I came across another review from a reader on Amazon that really touched me and so I decided to post it here for all to see:

By: Mladen Andrijasevic

There are several books I wish Americans were reading today. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Nomad and Melanie Phillips’s A World Turned Upside Down. But most of all I hope they would read this one, for it is time they begin to understand what is happening in Iran and the dangers of doing nothing. In 2005 Reza Kahlili’s wife Somaya told him “Tell the world what you have witnessed and what these criminals have done to us.” Thank you, Somaya.

It is almost impossible to explain to Americans what it is like to live in a totalitarian Islamic society, all the more so with journalists like Roger Cohen of the New York Times parachuting into Iran for a few weeks and thinking that by asking people in the street he would get a realistic picture. Yet Reza Kahlili has managed to do it. The book has a strange feel of Smiley’s People by John le Carré mixed with Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. But of course, it is a unique book by a brave and honest man who has decided to speak up and warn the world of the imminent danger of Iranian apocalyptic jihadists, and of American stupidity in not recognizing the danger.

This is not a thriller, a spy novel, an autobiography, a historical account and psychological drama. It is a combination of all of the above by a man whose sole motive was to try and do something and reverse the descent into barbarity that the 1979 revolution had plunged Iran into. This something was not writing letters to the editor from California but working among the Revolutionary Guards in Teheran while being a spy for the CIA – an extremely dangerous endeavor. If found out his family would have been tortured and executed in front of him, not put on the first flight back home like the Russian spy Anna Chapman a few weeks ago. .

What motivates a man to take such enormous risks? The turning point in the book are the horrific events in Evin prison which are conveyed with such power that all his subsequent actions become understandable, yet only someone with exceptional courage and determination could have persevered for so long.

However, despite all his efforts American policy towards Iran had from the start been one of appeasement of the mullahs, from the time of President Reagan to this day with President Obama. It is as if the political elites never understood what he had been risking his life to tell them. What a shame!

The political elites also did not seem to understand that so many Persians were proud of their great history, expressed in the words of Reza’s grandfather, Agha Joon: “This is the land were Cyrus the Great ruled one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. He brought dignity and respect for all to this great civilization: a land where the first charter of human rights was introduced, a land where women were respected, where slavery was abolished, and a land where Jews were free to return to their native land at the end of the Babylonian captivity. This was the Persia where poets, philosophers, and scientists were the bedrock of national pride, where religion was based on three simple premises: good thoughts, good words, and good deeds”.

Reza Kahili has remained true to his conviction. After settling in the US he could have lived a quite and secluded life. But after 9/11 and the rise of Ahmadinejad on the urging of his wife he decided to speak up and write this book. How many Americans have heard of the Mahdi? Will they take notice when Kahlili writes: “The hadiths predict that `many will be killed and the rest will suffer hunger and lawlessness’. People like Ahmadinejad so completely believed that these conditions would hasten the return of the twelfth Imam that they were willing to foment universal war, chaos, and famine to bring it about”.

Reza Kahlili risked his life to help his people and help the US. He was there. His words carry weight. The West should listen.

Amazon.Com