Draw­ing on new­ly declas­si­fied archives, Bergman, one of Israel’s top inves­tiga­tive reporters, Although Israel once sup­port­ed Iran’s mil­i­tary efforts under the Shahs, its rela­tion­ship with Iran dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed in 1979, when the Aya­tol­lah Khome­i­ni over­threw the Shah and led the coun­try into a rad­i­cal Islam that foment­ed hatred against Israel and the West. With all the bone-chill­ing ten­sion of a good thriller, Bergman’s book reveals the behind-the-scene efforts of the Mossad and the CIA to thwart the ter­ror­ist ploys of Hezbol­lah. Although Bergman points to the fail­ures of intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tions in Israel and the U.S. as a major rea­son for the strength­en­ing of Iran, he points out that Israel’s 2007 ghost raid on Syria’s sus­pect­ed nuclear facil­i­ties demon­strat­ed Israel’s com­mit­ment to the Begin doc­trine: The Jew­ish State will not tol­er­ate the devel­op­ment by its neigh­bors of weapons that may be used to destroy it. Gloomy and fright­en­ing, Bergman’s fast-paced study is nev­er­the­less a clar­i­on call to all the par­ties involved in the preser­va­tion of the future of Israel.