The photo on the cover depicts Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, forefather of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) in 1979. The back cover shows Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, 2014 founder of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He is only one of the protégées of Khomeini, whether he realizes it or not. Without success of the founder of the Islamic Republic in creating a terrorist state, organizations like ISIS would not have been inspired to seize land for their own states. The Islamist Revolution in Iran also spread to Sunni Hamas in Gaza and Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon. ISIS split from its parent, al Qaeda (formed in or about 1989 as the base); it refrains from state-building for an incremental approach to world domination; ISIS competes and cooperates with al Qaeda. Frenemies suggests they are friends and enemies. Iran, the Islamic State, and al Qaeda are friends and enemies and collude against common enemies as in an old Arab Bedouin saying: I, against my brothers, I and my brothers against my cousins, I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.
About the Author: In 2005, Raymond Tanter cofounded the Iran Policy Committee (IPC) and serves as its President and of Iran Policy Committee Publishing as well as American Committee on Human Rights, He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Committee on the Present Danger, and was for about a decade an Adjunct Scholar at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Tanter served in the Executive Office of the President as a senior member on the Reagan-Bush National Security Council staff, 1981-1982. In 1983-1984, he was personal representative of the Secretary of Defense to arms control talks in Madrid, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Vienna. In 1967, Tanter was deputy director of behavioral sciences at the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and a member of the Civilian Executive Panel, Chief of Naval Operations, 1980-1981. Among Tanter's authored and/or coauthored books relevant to Iran are: Rogue Regimes(1999); Appeasing the Ayatollahs and Suppressing Democracy (2006); What Makes Tehran Tick, (2006); Baghdad Ablaze (2007);President Obama and Iraq (2009); President Obama and Iran (2010) and (2012); Terror Tagging of an Iranian Dissident Organization, (2011 and 2012); and Arab Rebels and Iranian Dissidents (2013). Articles include: How to negotiate with a bully? Use the bully pulpit with words complemented by military moves, Foreign Policy, October 13, 2015; "Iran's Breakout and Sneakout into the Nuclear Sunset," Foreign Policy, March 11, 2015; "Washington's Third Option against a Nuclear Iran," Foreign Policy, February 16, 2015; "The Rising Insurgency for Sanctions against Iran," Foreign Policy, January 29, 2015; "Cartoons, Dissent, and Human Rights in Iran," Foreign Policy, January 20, 2015; "How Not to Negotiate With Rogue Regimes," Foreign Policy, January 6, 2015; "Iran's Terror Tunnels," Foreign Policy, December 23, 2014; "Is Washington Forgetting Its Allies in the Iranian Nuclear Negotiations?" Foreign Policy, December 8, 2014; "A Bad Deal with Iran in the Nuclear Talks Could Destabilize The Middle East," Foreign Policy, November 25, 2014; "How to Tell if Tehran Is Lying About Its Nuclear Ambitions," Foreign Policy, November 10, 2014; "Stopping The Islamic State Might Be Obama's Chance To Salvage His Middle East Policy," Foreign Policy, August 25, 2014; "Is Iran About To Lash Out At Its Dissidents?" Foreign Policy, July 20, 2014; "The War over how Washington should think about Iraq," Foreign Policy, July 11, 2014