ABSTRACT
Abbas Mas'udi made official trips to America in 1945-1946, Eastern Europe in the 1950s, China in the 1950s and 1970s and the 'Sheikhdoms' in the 1960s and 1970s. From the first war with Russia in the early nineteenth century until Operation Ajax in 1953, Iran was largely on the defensive in all areas of its foreign policy. Farhad Mas'udi portrays his father's Persian Gulf trips as catalyzing an informal process using the Kuwaiti government as intermediaries that ultimately restored relations between Iran and Egypt in August 1970. Mas'udi's portrayal of post-independence Bahrain contrasted considerably with his portrayal of Oman. The emotional reality of nationalism coexists with sober strategic realism in foreign policy discourse. Mas'udi's travelogues formed an attempt to popularize these nationalist framings of foreign policy discourse and to justify them in the court of world opinion. These efforts may, in fact, have given these nationalist framings broader cultural currency and durability in Iran if nowhere else.
