Iran in 2006: A Country at a Crossroads

One spring afternoon in 1997, the telephone at the New York Times bureau in Istanbul rang. I was then serving as bureau chief, and the caller was my boss, the Times foreign editor. An election was soon to be held in Iran, he said, and he had chosen me to cover it. “Get yourself a visa,” he told me, “buy a plane ticket, go to Iran, and then tell us what’s really happening there.” Trying...