US State Department insiders tell how, after 9/11, Iran played a key role in helping America to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan - only for President Bush to put Iran into his 'axis of evil' immediately afterwards. Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, and President Khatami describe how Iran offered to help the US and its allies in their war against Saddam Hussein - help that, given Iran's powerful contacts in Iraq and the West's subsequent difficulties there, might have made a crucial difference.
Jack Straw, his successor Margaret Beckett, and Joschka Fischer of Germany describe how they struggled to find a compromise between Iran and President Bush's hardliners over Iran's programme. John Sawers at the UN reveals an extraordinary secret deal that Iran proposed a few years later.
