The Middle East is the world's most controversial region. Yet despite all the attention focused on the area, many longer-term and vitally important issues and trends often seem to be overlooked in the immediate and crisis-oriented focus. This book is an attempt to get beyond that barrier in order to deal with important points that, although generally neglected, help to explain the rush of events and developments.

While it uses printed primary sources, it should be stressed that this book also tries to bring to light the behind-the-scenes dialogue that goes on concerning the region. It is based on hundreds of conversations over several decades with Arabs and Iranians trying to understand and explain their region. The gap between official and published discourse and what people really think, but often cannot say, is central to the analysis presented here.

A note on transliteration: I would have preferred to have a consistent transliteration of Arabic names; the problem is that sources used often employ a different spelling from what I would prefer. To alter all of the spellings from the translations and other materials would lead to even greater confusion. Consequently, aside from some basic standardization, I have left the spellings as they appear in the source footnotes, though I would have preferred to do otherwise.

I would like to thank the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center of the Lauder School of Government, Interdisciplinary Center, for its help, and to thank especially Cameron Brown, Lawrence Joffe, Joy Pincus, Elisheva Rosman, and Caroline Taillandier for their help.