 revolution. The book had been available in stores for only three days when my amazon page was flooded of messages of personal abuse. Anonymous trolls accused me of being a cia agent, a defender of rightwing fascist dictatorship and human rights abuses. When my laptop was disabled by a virus, i wasnt sure if it was coincidence or something more sinister. As a precaution against hacking, i felt compelled to close my social media accounts and i also had to cancel a scheduled trip to iran next year. My employer briefed me on the policy Columbia University has in place to deal with harassment abuse and threats. Now, all these things happen before anyone had really had time to read my book or filly judge its content. Indeed, some of the people trolling me admitted they had not read it. I suspect they never intended to read the book. In fact, what what they were reacting to was not my work, but instead a book review that appeared in the New York Times book review. The review was written by an american journalist of iranian heritage. She decided i presented a far too sympathetic portrait and i was too critical of the Islamic Republic of iran. In particular, my reviewer accused me of showing hostility toward islam which is a particularly sweeping generalization and in century to use against anyone at a time of rising sectarian and religious tensions. She did not inform her readers that in order to better understand islam, as it had been practiced before the revolution i had traveled to iran to undertake a sabbatical to study shiism. Nor did my reviewer inform her readers that earlier in my career i had worked as a Human Rights Researcher at the United Nations and then at human rights watch. In fact, my training made me more qualified than most to address the highly sensitive issue of human rights in iran in the 1970s. Now you wouldnt have known it from reading the times, but my book was the product of a decade of research and scholarship that entailed travel to iran, but also to lebanon, egypt, france and several other countries. During my travels, i met with or interviewed more than 100 people. In addition, i located and analyzed thousands of new pages of newly declassified documents and many others that had never before. Imprint. Casual readers of the review could be forgiven if i had simply decided to sit down one day and write a book because i felt like it. This tells you something about the time we are living in. The book review was posted to the time site on friday. By saturday morning, the volume of abuse was such that my publisher intervened with amazon and asked them to take immediate measures. Amazon agreed immediately, to their credit, and the issue was that sent to the companies special Committee Established to monitor and respond to abuse, harassment and threats. I dont know many of you knew there was a committee. We do have a committee in place to help people like me. By then the review had gone viral and by sunday morning the Jerusalem Post had carried a report that stated my book was causing profound embarrassment to hezbollah in lebanon. As you can see, things are getting worse. What my reviewer had done was misrepresented the part of the book that dealt with the disappearance of a prominent cleric who disappeared in libya in august 1978. According to her, the book accused someone of direct personal involvement in the disappear disappearance of him during the revolution. In fact, if you read the sections of the book carefully and closely, you will see that i lay out several plausible explanations to describe what may have happened to this man. In tehran, iranian journalists began asking family members if the accusation in the New York Times was correct. The next thing i knew, i was via the deport of dubai. Some people decided they could be using the book to embarrass the iranian authorities. The words historian and contraband are usually mentioned in the same sentence, but i admit, i was flattered to learn that my book was now in the same illicit category as crates of whiskey and blue movies. Without knowing it, i had in fact produced a work of controversial literature. Thats what i was told by my editors, my agent and my friends they congratulated me. You have achieved something very few historians have achieved, notoriety. But i did not seek out notoriety and frankly, i was appalled to see myself reduced in the public eye to a in my work completely misrepresented. I had spent the past decade working seven days a week, long hours and with great care to produce two books totaling over 1000 pages. During that same time period, apart from undergoing spinal surgery for spinal injury, i had completed a second masters degree and a phd in order to develop a respectable level of scholarly expertise. The whole experience of this book release initially left me feeling dispirited. Yes, controversy sells was replied, but what about my reputation, my professional integrity. Even as i uttered those words, i realized i sounded as though i had stepped out of a painting from the 18th century. Today, when scandal is seen as the fastest way to the top, concerns about personal reputation and integrity. Several weeks ago, the novelist who wrote the slaves of new york a long time ago was asked by the Guardian Newspaper how she dealt with criticism and poor reviews of her work. might wonder what had is all of the fuss about . Iranian revolution occurred in 1978 79 which to many of you is a lifetime ago. And the late shaw dmied kentucky cairo in 1980. In 198jiminy carter was president and berlin wall Still Standing and bee gees rolled the music charts. Millions words, thousands of articles, and hundreds of books have been written about the shaw and the revolution. What was it about e me and my book that provoked such an intense reaction . Well, the simple answer, one answer is that for iranians, the revolutions never really ended. For many it remains an open wounds and very much unfinished business. What others regard are as simple history they view as deeply personal. Everyone has their own opinion about why the revolution happened and how it turned out. There are iranians especially on the intellectual lift who have never forgiven the shaw for his mistakes. And i suspect their krit criticisms can be partly explained as a response to my work. Yet almost four decades later, far more iranians have grown weary of the black and white historical narrative that cast the shaw the villain and the great liberator from oppression. This narrative shaped by baby boomer generation scholar who carry over struggle and grievances of the 1960s and 70s into this work. They remain deeply invested in this narrative and i think it is fair to say have profited from it. Thats just how it works. But that narrative is now collapsing beneath the weight of its own contradictions. Though, my critics would like you to have believe that im personally trying to rehabilitate the shaw and paul era. The fact is that scholars are are now only catching up to where many in the Iranian Community have been for some time. In the last decade in particular, many younger iranians have become interested this learning about what life was like before the 1979 revolution. So then the crackdown on the Green Movement in iran in 2009 was a water watershed event that led them to question the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic. Stunned by the brutality of the crackdown that followed, many young people and students withdrew from active politics. In their search for answers to iran got to where it is at today, they became interested and began studying the countrys history before the revolution. Now, i endownered this phenomenon three years ago when i visited iran. Islamic scholars in Islamic University told me their students had so many questions about the shaw and the polly era that they felt obliged to offer special history classes to educate them on the faults and failings of the monarchy especially the shaw and to remind them why the revolution had been necessary in the first place. The literature was bound to change. If only because it had become stagnant. The first wave of books written about the revolution appeared in the 1980s and 1990s. They were written by political scientists, diplomats, former officials, journalists, and idiologs. Some were good. Others not so much. Most authors reflected the orthodoxy of the cold war period and will without exception were harshly critical of the shaws role. Except for a few exceptions these books and their authors portrayed the shaw as an american puppet as a blood thirsty dictator and weak and corrupt ruling who was comploal out completely out of touch with his people. Professionally intrad historian not to get involved in historical debates until we can confident we are located new materials with which to write our own investigations and reach are our own conclusions. So for a long time, most his toirns historians stood back. That started to change in 2009. Since then books suggest the wave of literature on era was finally on its way. The authors of these books were less judgmental and i think more sympathetic to the challenges the shaw faced in trying modernize his country at a very difficult time. My first book the oil kings was published five years ago. Its portrait of the shaw as staunch nationalist, and hard nose negotiator with u. S. Officials including president nixon. Shocked and intrigued iranians who were used to the conventional narrative of him as an american puppet. Now, for the first time with the help of the new we had from National Archive and president ial libraries, they were able to begin a more nuance understanding was particular challenges faced by the shaw in trying to preserve irans sovereignty and steer his country through the treacherous current of the cold war. Some iranians who have lived through revolution refuse to accept the books scholarship. They considered it such a radical departure from what theyve known and read about that they it does i must be apartment of some organized conspiracy. To rehabilitate the shaws image. For the first time, i began hearing rumors another iranian could not have written possibly such a booklet alone someone from enologies and rumors circulating that i was a cia agent or that declassified u. S. Government documents i used in my research were elaborate forgeries, produced by institutions such as this one. From writing about Conspiracy Theory are, i became one myself. The ultimate accolade in a way. I always wantedded to write a book about the shaws last days in power. I was nine years old when the revolution happened and i still remember watching the crisis unfold on television in we willing new zealand where i grew up. Think about what our children are watching today and how thats going to affect them later on. As a teenager, i read hundreds of history books. That was my stick. Big books bigger the better and i particularly enamored with nicholas and alexandra x i start regard as perhaps one of the best written and e voktive narrative history book of the past 50 years. The oil kings opened the door to the sequel that i hoped it would take readers behind the scenes to help them understand how the shaw lost power in 1979. I also wanted to recreate what i have loo was like in iran and tyrann on eve of the revolution. I thought younger iranians in particular would enjoy more about how their parents and grandparents had lived before the revolution changed iran forever. Like the first book, this one was also helped by timing. With the declassification of thousands of pages of new documents from the counterpresidency. So now for the first time we understand what u. S. Officials in 1979, 78 responding to the emergency of the crisis in iran and this is important. Now imagine for some iranians i know for some iranians theres something strangely compelling in spectacle of a new zealand born historian coming underfire for writing a book under uhuh shaw. Some iranians are surprised and suspicious they tell me so i know this is how they feel. That a foreigner in and special someone from as for a field as new zealand shows so much interest in the history. But you have to consider where i come from. New zealanders have a reputation for curiosity about the world around them. Our personal interests often become efficient. Which may something to do with the fact that not much happens in new zealand. [laughter] fortunately this is not broadcast in new zealand. I hope. New Zealand New Zealand an its people tend to be very quiet especially when compared to iran and iranians. But we live vicariously through you. Were also from what had i can tell very single minded people. I dont think its a coincidence that a new zealand mountain climber the first ever to climb Mount Everest or kiwi scientist first to split adam. Consider the bizarre con over the yores, egg beaters it shall hear pins, and referee whistles. Where would you be without them, us, we have a role to play. [laughter] seven years ago, a new zealand teenager living on an isolated farm built the Worlds Largest pone pone know this a wall shed with no burn help, reductions instructions on the outside. Thanks to New Zealander who invented zorb you can spin tun a hill coyed at 50 kilometers an hour. Why wouldnt you wanted to that . [laughter] and dont forget we invicinitied bungee jumping. [laughter] nor am i the only having investigative research. Journalist david heirier ice documentary on tickling yes took the New Zealander to think that one up has received critical acclaim. And theres even tack of an oscar nodges for best documentary. He was at his computer one day and read a story about tickling and peeked his curiosity and investigate what turned out to be a underground culture of to my tickling. His documentary also led it a violent backlash from professional tickling who were orchedded by how he portrayed them. You can look at this stuff. Im not making this stuff up. This is great. I feel your pain, david perhaps you and i can do an exchange. Ill tick tick leers off your hand for a weekend if you agree to host the gentleman from hezbollah. [laughter] im serious about that too. Rather than be offended or suspicious, iranians should perhaps be grateful that somewhere down antarctica a country intoir population appear to have a serious case of ocd. Seriously i believe my status as an outsider noniranian historian has been manufacture a help than a hindrance. First thought i sew thingses that iranian scholars have overlooked or perhaps did not think were significant. The issues i am interested in and questions i ask are different. My training as an investigative researcher has also been