BOOK REVIEW : James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American Iranian Relations

This review situates James A. Bill’s “The Eagle and the Lion” within the scholarship on US–Iran relations, highlighting its archival depth and narrative sweep from the coup of 1953 through the revolution and hostage crisis. It outlines the author’s central claims about misperception, overreliance on elite ties, and the pathologies of hub-and-spoke alliance management. The review commends Bill’s granular portraits of actors and institutions while probing debates on agency versus structure, and on whether alternative policy choices could have averted rupture. It argues that the book’s enduring value lies in its disciplined attention to ideas, identity, and domestic politics as constitutive of foreign policy behavior, a perspective that complicates purely strategic accounts.

The body first summarizes the architecture of the book—periodization, sources, and analytic frame—then assesses its explanations for recurring crises: asymmetries of information, moral hazard in security assistance, and domestic coalition shifts in both countries. It interrogates Bill’s treatment of nationalism and religion in Iran and the tendency of US policymakers to privilege stability over pluralism. The review compares Bill’s narrative with later works that emphasize oil politics and Cold War imperatives, noting areas of convergence and contestation. It also evaluates methodological choices: the balance between elite interviews and documentary evidence, and the handling of counterfactuals. In closing, the review extracts policy lessons that resonate beyond the case—dangers of personalization in diplomacy, costs of signaling inconsistency, and the need for thicker societal engagement to sustain ties during shocks. As scholarship and policy continue to revisit the US–Iran relationship, the book remains a rigorous, provocative touchstone.