The book is on the whole very well researched and well written and is thoroughly recommended to anybody with an interest in international relations and the middle east (and I don't say that as an Iranian Patriot). Particularly, the chapters on the Abadan Oil Crisis of 1951 until the 1953 Coup came across as a serious scholarly work of historiography. Only a Labour politician could draw the link between Attlee government's nationalisation at home and their ambivalent treatment of Mossadegh who too wanted to nationalise his country's oil industry.
The earlier parts on the Qajar and Pahlavi period had a rather anti-imperialistic tone which one may not necessarily expect from a British Foreign Secretary. The parts on the Iran Iraq war was really eye-opening particularly about the Israeli assistance of Iran in the fight against Saddam, Which I would assume would be censored out of the Farsi translations. The notion of covert cooperation between the Islamic Republic and Israel is such an unknown part of Iran's modern history that it would be virtually unimaginable for the vast Iranians due to the fierce rewriting of the history of that period by the regime and its sentimental branding as 'holy defence' or Defa Moghadas in Farsi. Another interesting point was Straw's of Iran's aggressive policy towards Israel with the West's failure to invite Iran's representatives to the 1991 Madrid conference on Israel and Palestine. Straw argues that to be a turning point in Iran's policy from 'whatever the PLO agrees we'll support' to opposition to Arafat and active support for more extreme rejectionist groups like Hamas.
Additionally, the bits about how the war could have ended much earlier at around 83 is also particularly interesting and again controversial. As the book nears towards the end and once the author talks about the Nuclear negotiations with E3 and the P5+1, he is able to draw from his own first-hand experiences as British Foreign Secretary at the time, which I personally found rather dull as it went through the intricate details of Iran's nuclear programme and the International Law around proliferation.
One of the two mistakes I came across was on Chapter 20 page 308 when he lists the candidates in the 2013 Presidential election in which there was a typo of 'Gharazi' typed as 'Gharaz' and the list totally missed out one of the key candidates, the former Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref who served under Khatami and was the election's main Reformist candidate until Khatami endorsed Rouhani after which he withdrew his bid. The book totally misses out this brief episode, which is rather surprising given Straw's otherwise extensive knowledge of Iran's recent history and his personal dealings with the reformists. In the same chapter, I found it very interesting when he observed that in Rouhani's first Cabinet there were more PhDs from the US than in Obama's Cabinet. Another thing I noticed was that there was only one mention of Ghassem Souleimani and the Quds Force despite Straw having mentioned the IRGC, Iran's security apparatus and its involvement in the region multiple times throughout the book. Maybe that was due to Souleimani's tendency to stay 'off the radar'. The other mistake is on the concluding chapter and on page 365 in which Straw describes Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi as 'a leading reformist cleric' which as an Iranian, I found surprising given how critical of the Rouhani govt he actually is.
The other interesting observation the author makes is about the modern Iranian state, which is that within the Islamic republic power is so dispersed (yet paradoxically concentrated with the Supreme Leader having the final say on almost everything) between elected and unelected institutions, how different security forces (the Police, Basij, IRGC and the Intelligence Ministry) compete with each other and how there is no coordinated Foreign Policy as Iranian negotiators often find themselves blindsided by the announcements of the Supreme Leader or IRGC Generals. This element of internal multipolarity is a uniquely Iranian problem.
The final point of interest for me was his plea for the world powers to give Iran the recognition which it craves and to be accommodating to reformists in Iran in order to allow them to point to the benefits of cooperation with the international community and weaken the appeal of the hardliners. This conjured up a thought in my mind which is that there seems to be a paradox. Currently, around the western world, ordinary people are rising up against globalisation (election of Trump, Brexit etc) against a ruling elite which wishes to continue cooperating with the rest of the world, whereas in Iran the reverse is the case. Amongst ordinary Iranians, there's a strong appetite for further integration into the international community whilst it is the elites which are pessimistic towards 'foreigners'. The final beautiful point was in the final few lines of the book, where he correctly observes that over the years the cynical and conspiratorial explanation behind everything in Iran's highly politicised society has shifted from 'Kar Kare Englisas' to 'Kar Kare Khodeshoone' from 'It's an English job' (the title of the book) to 'it's an inside job', which may be due to the fact that the leaders of the Islamic Republic have blamed foreign agents and foreign involvement so much to dismiss any protest or dissent, that it has become the case of 'the boy who cried wolf'. Especially, after the US unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal, any hardship felt (even if caused by mismanagement) is blamed on the sanctions.