The book's author is a senior CIA military intelligence analyst who has studied Iran's political history and military culture for more than twenty-five years. Ward is a cautious and thorough scholar. He examines the factors that have shaped the strategic assessments of Iran's military leaders from the time of the “Immortals,” a royal guard of 10,000 men created by the Emperor Xerxes in the 5th century B.C., through the beginning of the 21st century.

Ward outlines several factors that have shaped Iranian identity, security policy, and military culture. The most important of these is Iran's geostrategic location, a point on which most scholars agree. Ancient Persia and modern Iran have witnessed invasions, foreign interventions, and isolation imposed by outsiders (Britain, Russia and the Soviet Union, Iraq, and the United States, to name the most recent). The author notes that throughout Iran's long history, its armed forces have sometimes been called invincible and at other times shamed by their weakness and inability to prevent foreign intervention. The military, Ward observes, excelled when rulers paid attention to it and, not surprisingly, suffered when they ignored it.

A second factor is Iran's history of dual militaries. Ward discusses both the pre-Islamic era of the “Immortals” and the most recent examples—the regular armed forces (artesh) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (pasdaran), the former modernized by the last shah, and the latter created by the Islamic Republic in 1979 to protect its leaders and the revolution and act as a counterbalance to what was left of the shah's armed forces. Iran's military in the 1970s was one of the largest and best equipped (by the United States), and it was assumed by many in Iran and the region to be second only to that of Israel as the most effective military force in the region. The military's failure to halt the revolution revealed how weak it had become under Mohammad Reza Shah, a vacillating and insecure ruler who was not convinced of the loyalty of his senior officers and who micromanaged appointments as well as arms purchases. Nor did Ayatollah Khomeini trust the military bequeathed to him by the shah. How could he trust a military that had been created by the shah and trained and equipped by the U.S. military? Ward notes that “competitive militaries . . . prevent challenges to central authority regardless of the cost to military effectiveness” (p. 301). That may have been true in premodern times, but the shah saw senior military officers as potential rivals as well as allies. Moreover, Saddam Husayn and the Islamic Republic have shown how a new model army can be created, equipped, and effectively deployed alongside and at the expense of the traditional armed forces while maintaining competitiveness.

Ward's third historical theme is the conflict between clerics with a traditional conservative mindset who are uneasy with political or military innovations and more liberal-minded political and military elites interested in adapting modern (read Western or American) values and technology. Ward writes that the clerics and leaders of the Islamic Republic see the military's role as protecting their idealized image of the Islamic state and society from foreign influences while the military under the shah saw modern technology as the means to make Iran great once again. Is there a real conflict today? I don't think so. The clerics, the IRGC, and the regular armed forces seem to agree on a common end state and on the need to possess the most advanced weapons to get there—the term nuclear “capability” is used to cover both civilian energy and potential military uses.

Ward describes both the wars of the Persian Empire and the Islamic state with the rigor and thoroughness one would expect from a military historian and an intelligence analyst. He documents the strategies and tactics employed to achieve military success. His analysis of Iran's politics and foreign relations is equally solid, with the two discussions blended, for example, in his examination of the rise of Reza Khan and the latter's efforts at military modernization and cosmetic adoption of Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's political and social reforms. The book is, after all, an attempt to present a comprehensive history of Iran's political institutions and military culture and he documents those changes as part of his historical narrative. If I have a quibble with Ward, it is his assumption that the westward longing of the senior officer corps in the 18th and 19th centuries included a taste for European-style political liberalism or stretched much beyond the narrow confines of Tehran. I doubt this was part of the thinking of anyone among the military elite except in the most superficial sense.

Ward links the expansion of American interests in Iran in the 1940s and 1950s with postrevolutionary Iranian suspicion of U.S. intentions. Iranians still accuse the United States of intervening in its internal affairs by leading the coup that overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh and restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power. Distrust of American and British intentions had roots here that are reflected in the discourse of the Islamic Republic in defending its rights to define and defend its national interests. It also helps explain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reflexive mistrust of American intentions toward Iran. One interesting detail, however, stands out—the role of Colonel H. Norman Schwartzkopf, a graduate of West Point's class of 1917 and the father of General H. Norman Schwartzkopf, Jr., the commander of the U.S. and coalition forces that liberated Kuwait in 1991. Despite opposition from military commanders and Mohammad Reza Shah, the elder Schwartzkopf reorganized, retrained, and rearmed Iran's gendarmerie, turning it into a force capable of restoring order and governmental authority during the chaos of World War II. He also established the U.S. Army Military Mission in Iran.

Immortal is divided into ten chapters, each a study of a significant period in Iranian history and military preparedness or lack thereof. The book overall is well organized, well written, and well documented. Ward ends with an examination of Iran's strategic nuclear doctrine, which he writes is based on the use of nuclear weapons to deter attacks on Iran and retaliate against its enemies. This is probably the weakest chapter in the book. It was written after the publication of selected key judgments from the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which stated that Iran had had a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of its NPT commitments but assessed “with moderate confidence” that Iran halted the program in late 2003. It also assumed that Iran had the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons should it choose to do so. Ward admits that Iran's intentions are unknown, and he does not rule out the possibility that Iran's leaders would use nuclear weapons offensively. He doubts, however, that nuclear weapons would be used to support unconventional warfare or proxies or as a shield to protect it from the consequences of covert operations (pp. 319–22). I do not know if Ward still holds these views. I hope he is correct.

This study is the only comprehensive history of Iran's military and as such it is a must-read for students of Iranian history and those looking to understand the factors that drive Iranian strategic thinking and mistrust of the United States and the West. It is an excellent source book for graduate and undergraduate students studying Iran. Ward has made good use of English-language source material, including memoirs and articles written by Iranians in English, but he has not used sources written in Persian. It would be interesting to compare his analysis with accounts written in Persian by Iranian military and civilian leaders and scholars. That book must wait.