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Geoffrey F. Gresh, Gulf Security and the U.S. Military: Regime Survival and the Politics of Basing (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2015). Pp. 280. $65.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780804794206

policy, one would expect the author to have used original primary source material in Persian; yet, the majority of citations are from secondary sources and all are in English. Juneau believes that in all three issue-areas Iran’s performance has been generally suboptimal. Comparatively put, Iran’s worst performance was in the Arab–Israeli conflict where “lower structural pressures allowed domestic processes to hijack policy-making, leading to a highly suboptimal outcome: major consequences and limited gains” (p. 198). In Iraq, due to strong structural pressures, Iran had a relatively more optimal manner with important gains. The nuclear case situates itself in between: “the consequences of its nuclear policy have been severe and are set to worsen, but the potential benefits are significant” (p. 12). The most debatable aspect of the book is not the narrative that the author provides for Iran’s performance; rather, it is hidden in its supposition. Juneau assumes that a window of opportunity was opened for Iran after 2001 as its two hostile neighbors collapsed one after another. As a result, Iran “faced an unusually high degree of choice” (p. 220). However, this is not how Iranian politicians and statesmen perceive the situation. They see a window of threat that opened after 2001 when the United States declared Iran a member of the axis of evil. Iran’s attempt to reach a grand bargain with the United States was rejected by the Bush Administration and the country faced a persistent and imminent threat of attack by the United States and Israel. Concerned with survival, Iran had limited choices. Considering this alternative perspective could affect our judgment and evaluation of Iran’s performance. In reality countries are rarely faced with windows of pure opportunity; rather, they have to deal with a complicated and interrelated combination of advantages and disadvantages that also relentlessly affect one another. The book was in the process of publication while nuclear negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany were ongoing. It was released almost two months before the historic accord was reached, leading especially to a rapid economic rapprochement between Iran and many European countries. The situation in the Middle East is very fluid as it has rapidly faced new developments since the publication of Juneau’s book. Yet, he does not hesitate to predict that the “overall situation will worsen, not improve, for the Islamic Republic: its power is likely to decrease in coming years” (p. 12). The book has a wide potential audience. It could provide a good methodological example for students of international relations who are interested in using neoclassical realism as a framework for any case study. Neoclassical realism has usually been applied for studying far and long historical cases. But Juneau’s book is a courageous attempt to use this theory for understanding the “important day-to-day aspects of state behavior” (p. 5). Scholars of Iran and Middle East politics can also benefit from reading the book. Policymakers, nonacademic professionals, and lay readers who are interested in the region can skip the two theoretical chapters of the book and yet gain insight from the detailed accounts of Iran’s foreign policy that Juneau offers.