These veteran observers (Mr. Bushinsky had been in Israel since 1966; Mr. Bierman was expelled from Iran by the Shah in 1973) take us through the Soviets' involvement in the Middle East and why anyone still trusts them, President Sadat's flair for the dramatic, and how the Carter mission affects Middle Eastern views of the United States. They also shed some fascinating sidelights on, e.g., Middle Eastern corruption. Mr. Bushinsky: "You have kind of a disguised unemployment in a country like Egypt, where many people are kept working and salaried by dint of their presumed jobs, and you as an individual, foreign or domestic, must go through these people--and they are very jealous of their prerogatives; otherwise their jobs might be rendered redundant. You can call that a form of corruption if you will, but... it wasn't necessary to bribe the air-freight personnel to get your shipment out... Maybe there were a few too many rubber stamps along the way, but not corruption on a scale that John had known in Tehran."