Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East

by Kim Ghattas

Overview

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020

“[A] sweeping and authoritative history" (The New York Times Book Review), Black Wave is an unprecedented and ambitious examination of how the modern Middle East unraveled and why it started with the pivotal year of 1979.

Kim Ghattas seamlessly weaves together history, geopolitics, and culture to deliver a gripping read of the largely unexplored story of the rivalry between between Saudi Arabia and Iran, born from the sparks of the 1979 Iranian revolution and fueled by American policy.

With vivid story-telling, extensive historical research and on-the-ground reporting, Ghattas dispels accepted truths about a region she calls home. She explores how Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region, became mortal enemies after 1979. She shows how they used and distorted religion in a competition that went well beyond geopolitics. Feeding intolerance, suppressing cultural expression, and encouraging sectarian violence from Egypt to Pakistan, the war for cultural supremacy led to Iran’s fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, the assassination of countless intellectuals, the birth of groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the rise of ISIS.

Ghattas introduces us to a riveting cast of characters whose lives were upended by the geopolitical drama over four decades: from the Pakistani television anchor who defied her country’s dictator, to the Egyptian novelist thrown in jail for indecent writings all the way to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Black Wave is both an intimate and sweeping history of the region and will significantly alter perceptions of the Middle East.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250131218
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/28/2020
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	400,387
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Kim Ghattas is an Emmy-award winning journalist and writer who covered the Middle East for twenty years for the BBC and the Financial Times. She has also reported on the U.S State Department and American politics, and is the author of The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power. She has been published in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and Foreign Policy and is currently a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Born and raised in Lebanon, she now lives between Beirut and Washington D.C.

Kim Ghattas is an Emmy-award winning journalist, analyst, and author with more than 20 years of experience covering the Middle East, international affairs, and US foreign policy for the BBC, the Financial Times and de Volkskrant. She is currently a contributing writer for The Atlantic magazine, a regular contributor to the Financial Times, and a 2023-2024 Inaugural Distinguished Fellow at Columbia University's Institute for Global Politics.

Ghattas is the author of The Secretary, the New York Times best-seller about US foreign policy and her travels around the world with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Her second book Black Wave, about the Saudi-Iran rivalry, was named a New York Times notable book in 2020 and has since become a reference for universities and diplomats. Ghattas is currently writing her third book, which revisits Lebanon’s civil war as the origin story of the US-Iran clash in the Middle East.

As a leading voice on Middle Eastern affairs, Ghattas shares her expertise on risk and opportunities in regional and geopolitical trends with a variety of key players and institutions in the region and in the United States. She serves on the board of trustees of the American University of Beirut and was chair of the board of directors for the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism network from 2020 to 2023. She sits on the advisory council of the Atlas for Impunity. Ghattas is also a former nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2017–2022), a former public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2017) and a former Civitella Ranieri fellow (2019).

Table of Contents

Note on Names and Spellings
People
Map
Introduction

Part I Revolution
1.Cassette Revolution
2.Today Tehran, Tomorrow Jerusalem
3.Bleeding Heart
4.Darkness

Part II Competition
5.I Killed the Pharaoh
6.No Dupatta
7.Karbala in Beirut
8.Shia Kafir
9.Mecca Is Mine
10.Culture Wars
11.Black Wave
12.Generation 1979

Part III Revenge
13.Cain and Abel
14.Fracture
15.Surrender
16.Counterrevolution
17.Between ISIS and IRGC
18.Achilles’ Heel
19.Murder on the Bosporus
Conclusion

Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize * A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 * A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2020 * A Financial Times Best Political Book of 2020

“[A] sweeping and authoritative history.” —The New York Times Book Review

“She serves up a wealth of human interest wrapped in ambiance and atmosphere. She paints riveting portraits of the protagonists… a superbly researched and subtly told story—current history at its best.” —The Wall Street Journal

“[A] wonderfully readable account… Ghattas has an enviable gift for going beyond politics… Whatever happens next in this long-running, oppressive and dangerous Middle Eastern drama, Black Wave will be a vivid, indispensable guide to the story so far.” —The Guardian

“A timely and welcome guide to the politics of a region…Well-researched and elegantly written.” —The Financial Times

“Unlike narratives told from a Western point of view, this book doesn’t highlight terrorism or ISIS but instead seamlessly weaves history and personal narrative into a story that explains the gradual suppression of intellectualism and the creep of authoritarianism in the region…Illuminating, conversational, rich in details and like nothing else you’ve ever read about the Middle East, Black Wave will leave you with a new understanding of this diverse and troubled region.” —BookPage

“The publication of this book, Black Wave, could not be better timed. In it, Kim Ghattas argues convincingly that the revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979 was one of three events that year that profoundly shaped — or rather misshaped — the Middle East… a fascinating and winding but highly readable tale.” —The Times (UK)

“[An] illuminating account of the origins of sectarian violence and the current political shape of the Muslim world… [a] fluid, fast-moving narrative...Essential for all who follow world events.” —Kirkus Reviews, *starred review*

“Skillfully written and scrupulously researched, Black Wave is an essential book in understanding the origins of the modern conflicts in the Middle East.” —Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower

"The framing of Black Wave is as important as the content. Kim Ghattas portrays the last four decades across the Middle East as a dark age, a world dimmed behind a curtain of violence, misogyny, and religious extremism. In exploring how this blackness came to be, she recalls a brighter past and predicts a better future. It's a powerful and important book." —Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of the New America Foundation and former Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State

“Kim Ghattas is a superb writer and reporter, which makes Black Wave an accessible and very interesting account of the sectarian schism and regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia that has riven the Middle East for decades and is one of the most consequential contests threatening global security.” —Peter Bergen, author of Manhunt

"An artful, gripping, timely, and humane account of the roots and consequences of the destructive rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia from one of the region's most insightful and incisive observers." —Ambassador William J. Burns, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Deputy Secretary of State

“A well-researched and highly readable primer on the rivalry between Shias and Sunnis shaping today’s Middle East. Kim Ghattas masterfully traces the origins of sectarianism in the explosive rise of Islamic fundamentalism in 1979 and the destructive Saudi-Iranian rivalry that followed. Told through the experiences of those who lived and shaped sectarianism, Black Wave is both gripping and informative; a must read for anyone interested in understanding the forces shaping the Middle East today.” —Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East politics at the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and author of Shia Revival

“Clear-eyed and honest, perfectly researched and brilliantly written, a unique book that is about more than the Saudi-Iran rivalry as it illuminates how and why the region began to turn inward over the last 100 years—a must read for outsiders and people in the region.” —Marwan Muasher, Vice President for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former minister of foreign affairs of Jordan

"Black Wave is a brilliant piece of work. Ghattas reveals how the competition between Tehran and Riyadh, instigated in 1979 by the Iranian revolution and the siege of Mecca—and intensified after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq—led to the instrumentalization of Islam to destroy cosmopolitanism, to force women to veil, and to mobilize sectarian extremists." —Emma Sky, senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute and author of In a Time of Monsters

From the Publisher

01/01/2020

Ghattas (The Secretary) sheds insight on the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The personal narrative details the ongoing impact of the Iranian Revolution in 1978–79, along with siege of Mecca in 1979. It was this year, notes the author, that Iran and Saudi Arabia, once close allies, become rivals, each facing differing amounts of religious intolerance and fanaticism. Ghattas explores political unrest in her native country of Lebanon along with other countries, including Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. She continues by recounting the lingering effects of economic stagnation, political repression, and widespread sectarian violence in the Middle East. Ghattas combines journalistic and academic references with firsthand narratives from political leaders and civilian activists throughout the region in order to better portray how suppression and intimidation impacts religious and cultural pluralism. The book highlights people who resist intolerance and violence; Ghattas maintains optimism that people, especially the silenced majority, can enact societal change. VERDICT A wide-ranging, lively historical overview of current geopolitical relationships within the modern Middle East and how they came to be. These profiles in courage are an informative, enlightening read. [See Prepub Alert, 7/15/19.]—Elizabeth Hayford, formerly with Associated Coll. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL

Library Journal

★ 2019-11-11
Illuminating account of the origins of sectarian violence and the current political shape of the Muslim world.

"What happened to us?" So runs a common refrain in households from Pakistan to Libya. Beirut-born journalist Ghattas (The Secretary: A Journey With Hillary Clinton From Beirut to the Heart of American Power, 2013), now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, locates an answer in three events of the same year, all tightly linked: the overthrow of the shah and the revolution in Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the attack on the Grand Mosque of Mecca by Saudi militants. "Nothing has changed the Arab and Muslim world as deeply and fundamentally as the events of 1979," she writes. Her fluid, fast-moving narrative ably proves the thesis. The Iranian Revolution put into sharp relief the ancient division between Shia and Sunni Islam, an argument at once religious and political, with the Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors vying for power with an implacably opposed—though just as conservative—form of Islam. The struggle has played out in many times and places over centuries, but since 1979, it has taken a form more familiar to Westerners. While occasionally Shia and Sunni clerics allied to battle a common enemy, such as the secularist Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the two powers of Iran and Saudi Arabia have more often squared off through proxies in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and particularly Pakistan after the withdrawal of the Soviets from neighboring Afghanistan—a defeat paid for by Saudi money but whose aftermath was swayed by Iran. One constant in the narrative: Wherever Americans have been involved, the aftereffects have been worse, whether attacking Iraq in 1991 and 2003 or attempting to shift the balance of power in the Middle East, with the bumbling of the current administration enabling such things as the savage murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The headlines from the Middle East make a little more sense through the lens Ghattas provides.

Essential for all who follow world events.

Kirkus Reviews