Seldom in the United States do politicians refer to literary works or memoirs when discussing foreign policy. Most politicians, like most Americans, think of literature as entertaining, spiritually edifying, even educational, to be read in the evening after work. But occasionally a book appears that politicians might do well to read during work.

"Iran Awakening," published in 2006 by Shirin Ebadi, is one such book. Ebadi, who received the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote this personal history of late-20th-century Iran from her perspective as a judge, lawyer, human rights activist, founder of the Children's Rights Support Association in Iran, and mother. In the book's epilogue, Ebadi warns of the effects of the use of force: "The threat of regime change by military force, while reserved as an option by some in the Western world, endangers nearly all of the efforts democracy-minded Iranians have made in these recent years. The threat of military force gives the system a pretext to crack down on its legitimate opposition and undermines the nascent civil society that is slowly taking shape here."

In her memoir Ebadi recounts the consequences of two revolutions in Iran, one in 1953 and another in 1979, and shows why military force will not produce democracy in Iran.

Born in 1947, Ebadi had yet to start grade school when, in August of 1953, the popular anti-American Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh fell in a coup d'etat financed by the United States, and the pro-American Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi solidified his power. During his two years in office, Mossadegh had nationalized Iran's oil industry and incurred the dislike of the American and British governments. In the years following the 1953 revolution, the shah, while enjoying the continued support of the West, became a despot whose secret police hunted down dissidents and instilled fear in the populace.

Ebadi grew up under the shah's rule, studied law in college and at the age of 23 became a judge. By the late 1970s she was seeing widespread protests against the shah, whose opulent lifestyle as much as his tyranny generated opposition from two very different groups: conservative religious supporters of the theocratic Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini, whom the shah had expelled in 1964 for his anti-shah sermons, and young intellectuals, many of them university students, many of them Marxists. In 1977, Ebadi identified herself as anti-shah when she signed a letter protesting the shah's attempt to reduce the authority of the secular judicial system.

This revolution gained strength in 1978, stimulated in part by the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, who from Paris encouraged his supporters to revolt. Finally, on January 16, 1979, the shah fled the country. And 16 days later, on Feb. 1, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran as Iran's new leader. Little did Ebadi's friends and associates envision then the religious repression that Khomeini would bring to Iran in the name of Islam.

Ebadi, who because she was a woman lost her judgeship when Khomeini took over, came to international prominence during the next three decades as a legal advocate for women's rights, children's rights and human rights. During this period she witnessed horrifying injustices by those in power who brutally punished Iranians challenging their authority. Among them was Ebadi herself, who in the year 2000 spent several weeks in prison.

In her memoir, Ebadi writes about the relationship of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s to the intensification of political oppression by the Iranian government. She writes about Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons on the Iranian people in a war that left a million dead and no victors —- except for, she says, the arms dealers. And she writes about the anti-Americanism developing among Iranians who watched on television "Saddam's death planes guided by U.S. satellite photos."

Ebadi ends her book with a plea to the United States to refrain from using force in Iran. She knows whereof she speaks when she says that the threat of force "makes Iranians overlook their resentment of the regime and move behind their unpopular leaders out of defensive nationalism." This dynamic may explain the power today of Iran's anti-American President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"I can think of no scenario more alarming," Ebadi concludes, "no internal shift more dangerous than that engendered by the West imagining that it can bring democracy to Iran through either military might or the fomentation of violent rebellion."

We are fortunate that Shirin Ebadi has written "Iran Awakening." I hope that her thoughtful account of Iran will give our political leaders wisdom.

> Betty Jean Craige is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Georgia.