REFRAMING IRAN: VIEWS FROM THE FIELD

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• From: wild_bill_donovan@xxxxxxxxx
• Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 22:27:24 -0700

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Reframing Iran:
Views from the Field
A report reflecting the views of the
Network 20/20
delegations to Iran
February 2007
Patricia S. Huntington
with
George Billard and Tai-Heng Cheng
Additional Contributors
Richard M. Murphy and Sarah Pfuhl
Edited by Andrew McCord
REFRAMING IRAN: VIEWS FROM THE FIELD
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The estrangement between the United States and Iran over nearly three
decades
continues while the two countries increasingly pursue conflicting
geopolitical
agendas, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, or Israel and the
Palestinian
territories. The presidents of both countries have described the
other’s nation in
hyperbolic negative terms, and their diplomats ha ve little experience
of each other
because of a generation-long prohibition of official contacts. In this
climate, even
the extremely small number of unofficial exchanges or collaborations
between
Americans and Iranians are vulnerable to attack by many in Iran and in
the United
States as “Trojan horse” strategies concealing more belligerent
intentions.
Nevertheless, desire for increased contact with the United States is
widespread
among Iranians. A more detailed understanding of Iran’s politics,
history, and
current conditions is vitally needed if the significant strands of
Iranian society that
are open to establishing constructive relations with the United States
are to be
effectively engaged.
In the fall of 2006, Network 20/20 members took the unusual step of
fielding two
delegations to Iran in order to gain first hand knowledge and build
bridges with their
counterparts in this important country. The delegations had three
goals in mind:
1) To acquire a better understanding of Iran and Iranians in today’s
geopolitical climate
2) To gain insights into the impact of the 28-year gap in Iranian-U.S.
bilateral relations
3) To make concrete recommendations for reframing issues and
reestablishing diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States
In two separate 10-day trips to Iran, Network 20/20 conducted more
than 50
interviews in six cities and several villages. Some meetings were
planned in
advance, while others took place spontaneously in tea houses, at
historic sites, on the
street, and in bazaars. Interviewees represented a cross-section of
Iranian society
ranging from students, soldiers, and taxi drivers to government
officials, mullahs,
NGO leaders, and university chancellors. Many interviewees spoke
English;
Network 20/20’s Farsi-speaking members conversed with those who did
not.
3
Overall, we found that interest in better relations with the United
States remains
strong, objections to U.S. policy do not inspire hostility to
Americans
individually, and in a few cases U.S.-Iranian medical, environmental,
business,
and drug prevention collaborations have endured.
Nationalist sentiment is shared by Iranians across the political
spectrum and
colored by grievances over past American and British interference in
domestic
affairs. Iran’s nuclear program is largely viewed as symbolic of
Iran’s
independence and prestige, rather than in terms of proliferation or
military
strategy. Even strong opponents of the clerical and security
establishments
strenuously object to coercive diplomacy by the U.S., and especially
to the threat
of military force. While most reformists feel that threats of military
force and
regime change are counterproductive to their reform agenda, they
privately
believe that external pressure is critical to forcing the clerical
regime to moderate.
Keeping the diplomatic heat on the Iranian government for its human
rights
record and disruption of the Middle East peace process, for example,
is an
approach many reformists welcome.
Within Iran, political debate persists, skepticism about the
government’s motives
abounds, and liberal civil society institutions have been tenacious.
While Western
analysts usually portray the country in terms of a crude division
between
“reformists” and “conservatives,” the reality is far more nuanced, and
political
alignments and personal ideology can be fluid.
Our main recommendations to U.S. opinion leaders and policy makers are
that:
 The U.S. government should reestablish diplomatic relations with
Iran.
The United States should also avoid mixed policy messages. For
example, Congress should not pass legislation that couples support for
Iranian democracy with support for regime change.
 The U.S. government should build expertise on Iran among its
diplomats and support joint projects or exchanges in the less
controversial areas of the environment, education, science, public
health, and culture working through nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), multilateral agencies, or private foundations.
 The U.S. government should work with the current Iranian
government on issues of political, social, and economic reforms.
Eventually the United States should help Iran, the way it has China,
accede to international organizations, including the World Trade
Organization.
4
 Congress should hold open hearings on how better relations could be
established with Iran. A large pool of expertise on conditions,
politics,
and attitudes in Iran is present in the United States among Iranian-
Americans and among academics, journalists, former diplomats, and
some businesspeople. Where possible, experts and opinion leaders
should be invited to participate in such hearings on Iran.
 In the current highly charged climate, people-to-people
relationships
need to go beyond simply enacting good will between Iranians and
Americans and begin testing out ways of raising the level of the
debate
between our two countries.
See full recommendations on page 20.
5
INTRODUCTION
Americans and Iranians look at their shared history through different
lenses,
focusing on different events and accentua ting different grievances.
For many
Iranians, the 1953 overthrow of their elected prime minister, Mohammad
Mossadegh, is the defining moment in the relationship. That coup
d’etat, which
was engineered by U.S. officials, led to the installation of Shah
Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi, whose government was brutal in its repression of political
opposition and
generally unresponsive to human development among its subjects, even
as it was
seen to be modernizing by the West. America’s support for the Shah
over more
than a quarter of a century is, in turn, often cited by Iranians of a
wide-range of
ideologies as proof that U.S. aims are not in the interest of Iran.
Furthering this
mistrust, American backing for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war still
resonates among
young Irania ns and the Ahmadinejad generation of government
officials. Finally,
the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq keeps these grievances alive among
young and old
alike.
By contrast, many Americans look at Iran against the backdrop of the
1979
storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the subsequent 444-day
captivity of
66 American diplomats and supporting staff. For many Americans that
ordeal
marked their first awareness of religiously justified anti-American
politics in the
Muslim world.
The symmetry of countervailing grievance between Americans and
Iranians is
repeated at the level of foreign policy: U.S. support for Israel,
Egypt, and Saudi
Arabia, Iran’s main power rivals in the region, is seen as hostile by
the Iranian
state, while Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and for Hamas in
the
Palestinian territories is viewed by the American state as a
significant threat to
vital U.S. interests in Israel. With the U.S. buildup of naval forces
in the Persian
Gulf and the recent detention of members of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard in
northern Iraq, tensions have mounted further. The standoff between the
two
countries threatens both U.S. national interests and global peace and
security.
As U.S. influence in the Middle East is challenged violently in Iraq,
Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and the Levant, Iran’s influence has grown, sometimes as a
stabilizing
force, as in its development aid to western Afghanistan, and sometimes
as a
destabilizing one, as in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories and,
the U.S.
government increasingly asserts, Iraq. But allowing deepening security
disagreements to preclude any further dialogue between the two
countries is a
mistake. The political differences between the two countries need to
be addressed,
and a framework for negotiation that both countries can live with
needs to be
constructed.
6
This is not an impossible task. Paradoxically, the United States and
Iran have
been growing closer to each other in several areas: Iranian trade with
the U.S. via
third parties has increased steadily since the revolution; after a
major drop in
student visas in 2001 and 2002, the number of Iranian students going
to America
to study has gone back up; and, significantly, the United States has
maintained
steady, mediated contacts with Iranian government officials, which
were
instrumental in coordinating U.S. contacts with Afghanistan’s Northern
Alliance
prior to the defeat of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in late 2001.
In order to formulate a serious and successful foreign policy toward
Iran,
Americans need information about what Iranians think, believe, and
feel about
their own society and how it fits into the international system. This
report is an
attempt to outline from recent on-the-ground interviews and
discussions how
Iranians view U.S.-Iranian relations and what their aims and goals
are, both as
individuals and for their country. Our findings are based largely on
interviews
conducted in Iran, with additional information coming from e-mail
exchanges and
off-the-record meetings in the U.S., Canada, and Europe with scholars,
diplomats,
NGOs, international organizations, businesspeople, and journalists,
many of
whom visit Iran regularly. We have generally not named our
interviewees in this
report because of concern that publication of their remarks could, in
some cases
and in unpredictable ways, affect them adversely.
7
MAIN FINDINGS
According to the chancellor of a prestigious university in Tehran,
despite the
current government-to-government freeze, the way to start fostering
further
cooperation among Iranians and Americans is by people-to-people visits
that
allow us to question our fundamental perceptions. “Coming here to talk
to people
like me in order to seek a greater understanding of reality is how we
can all start
to see that what we believe is often very different than the actual
facts,” he said in
a meeting with members of our delegation. “This sort of exploration
can only lead
to a greater understanding and further cooperation between our two
countries.”
Regime-Change Rhetoric Harms Relations and Reforms
Yet in the aggravated climate surrounding the sanctions debate in the
United
Nations Security Council, young reformers we met bemoaned the setbacks
they
suffer from the hardliners every time the United States issues
statements that
threaten to isolate Iran. They told us that Americans must begin to
understand Iran
on its own terms and to listen to Iranians and learn about local
realities, rather
than rely on stereotypes. America’s big-stick diplomacy only fuels
Iran’s
hardliners and hinders reforms, we were told.
President Bush’s co- mingling Iran with North Korea and Iraq and
calling it part of
the “axis of evil” immediately after Iran supported the U.S.. in
Afghanistan has
had deleterious effects. According to a retired government official in
Tehran, “the
U.S. pulled the carpet out from under the Iranian internationalists
who had
supported outreach to America.” Iran’s UN ambassador, Javad Zarif, who
was in
charge of his country’s negotiations with Washington over Afghanistan
at the
time, explained why the U.S. label “axis of evil” had such a negative
impact in
Iran. He said that many Iranians had expected a positive response from
the U.S.
for Iran’s help in Afghanistan and that they were outraged and hurt by
the
poisonous labeling “axis of evil” that they received instead. He told
us, “Iran
made a mistake by just hoping that the U.S. would reciprocate and by
not linking
its assistance in Afghanistan to American help for Iran in other
areas.” It is likely
that Iran will drive hard bargains with the U.S. in the future.
In the context of tensions between the U.S. and Iran, American Under
Secretary
of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told us that the U.S.
and Iran
maintain only limited back-channel contacts. Burns reported that he
himself has
never been in a room with an Iranian official and that the State
Department does
not have a cadre of Farsi speakers. “There is no one in my generation
who’s ever
served in Iran,” he said. “There’s no one in my generation who has
ever worked
with the Iranians in any way, shape, or form. And we have got to fix
that.” To that
end, Burns has promoted first-time Farsi lessons among State
Department
employees.
8
He has established a special outpost in Dubai where U.S. diplomats can
meet
Iranians as they come and go to and from Tehran, and has set up a
special
interagency task force within the State Department to facilitate the
exchange of
information on Iran.
While Iran’s hard- line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, resists
international
pressures to open its nuclear program to full international inspection
and the
United States elaborates new complaints about Iranian influence in
Iraq,
supporters of democratic reform have been heartened by the setbacks
Ahmadinejad received in the December 2006 elections for municipal
government
bodies and for the “Council of Advisors,” a large body that advises
Iran’s
“supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As long as tensions run so
high,
however, even secular liberals in Iran are not receptive to gestures
of support from
the American government. Like the journalist Akbar Ganji, important
dissidents
tend to reject overtures from the U.S. administration.
The pro-democracy broadcasting proposed under the Iran Freedom Support
Act,
which passed both houses of the U.S. Congress with broad bipartisan
support in
2006 as part of a package that also threatens sanctions against Iran’s
nuclear
program, is widely seen as propaganda in service of a U.S. policy of
regime
change. The Iranian sociologist and former UNESCO advisor Ehsan
Naraghi
opposed the act from early in its conception, writing to
Pennsylvania’s Senator
Rick Santorum that “your support would only give the authoritarians
the
opportunity to accuse freedom activists of complicity with the
American
superpower.”
A manufacturer we met in Yazd warned, “America’s threats of regime
change,
bombing, and UN sanctions fuel our hardliners. We will be set back and
our
freedoms taken away if it comes to war.” A participant in the embassy
hostage
taking of 1979 who now promotes human rights and other reforms
complained to
us that the surge in support for democratic reform, symbolized by
former
President Mohammed Khatami’s first-ballot electoral majorities of 70
percent in
1997 and then 78 percent in 2001, was “stopped in its tracks” by
President Bush’s
2002 “axis of evil” speech. In 2004, candidates identified with the
reform
movement were able to win only 39 out of 290 seats in Iran’s Majlis,
or
parliament. By 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had a base of support
among
Revolutiona ry Guard veterans of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and an
alliance
with Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, was able to gain a second-round
majority
of 62 percent in Iran’s presidential election. Although a major reason
for the
resurgence of politicians aligned with Iran’s clerical power structure
in 2005 is
that right-wing bodies were able to approve who could run for office
in partyless
elections, the effect on popular opinion in Iran of the United States’
escalating
anti-Iranian rhetoric and actions should not be discounted.
9
Nationalism Is a National Pastime
In order to more effectively engage Iranian opinion, U.S. officials as
well as
independent observers need to realize how deeply nationalism runs
through
Iranian society. When Iranians perceive the na tion to be under
threat, nationalism
transcends resentment of the unpopular regime, helping explain how it
can be
both unloved and stable at the same time. We heard statements of pride
in Iran’s
civilization from reform-minded students and conservative shopkeepers
alike.
Insistence on Iran’s independence is contained not only in President
Ahmadinejad’s bellicose rhetoric but also in the opinion of a
shopkeeper who told
us that he knew what the International Atomic Energy Agency was but
did not
care whether or not Iran’s nuclear program was in compliance with IAEA
treaties.
Despite such strident remarks, we learned that public support for the
nuclear
program is neither as universal nor as fixed as the government claims
and that
Iranians would have access to more information about the issue if the
media were
less strictly controlled.
A diplomat in Tehran who has served internationally told us, “The
United States
and Iran can work together only if their mutual interests are
respected and not on
the basis of U.S. interests dominating, as they have for more than 50
years.”
While Iranians are tired of being a pariah state, they are also proud
of their
country’s growing global power and importance. “Iran has the power now
while
the U.S. is caught up in a quagmire in Iraq,” the diplomat commented.
Said the
university chancellor in Tehran: “The goals of the Iranian people are
not simply
limited to economic success and prosperity. The people want their
country to have
independence and a voice on the international stage.”
Our meetings in Iran were made through contacts developed in advance
of our
visits, often taking advantage of the personal connections of our
members. We
also conducted interviews on the spot during our travels around the
country.
Many people welcomed us and were glad to talk frankly and at length
about a
wide range of topics. But in a social context where the clerical power
structure
has a surveillance and enforcement apparatus in the Revolutionary
Guard’s
millions-strong paramilitary Basij force, reform-minded people were
more
accessible. We met fewer supporters of Ayatollah Khamenei or President
Ahmadinejad than we did those who question or oppose them. The
conservatives
we did meet were deeply nationalistic, even if they did not understand
foreign
affairs. For example, a conservative school teacher in Tehran told us
she
continues to support the President and his foreign policy whatever it
was because
he has raised her salary. When asked about Ahmadinejad’s denunciations
of Jews,
she said that she didn’t know anything about the Holocaust but that
she was proud
that Ahmadinejad had “stood up for the Palestinians to the whole
world.”
10
President Ahmadinejad in Person
At a small group breakfast meeting that we attended in New York,
President
Ahmadinejad played down his Holocaust denial, emphasizing only his
belief that
Palestinians had been made to suffer as a result of Jewish suffering
during World
War II. “A blacksmith committed a sin, and they beheaded another
blacksmith to
make up for it,” he said in colloquial phrasing typical of his
rhetoric. A short man
dressed in the white windbreaker he wears everywhere, Ahmadinejad
contrasted
sharply with the black-robed and turbaned ayatollahs with whom he has
an uneasy
alliance. He greeted us with a polite salute and then proceeded to
talk for two
hours, allowing us to ask whatever questions we wanted.
Ahmadinejad skirted critical questions, parrying queries on freedom of
expression
in Iran, for instance, with the assertion that “no one in the United
States questions
democracy, but in Iran we can question the principles of Islamic
government.”
The exchange did not produce evidence of common ground on which to
resolve
the United States’ disputes with Iran, but Ahmadinejad did profess to
be in favor
of dialogue, promising to provide forums for exchanges in technical
areas such as
aerospace and adding tongue in cheek that “Americans can go to Iran
without
being fingerprinted and treated disrespectfully.” (A visa for
President
Ahmadinejad himself had been opposed by the State Department, and a
number
of Iranian journalists were denied visas to accompany his visit to the
United
Nations.)
The denunciatory rhetoric that President Ahmadinejad had demonstrated
in his
UN speech the day before our breakfast meeting was significantly muted
when we
met in the absence of a large diplomatic audience to witness his
performance. He
emphasized an almost mystical side to the nationalist populism he
projects.
“Iranians have a love affair with Iran,” he said at one point,
recalling his service
in the Revolutionary Guard during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
“Even
Armenians and Jews joined in the fight.” At another point he said,
“Ideals are like
mountain peaks for a mountaineer. As you climb you must look at the
peak but
also at your feet. We must move up towards the ideal. Otherwise life
is boring.”
Again, there was little in the exchange to provide a basis for
bilateral
understandings, but the closed-door meeting provided insight into a
quieter side of
the Iranian president’s personality and also, perhaps, into an aspect
of his
domestic appeal in Iran. “From the taxi driver to the baker, nobody is
worried
what will happen if the U.S. attacks… Iranians have inner strength.”
Iran’s Government Must Meet Rising Expectations
In Iran we found repeated confirmation of Ahmadinejad’s assertion that
his
constituents were concerned about improving their lot in life. But we
also
found that the government faces increasing difficulty delivering
sufficient
11
economic benefits. Despite the steep rise in oil prices over the past
few years and
strong growth rates in the economy overall, benefits to Iranians have
trailed off.
Almost a third of a century of sanctions have taken their toll,
fueling the black
market and forcing Iranians to pay its high prices for medicines and
other
essentials. Inflation, estimated to be as high as 30 percent, is also
eroding living
standards; the price of some basic food commodities like potatoes and
tomatoes
quadrupled in six months. The country’s oil infrastructure is
decaying, and it has
been unable to reap a full return on the high prices because it cannot
meet the
export quotas set by OPEC. Domestic consumption of highly subsidized
natural
gas and gasoline is rising rapidly, and in the case of gasoline,
Iran’s minimal
refinery capacity means it must import at market rates in order to
sell gasoline to
the public for 35 cents a gallon. Surpluses gained from higher oil
revenues that
are not lost to the subsidy on gasoline appear to be consumed by the
government
and the network of clerical organizations that control these revenues.
In the years immediately after the 1979 revolution, the standard of
living for
average Iranians improved markedly, even though gross domestic product
declined precipitously and has recovered pre-revolution levels only in
recent
years. Electrification and piped water were brought to more than 90
percent of the
population. Natural gas for cooking and heat was piped into 90 percent
of urban
households. Health, family planning, primary education, and other
governmentsupplied
services dramatically expanded. Birth rates declined to close to the
replacement level for Iran’s population. As many as 90 percent of
households
were able to purchase televisions, and phone service was brought to
rural areas.
According to UNICEF figures, childhood mortality rates under the Shah
ran
nearly as high as those in India, then a much poorer country. After
the revolution
these rates declined from 130 deaths per thousand children under five
in 1980 to
72 in 1990, 55 in 1995, 44 in 2000, and 41 in 2002. In the United
Nations
Development Programme’s Human Development Report for 2006, however,
Iran’s oil-rich per capita income of $7,525, which places it 72nd
among 177
countries surveyed, does not translate proportionately into a higher
standard of
living: Even while absolute poverty is low in Iran (35th out of 177
countries,
considerably lower than under the Shah), the country ranks only 96th
in terms of
the UNDP’s overall human development index, 85th in terms of total
life
expectancy and adult literacy, and 92nd in terms of enrollment of
potential
students in schools, colleges, and universities.
In Peace, Economic Strivers Question their Government
The Iranian government’s recent inability to meet the rising
expectations of its
people has led many Iranians to question the power of their leaders.
We met many
12
Iranians who were taking on extra jobs to maintain their standard of
living. “All
they give us is slogans,” said a 67-year-old former naval officer who
now works
as a mechanical engineer and also drives a Tehran taxi to make ends
meet. “Talk
about Palestinians and Hezbollah won’t help me buy milk for my
grandchildren!”
The wages of even professional jobs are untenably low. We were told
that an
engineer or a college professor would have difficulty buying a home or
sending
children to a university. A female journalist in her early thirties
reported that
when a local bakery shut down for renovations during last summer’s
battles
between Israel and Hezbollah, her neighbors immediately concluded that
the
Iranian government had sent all the country’s flour to Lebanon. The
economic
aspirations of Iranians could be an important engine for greater
integration with
the international community. Alternatively, threats like U.S. warships
in the
Persian Gulf or broad sanctions affecting the Iranian people could
result in an
entrenchment of hardliners and Iran’s closing itself off from the
West.
Two-thirds of all Iranians are 35 years old and younger, according to
the UN
Population Division, and the entry of young people into the labor
force has
outstripped job creation by about 200,000 people per year, according
to the World
Bank. In September 2006, the World Bank reported unemployment in Iran
at 11.5
percent overall and 23.2 percent among young people, compared with
10.9 and
22.4 percent, respectively, six months earlier. Young men and women we
met
complained that Iran’s economy is decrepit, that unemployment is
rising, and that
wages for nonprofessional jobs like driving buses and taxis are
unbearably low.
They blame the government for mismanaging the economy. “The government
is
everywhere,” they say. “All of us are working with the government in
some way
or another because it’s so big that it permeates all of life. You
can’t get away from
it.”
Compounding the problem, Iran’s constitutional prohibition of foreign
ownership
has caused deterioration in its petroleum infrastructure because it
forbids the
sharing of oil resources with foreign refinery developers and Iran
lacks the
capital, technology, and management to build them on its own. “Why are
we
importing gasoline when we are a major oil-producing nation?” one
professional
job-seeker asked us rhetorically. Several young entrepreneurs argued
that foreign
direct investment could bring new opportunities for employment. A
small
business owner in Shiraz complained that even though the government,
which has
controlled 80 percent of employment in the past, has slowly begun to
privatize,
his own chances of making it are hampered by Iran’s isolated status in
the world.
An entrepreneur named Sami who sells air time to calling-card
companies said
that his business suffered because of negative views of Iran among his
international clients.
13
Ideology Is Discredited by Corruption, Undermined by Media
Other young men complained of government corruption. Ahmed, a 37- year-
old
entrepreneur, found himself shut out of a computer-importing business
when he
ran up against government officials who had their own interests in
computer
importing. “If they tell you to stop, there is nothing you can do,”
Ahmed
complained. “I had to abandon my business entirely.” When we met him,
he was
working as a translator and tour guide at the same time that he tried
to get an
internet marketing business off the ground. A 34- year-old would-be
businessman
added, “If I want to get anything done, I have to bribe government
officials—not
much, but enough to get the paperwork moved up the chain.”
Iranians tend to view their theocratic regime as hypocritical because
official
corruption is so prevalent. “The connection between regime piety and
corrupt
wealth dominates how Iranians see the world,” a journalist wrote after
describing
a police crackdown on illegal satellite dishes. While the dishes are
ostensibly
banned because they are conduits for Western influence, the
journalist’s
informants asserted that dishes began to be confiscated only when the
son of a
prominent regime-connected ayatollah obtained a contract to import
laptop-size
satellite dishes. The well-connected dish trader wanted to make sure
of demand
for his new product, according to the journalist’s sources on the
episode.
Satellite TV dishes are widespread, despite official prohibitions.
When a Network
20/20 delegate visited relatives in Shiraz, his cousin told him that
thanks to
ingenious connecting and sharing devices, Iranians can now access
Showtime,
Cinemax, and even pay-as-you- go porn channels from the United States.
“How
will the Iranian government ever be able to regulate what channels are
available
to us?” asked the cousin. DVDs of Western films are widely available,
and
despite the fact that high-speed Internet access is the exception, not
the rule, many
young people we met reported use of the Internet on a daily basis,
tolerating long
delays online to download media-rich content from international
websites. Young
Iranian men and women publish more than 90,000 blogs, making Farsi the
world’s third most popular language on the Web, according to the Iran
Civil
Society Organization’s Training and Research Center.
Higher Education of Women Accelerates
While visiting colleges and universities, we found that the
professional education
of women, while contributing to pressure for employment, adds
expertise to the
work force and represents a major force for social change. The number
of women
graduating from Iran’s universities now exceeds the number of men. For
instance,
20 of the 25 graduate students in Islamic Azad University’s spring
2006
environmental management seminar were women. In the university’s
applied
physics department, 70 percent of the 2006 graduates were women. An
American
14
medical scientist visiting Tehran told us that in academic settings
she had
observed equality between male and female researchers. “No
distinctions are
made around the Petri dish,” she remarked.
A nurse who had just finished a night shift insisted, “I will choose a
person as a
husband who lets me work because I love my job.” This sentiment is
heard
despite the fact that in Iran a woman needs her husband’s permission
to work and
it is difficult for a single woman to rent an apartment. Working
mothers are a
growing phenomenon, with the result that husbands are sharing the
workload at
home for the first time. Professional women lack access to management
positions,
however, and earn less than a third of the income of their male
counterparts.
Who Speaks Up for Women’s Rights, and How
Two highly educated professional women in Tehran argued for reform
that goes
beyond shared housework. They want to see gender equality in Iran in
government, society, and the home. They said revisions were needed in
divorce
and child custody laws and cited a host of smaller issues, including
the fact that
their husbands are not allowed in hospital delivery rooms while they
are giving
birth. Like women all across Iran, they expressed a desire to attend
soccer games
and other sports events along with men. Such wishes are typical of the
plethora of
freedoms that Iranians press for in addition to human rights, freedom
of speech,
judicial practice, and government transparency.
On a street in Tehran, a 23- year-old graduate student in blue jeans,
sweater, and
headscarf pointed out another woman in head-to-toe chador and asked,
“Do you
know what she’s wearing?” When we said politely that the outfit was a
chador,
she vehemently countered, “No, it is a prison.” Such statements
clearly show that
the visceral objections to the public concealment of women that many
Westerners
feel when they travel through the streets of Iran are not foreign to
some Iranian
women. But the dodging of the veil by university-educated women should
not be
promoted as the primary battleground in the struggle to improve the
lives of
Iranian women. “Progressive women need to bring along the more
conservative
female forces in Iranian society,” we were told by a sophisticated
Iranian woman
in her mid-forties. “Sometimes these women hold us back more than the
men.
They are difficult because they are fundamentalist and ideological.
Also they are
ignorant of international norms.” It should be noted that besides the
large increase
in female literacy in Iran since the revolution, contraception is now
available to
more than 70 percent of Iranian women. Other young women we met
bristled at
having to wear a headscarf, and many went to le ngths to fulfill the
requirement of
public modesty in minimal ways, wearing form- fitting outfits, bright
lipstick, and
token scarves perched on the back of the latest hairdos. But they told
us also that
they don’t want to be told by outsiders that they sho uld take it off.
15
Coping Amid Restraints and Repression
Many Iranians live with far more freedom in their daily lives than the
legal codes
they live under formally allow. Often rules are simply disregarded. A
former
high-ranking government official argued that one way to achieve
progress is by
not enforcing rules that are still in place, rather than waging public
battles on hotbutton
issues. She called this approach “productive corruption,” in which an
opportunistic public argument that a “perfect socie ty” is only
attainable in the
afterlife might allow for greater tolerance in the here and now. She
identified
former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as an exemplar of this
approach,
noting that Rafsanjani has often been accused of corruption but that
individual
freedoms, as well as privatization of state businesses, increased
under his
government. By contrast, a young secular women’s rights activist we
met
disagreed with this tack, complaining vehemently that “productive
corruption is a
Band-Aid solution, as it keeps women vulnerable to parallel security
forces and
skirts the fundamental problem of lawlessness in Iranian society.”
Iranians who take on the current order in explicit terms, however,
have faced
unrelenting pressure. Over the past four years, the Iranian
authorities have ordered
the closure of more than 100 newspapers. In the fall of 2006, the
government
closed the daily Sharq, a paper that had in some ways accommodated
government
controls while trying to secure means for reform-minded journalists to
continue
their work. Sharq’s editors, like those of earlier reformist papers,
have been
threatened, attacked, and sometimes put in prison. A professor of law
at the
University of Tehran told us that reformist academics, particularly in
the political
science and humanities departments, had been forced into retirement
under
Ahmadinejad. Besides the impact of these retirements, including
potentially his
own, the professor complained that the overseers of Iran’s
universities now are
“men who lack experience in academic administration.” The situation is
so dire
that the majority of Iran’s prominent intellectuals and activists
either have fled the
country or are remaining silent within Iran, engaging in tangential
occupations
and waiting for a more conducive time to again speak up.
University students in Tehran and Shiraz told us that in the face of
the
government’s blocking of websites and online newspapers, they have
solicited
friends outside Iran to forward the sites’ content to them as e-mail
attachments.
While such inventiveness is likely to preserve the circulation of
dissident opinion
among a small group of dedicated students and techies, other Iranian
citizens
ranging from a restaurant owners to an environmental expert complained
that the
regime’s interventions were effectively removing the Internet as an
alternative
theater of debate.
A few activists remain resolute. “If the regime expects me to keep
silent about the
violation of Iranian citizens’ human rights, it is wasting its time,”
the journa list
Ahmad Zeidabadi told us boldly. “Even if they decide to execute me,
like Thomas
More, I will not relent.”
16
The Rise, Retreat, and Potential Revival of Reform Politics
Optimism among reformists was at its peak soon after former President
Khatami
won his first term in 1997. That enthusiasm dimmed as the Supreme
Leader
Khamenei and his clerical allies repeatedly exploited the structural
weakness of
the president’s office to thwart reform. And President Ahmadinejad’s
victory in
2005 left many liberals despondent. “Every morning I wake up and
remind myself
that I am in Iran,” a professor of agriculture told us. “I keep my
expectations
low.” In the run- up to the December 2006 elections for municipal
councils and for
the Assembly of Experts, an 86-member council that advises and selects
the
Supreme Leader, many opponents of President Ahmadinejad despaired of a
positive outcome. “Iranian elections are massive. We have more than 46
million
eligible voters for more than 130,000 seats,” a professor from Yazd
told us. “But
the Council of Guardians makes sure that their conservative candidates
dominate
every race.” Two physicians in Esfahan complained that more than two-
thirds of
the candidates for the Assembly of Experts either were not allowed to
run or
dropped out of the race. This vetting extended to the municipal
council elections
throughout the country. Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati
complained that the decisions on who would be allowed to run for the
municipal
councils “are governed by bribery.”
Despite the very real controls on who can run in Iran’s elections, the
December
elections had surprising results. President Ahmadinejad, whose
clerical sponsor
had himself been barred from contesting by the Council of Guardians,
saw an
allied slate of candidates known as the Pleasant Scent of Service win
only three of
the 15 council seats in Tehran, where Ahmadinejad served as mayor
before being
elected president. Moderate conservatives won seven seats on the
Tehran council,
reformists won four, and an independent took one. Elsewhere, the pro-
Ahmadinejad slate won just three of 11 seats in Isfahan, four of 16 in
Tabriz, one
of 11 in Shiraz, three of nine in Qom, and one of nine in Ardabil,
where
Ahmadinejad had once served as governor. In the election for the
Assembly of
Experts, the big winner was former President Rafsanjani, who received
more
votes than any other candidate in Tehran and has recently argued for a
more
conciliatory approach on Iran’s nuclear standoff with the U.S.
Significantly,
Rafsanjani’s victory came after former President Khatami brokered an
agreement
that saw to it that Rafsanjani, Khatami, and the reformist former
speaker of
parliament, Mehdi Karrubi, did not field competing candidates for the
assembly
seats. Turnout was over 60 percent. Whether the election results
indicate a
popular rejection of Ahmadinejad’s histrionic politics or a backlash
against him
among the clerical establishment is difficult to sort out. But
observers of Iran, and
U.S. government officials in particular, would do well to pay closer
attention to
the shifting currents in Iran’s politics.
17
Attitudes Toward Americans Since the Invasion of Iraq
An academic we met told us that with the Iranian government
recognizing that the
United States seeks to infiltrate Iranian civil society in order to
forward a cause of
regime change, “it is essential for Americans to have no connection to
the U.S.
government whatsoever and for them to be known and respected among
Iranians
before collaboration is possible.” An NGO worker told us that Iranian
civil
society organizations that had sought U.S. funding as recently as two
years ago
now avoid such contacts. “Meetings with Americans have created
resentment
among Iranian NGOs and mixed feelings about receiving support from
outside,”
she said, adding that some organizations in civil society in Iran have
temporarily
gone underground and that U.S. overtures to them would only increase
the
insecurity of their relations with the state.
Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran had the most staunchly and
energetically
pro-American population in the Middle East, a matter of no small
importance
given conditions in the rest of the region. But the images of
devastation in Iraq
and media reports of U.S. aggression that Iranians view daily have led
to a
dramatic change in these sentiments. A young wife and mother told us,
“In the
past three years, the botched invasion has resulted in a serious loss
of political
capital for the United States, and the sort of sympathies that brought
Iranians out
in protest to the September 11 attacks do not exist today.”
Nevertheless, the American and international members of Network
20/20’s
delegations were warmly greeted throughout Iran. Three young
Zoroastrian
computer engineers we met poignantly described their reaction to the
attacks on
New York City and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001. One of them
recalled:
When 9/11 happened, many Iranians felt profound sadness and
unity with the American people. Like everyone else in the world,
we viewed that day as a horrible tragedy that affected the whole
world. Young people all over Iran—in Tehran, Esfahan, Yazd—
shed tears and even expressed themselves in public by holding
candlelight vigils in public squares. They condemned the senseless
acts of the terrorists and demanded justice. Many chanted, “Death
to the terrorists!” Of course, our public display of solidarity did
not
go unnoticed by the regime or their local thugs, the Basij. Young
boys (around 12 to 15 years old) who had volunteered for the Basij
were ordered to disperse the crowds, which they accomplished by
brutally clubbing people with batons and storming in on
motorcycles. I was hit in the back of the head and had to be taken
to the hospital.
18
While such a heart-warming story does little to resolve the state-to-
state disputes
between the United States and Iran, it does serve to remind us that
some
individual sympathies persist. We found communication and in some
cases
collaboration to be thriving in a number of technical arenas.
International
researche rs in fields as varied as archeology and medical research
have
maintained institutional collaborations throughout the years of Iran’s
isolation.
Members of the 20/20 delegation are now developing associations in
their various
fields with friends they made on their visit. While it will take time
to build these
initiatives, several promising starts have been made in the areas of
women’s
rights, the environment, and filmmaking.
Forwarding Collaboration and Communication
Some areas of potential collaboration we identified include public
health, where
Iran’s successes in family planning, drug treatment, and HIV/AIDS
treatment and
prevention have drawn praise from U.S. and other international
researchers and
agencies; medical research of heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and
loss of
eyesight, where Iranian advances have generally been made by non-
government
institutions; stem-cell research, which, unlike in America, is not
thwarted by
theological polemic, in part because many Sunni and Shia sects believe
that a
fetus is infused with a soul only at the age of 120 days; and
environmental
protection, where a local adviser to international organizations
operating in
Tehran tells us that environmental protection projects are already
funded by
multilateral mechanisms to which the United States is usually a main
financial
contributor, and where Iran has already coordinated with its neighbors
to mitigate
the effects of oil drilling in the Caspian Sea.
Iran’s poor integration into the international system, however, has an
impact on
exchange even in noncontroversial areas. A research doctor at the
Royan Institute
in Esfahan reported that Iran’s exclusion from the World Trade
Organization has
limited its access to scientific equipment and replacement parts. A
seasoned
diplomat told us that because of sanctions, until very recently Iran
Air had not
been able to buy spare parts for its airbus fleet for 27 years, and
that the situation
had become increasingly dangerous for air travelers within Iran. On a
more
personal level, the suspicious treatment of Iranians entering the
United States
discourages collaboration and people-to-people exchange. In the summer
of 2006,
for instance, more than 100 prominent Iranian academics attempted to
enter the
United States for a reunion of the prestigious Sharif Industrial
University’s
alumni. They all had valid visas, but half were deported because of
concern
among American border agents about the sudden high number of visiting
Iranians.
Such spontaneous and uneducated reactions are counterproductive and
should be
prevented.
19
In some areas of culture, cross influences seem to persist regardless
of the
difficulties of communication and collaboration. Our encounters with
viewers of
American television and movies attest to this, as does the reception
given Iranian
art films by American cinephiles. A U.S. wrestling team that has
competed in
post-revolutionary Iran for almost a decade has succeeded in
establishing strong
ties with Iranian counterparts as well as wrestling fans. We also note
with
approval the recent lifting of a ban on Iran by Fifa, the world
football ruling body,
just hours ahead of the draw for the 2007 Asian Cup finals.
Remembering the role
that table tennis played during the early 1970s in the thaw in
relations between the
United States and China, we welcome the possibility of a U.S.-Iranian
contest in
the 2010 World Cup.
20
RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommendations to each of the groups below are made in order of their
direct
connection to Network 20/20’s expertise.
To the U.S. Government
The U.S. government should reestablish diplomatic relations with Iran.
It
should cease calling for regime change; the Iranian government is not
going
away. Instead the U.S. should work through diplomatic channels to
raise issues
that concern us like human rights and support for terrorism.
Eventually the U.S.
should help Iran, the way it has China, accede to international
organizations,
including the World Trade Organization. The U.S. should explore
whether the
model of U.S.-Iran cooperation that was successful in Afghanistan can
be
replicated for Iraq.
A bilateral meeting between officials of both countries should be
considered to
lay the foundation for reopening diplomatic ties. While noting
disagreements on
specific issues, the meeting could result in a mutual declaration of
intent. The
declaration should include mutual benefits, rather than one-sided
benefits to the
U.S. or Iran.
The development of a corps of Foreign Service officers with knowledge
of
Farsi, Iranian history, and Iranian culture should be accelerated, and
existing
mechanisms of dialogue with Iranians should be expanded. The
restrictions on
meetings between Iranian and American officials should be relaxed. If
a thaw in
bilateral relations takes place, a cadre of knowledgeable diplomats
will enable the
U.S. to collaborate with Iran on certain issues while pursuing a hard
line in others.
With this in mind, the government’s new National Security Language
Initiative
should be made a priority. Areas for potential future cooperation
include the
environment, drug and HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, drug
interdiction,
and medical research.
Other actions that should be considered include: a) moderating the
rhetoric, as
threats, accusations, and ultimatums are counterproductive; b)
allowing Iranians
to obtain visas to enter the United States and encouraging their
visits; c)
revitalizing the Fulbright program for academic exchanges, especially
short-term
professor exchanges; d) sending one or two young diplomats from each
government’s foreign ministry to study language for a year at a
university in the
other’s country; and e) establishing virtual joint classes and
discussion groups
between universities (as Soliya does with the Arab world) and other
institutions
and organizations.
The State Department should coordinate with immigration officers and
other
branches of the Department of Homeland Security where visas have been
issued to Iranians to visit the United States to ensure that these
vetted and pre21
approved exchanges are not thwarted because officers at the point of
entry lack
information. As stated above, visas should be given to Iranians and
their visits
encouraged.
Incentives should be identified to reward compromise on the part of
Iran.
While relations are now too strained for the United States to offer
carrots in
advance of agreements, the outlines of specific incentives should be
articulated.
Among possible approaches could be U.S. promotion of direct investment
to
improve Iran’s decaying oil infrastructure, encouragement of Iran’s
membership
in the World Trade Organization, and the removal of American
objections to the
proposed natural gas pipeline between Iran, Pakistan, and India.
Cultural and
scientific exchanges could also be part of an incentive package.
There should be a revie w of the existing array of U.S. sanctions to
assess their
impact, followed by consideration of whether those with little or no
negative
effect on specific targeted problems might be reconsidered. Those
restrictions that
have potential to cause large-scale suffering among Iranian citizens
should be
abandoned. For example, even the threat of broad economic sanctions
such as an
oil blockade would greatly strengthen hard- line forces in Iran.
Sanctions
prohibiting the exchange of academic or cultural information contained
in the
works of senior government officials in Iran, Cuba, and Sudan should
be
abandoned. Reading such texts would be of real value to Americans, and
many
believe that such restrictions are not in keeping with the First
Amendment.
Iran should not be a scapegoat for Iraq. While an assessment of Iran’s
role in
supporting violent actors in Iraq’s internal conflicts is beyond the
scope of
Network 20/20’s Iran project, the deteriorating situation in Iraq
clearly has
multiple causes. The Iraq Study Group’s recommendation that Iran be
urged to
cooperate in intra-regional settlements concerning Iraq remains a more
promising
approach than the confrontational one being pursued by U.S. officials.
At a
minimum, official American statements should acknowledge that Iran has
a
natural interest in securing influence for itself in its immediate
neighborhood,
even while objecting to the forms that influence may now take.
To the U.S. Congress
Hearings should be held on how to engage Iran more productively than a
quarter of a century of nonrecognition, isolation, and sanctions seems
to have
done. Besides assessing the U.S. government’s intelligence and plans
for
addressing its security complaints with Iran, Congress should hold
open hearings
on how to engage Iran more productively. A strong pool of expertise on
conditions, politics, and attitudes in Iran is present in the United
States among
Iranian-Americans and among academics, journalists, former diplomats,
and some
22
businesspeople. Where possible, experts and opinion leaders should be
invited to
participate in such hearings on Iran. The hearings should include
information
about existing cooperation between Americans and Iranian, as well as
reports on
Iran’s leadership in the areas of health, the environment, and
culture. Network
20/20 would be pleased to participate in such hearings.
An early priority should be a visit to Iran by members or former
members of
Congress, followed by a reciprocal visit by Iranian parliamentarians.
To NGOs, Universities, Media Organizations, and Private Citizens
People-to-people efforts should help Americans gain a better
understanding
of Iran. By broadening people’s experience of the other society,
efforts like
Network 20/20’s can gradually build critical thinking in both the U..S.
and Iran,
which can, in turn, be used to generate new forums for resolving
disagreements.
Beyond simply enacting good will between Iranians and Americans,
people-topeople
exchanges need to try out ways of raising the level of the debate
between
our two countries. To that end, Network 20/20 proposes to expand its
network by
means of a conference on Iran to which Iranians, leaders from the
large Iranian-
American communities overseas, and prominent scholars and other
professionals
with experience in Iran will be invited. The agenda would include
reports on
Iran’s leadership in the areas of health, the environment, and
culture.
Nongovernmental organizations must take their cues from their Iranian
counterparts if they are to be helpful to them. In the current
atmosphere of
suspicion of American NGOs resulting from fear of U.S. regime-change
funds
flowing through them, it is imperative that efforts to address women’s
rights, the
persecution of journalists, and other human rights issues in Iran be
autonomous of
the U.S. government. In addition, Iranian civil society organizations
should lead
in setting the agenda and in defining the nature and scope of these
relationships.
Collaborations between unofficial Iranian and U.S. institutions should
be
preserved and extended. In various fields, collaborations built
largely by
individuals working in academic or research institutions have
persisted,
sometimes for many years. These contacts should be defended against
restrictions
in the event that U.S.-Iranian official relations become even more
estranged. New
collaborations in noncontroversial areas such as health, the
environment, and
culture would best be nurtured now by funding from organizations that
are
independent of the U.S. government.
Academic expertise on Iran should be supported. Teaching about Iran
and of
the Farsi language should be expanded in American universities and be
directed
not only at area studies specialists but also at those in other
disciplines who
23
propose to work in Iran. Linkages with Iranian universities need to be
set up and
the viability of joint degree programs and student- faculty exchanges
explored.
Priorities for joint programming would be the enforcement of human
rights,
international law, public health, and environmental regulations at the
regional and
local levels. Federal area studies funding may be drawn on to support
such an
expansion, but support from foundations and the Iranian-American
community
should also be pursued. The independence of academic programs from
government policy should be defended.
Western media, including from the U.S., should report on events and
opinion
within Iran even while the strategic standoff between the U.S. and
Iran moves to
the top of the news. Reporting on how American rhetoric and actions
influence
Iranian opinion is vital if Americans are to accurately gauge the
effects of their
government’s policies. The media should strive to cover Iranian
politics and
society more broadly, rather than focusing primarily on the
histrionics of a single
politician, and should seek to move beyond simplistic assumptions
about and
representations of Iranian society and politics. Consumers of media
could help
achieve better coverage by pointing out errors and by providing
context in letters
to the editor, op-ed columns, and other feedback media.
24
Appendix A
Network 20/20 Mission Statement
Preparing Future Leaders
to Shape the Global Security Debate
Twenty years from now, when business leaders and
policymakers from the U.S. and countries of pivotal concern
for global peace sit down at the negotiating table,
will they meet as strangers or as colleagues with
a history of cooperation?
Network 20/20 is an independent nonprofit organization that helps
prepare next-generation leaders in the U.S. to participate
meaningfully
in the creation and execution of policies promoting entrepreneurial
diplomacy and global security. We do this by means of lectures and
educational initiatives at home and through a series of trips and
exchanges abroad.
Network 20/20 fills two major gaps in U.S. foreign policy: lack of
youth participation and lack of serious input from civil society in
general. Network 20/20 helps to bridge these gaps by allowing
midcareer
individuals, with new and vigorous ideas drawn from their
experiences in the real world of civil society, to refine their
foreign
policy understandings and share their insights with their peers.
Network 20/20 members come from the business world, the
professions, media, NGOs, think tanks, government, and academia.
They are a talented and diverse group that includes foreign nationals
living in the U.S. What draws them together is that they are all
motivated and disciplined individuals who are volunteering significant
time and energy to improve their understanding of the world.
25
Appendix B
Entrepreneurial Diplomacy Program
In 2004, Network 20/20 launched its Entrepreneurial Diplomacy
Program in an effort to connect young private sector leaders from the
United States with their counterparts in other countries. Believing
that
the term “public diplomacy” has come to mean little more than
government propaganda, Network 20/20 is building a broad network
of influential private citizens that will generate concrete,
actionable
ideas to enhance international security and prosperity. The
organization pursues this goal through study, dialogue, and field
research in regions of global security concern.
Network 20/20 is an international association of talented young people
who wish to make their mark in international affairs. In a world that
grows more ideologically polarized by the day, Network 20/20 trains
its members in civil debate dedicated to finding common ground
between East and West, Islam and Christianity, developed and
developing countries.
We believe that the world can only become more secure if its leaders
know and respect one another. In the years ahead, our members will
rise through the ranks of business, the private sector, and civil
government while maintaining ties to their counterparts in countries
of
vital concern for global security. Because of Network 20/20, they will
have ready access to an international network of their peers.
Together,
our members and their international associates will help build a more
secure and prosperous world.
26
Richard M. Murphy
Chairman, Entrepreneurial Diplomacy Program
Richard M. Murphy is a senior editor at Fortune Small Business
magazine. He holds an undergraduate degree in literature from
Harvard College and a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford
University, based on fieldwork in Pakistan, where he was a Fulbright
Scholar. Murphy’s journalism has appeared in Fortune, the Wall Street
Journal, The New Republic, the New York Times, and many other
media. He is currently under contract with Alfred A. Knopf to write
Lahore Nights, a memoir about the culture and politics of
contemporary Pakistan.
Lena Sene
Vice-Chairman, Entrepreneurial Diplomacy Program
Currently a 2006 White House Fellow placed in the Department of
Housing and Urban Development, Lena Sene is a founding member of
Network 20/20. Prior to her work at the White House, Sene was an
Investment Representative at Lehman Brothers, where she advised
entrepreneurs and CEOs of publicly traded companies on a full range
of investment strategies. Before that she was a Private Banker at
JPMorgan Chase, where she was selected as the sole recipient of the
annual JPMorgan Rising Star Award for the Annual Women's Bond
Club Merit Award Dinner in 2003. Sene holds NASD Securities
Licenses 7 and 63. She is a board member of the United Nations
Association of New York and a member of the Economic Club of New
York. Born in the U.S., Sene was raised in Senegal, Russia, and the
Ukraine and is fluent in English, French, Russian, and Wolof.
27
Appendix C
Network 20/20 Iran Project Team
George Billard – Team Leader
George Billard is a filmmaker based in New York City. He is
President of Do Diligence, a film and television production company
that has mounted productions in more than 30 countries, including
Mongolia, Japan, Peru, French Polynesia, Australia, Morocco, Egypt,
Turkey, and Chile’s Easter Island. He is also President of Miracle
Media, under which he produced and directed The Well-Seasoned
Traveler for the A&E television network.
In the past 10 years, Billard has directed, photographed, and created
a
library of motion picture imagery that is distributed internationally
through Getty Images. In addition, Billard continues to produce
corporate communications and advertising. Clients include Panasonic,
American General, Toyota, Dannon, Revlon, Warner Brothers, and
Sony. He has a B.A. in Broadcast and Film from Boston University. In
2005 he earned an M.P.A. from Harvard University’s Kennedy School
of Government. For more information, visit his award-winning
website, www.planetbillard.com.
Patricia Begley
Patricia Begley is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of two
related companies, Prizmalite Industries and TioxoClean Inc., both of
which are involved in nanotechnologies.
Prior to her current ventures, Begley had more than 20 years of
experience in the investment banking industry, as the head of the
investment banking department at Sumitomo Bank in New York and
as a Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of two private
investment banking boutiques. Before that she spent six years at
Drexel Burnham Lambert in Corporate Finance. She is a member of
the first class of women to graduate from Yale University and holds an
M.B.A. degree from the Wharton School of the University of
Pennsylvania, where she was selected as a Wharton Fellow.
Tai-Heng Cheng
Professor Tai- Heng Cheng is Associate Director of the Center for
International Law at New York Law School. He is also guest professor
at Sarah Lawrence College and Of Counsel to the law firm Engel
McCarney & Kenney LLP. In all of these appointments, he addresses
complex issues situated at the intersection of public and
28
private international law. He was involved in the Dahbol arbitrations
concerning the largest foreign investment in the Republic of India. He
has also advised the Prosecutor-General of the United Nations
Transitional Administration in East Timor.
Professor Cheng holds a Doctor of the Science of Law degree and a
Master of Law degree from Yale Law School, where he was Howard
M. Holtzman Fellow for International Law. He also holds a Master of
Arts degree and a Law degree with first class honors from Oxford
University, at which he was Oxford University Scholar.
Lynn A. Foster
Lynn A. Foster has held senior level positions in financial and civic
institutions and has had an enduring commitment to conservation,
health care, and education. Recently retired as a research director of
an
investment management firm, she has also served as an institutional
broker, a health care equity analyst, and a consultant to a venture
capital firm specializing in health care investments. She is on the
Executive Committee of the Board of the World Wildlife Fund and the
Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and chairs the Nominating Committee of
the Board of the Population Council. She is a former president of the
Girl Scout Council of Greater New York and a former trustee of the
Girl Scouts of America.
Foster attended Punahou School in Hawaii and received a B.A. degree
in English from Connecticut College and an M.B.A. with honors in
Finance and Organizational Behavior from Boston University.
Thomas Gorman
Thomas Gorman is the Program Director at Network 20/20. A
graduate of Vassar College with a B.A. in Political Science, Gorman’s
academic focus revolved around international affairs, with a
particular
focus on private security contractors and counter-narcotics policy in
the Andean region. He has previously worked as a Research Associate
for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, D.C., drafting
position papers relating to Western Hemispheric issues.
Originally from Brisbane, Australia, Gorman grew up in upstate New
York. He has traveled widely in Australia and New Zealand, where he
pursued his love of making wine and trekking in the wilderness. He
speaks some Spanish and is currently learning Farsi.
29
Demetri Gounaris
Demetri Gounaris is a lawyer who works for the Department of
Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations, where he advises on
matters of logistics, supply, and contract management. As a product of
big New York City law firms, his professional background is in project
finance, structured finance, and banking transactions. He has provided
pro bono services to the Legal Aid Society, Volunteers for Legal
Service, and the St. Ignatius soup kitchen. Gounaris also volunteers
as
a teacher of English to immigrants and refugees at the International
Center in New York.
Gounaris grew up in Greece, the Dominican Republic, and Saudi
Arabia and attended Columbia University and Boston College Law
School. He speaks French and is current ly learning Spanish.
Patricia Huntington
For more than 20 years, Patricia Huntington has advised grant makers
in foreign policy, international development programs, and strategic
philanthropy. Her clients have included American Express, the Ford
Foundation, and the Sumitomo Corporation.
Prior to founding Network 20/20, Dr. Huntington directed a
Rockefeller Foundation field research project in 11 countries on four
continents. Dr. Huntington reported the results in a position paper,
“Landmines and U.S. Leadership: A View from the Field.” She also
created an educational CD-ROM on global humanitarian mine
clearance entitled “Landmines: Clearing the Way,” which has been
disseminated widely throughout the world.
Dr. Huntington is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the
Women’s Foreign Policy Group, Women in International Security, and
the Foreign Policy Association’s Off-the-Record Lecture Series.
She earned a Summa Cum Laude for her Smith College undergraduate
work on British imperialism in Southern Africa, an M.A. in African
History from UCLA, and an Ed.D. from Rutgers University.
Glenn Johnston
Glenn Johnston is a director of business research for Kroll and is
head
of business development for the North America region. Before joining
Kroll, he held director- level positions at the law firms of Loeb &
Loeb
and Covington & Burling.
30
Earlier in his career, Johnston was a financial journalist and worked
in
London and New York. He also spent four years as a public affairs
officer with the United Nations, where he was assigned to the General
Assembly’s Legal Committee and the Security Council. Johnston has a
law degree from Trinity College Dublin.
Rahul Manchanda
Prior to beginning his practice, Rahul Manchanda worked for one of
the largest law firms in Manhattan, where he focused on asbestos
litigation. Previously he worked for a multinational law firm in
Paris,
where he focused primarily on international arbitration, arbitration
agreements, arbitration venue choice, and foreign policy.
At Boston University, Manchanda earned a B.A. in Biology,
distinguishing himself in the chemical and biological sciences. He
also
attended Yale University, where he studied Molecular Cell and
Evolutionary Biology.
He is admitted to practice in the highest state and federal courts in
New York State and is currently an active member of the American
Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the American
Immigration Lawyers Association, Phi Alpha Delta International, the
Global Interdependence Center, and the Asia Society.
Manchanda is fluent in French, English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi. He
has also studied Russian, Latin, and Hebrew.
Sarah Pfuhl
Sarah Pfuhl is an associate in WilmerHale’s Securities Department.
Her practice focuses on regulatory investigations, including
conducting independent internal investigations of alleged improper
accounting practices for global Fortune 500 companies. Pfuhl’s
work has also included analysis of international affirmative action
jurisprudence for an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme
Court, pro bono representation of asylum clients, and research for the
Open Society on international criminal law issues.
Pfuhl earned her J.D. magna cum laude from Duke University and was
editor- in-chief of the Duke Journal of Comparative and International
Law. In addition, she was an intern at Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights, where she focused on international criminal law issues
relating
to the International Criminal Court Statute. Pfuhl is a member of the
New York Bar Association.
31
Elsie Vance
Elsie Vance is currently an international consultant based in Istanbul
and New York. Her clients include leadership educational and cultural
institutions in Turkey and in the U.S. for which she provides
strategic,
marketing and governance services. Vance also serves on the Board of
Trustees of Robert College of Istanbul, the American Research
Institute in Turkey, Istanbul, and the Leadership Project of
Washington, D.C.
Prior to moving to Istanbul, Vance worked from 1987 to 1994 as Vice
President of the New York City Partnership, the leading business
leadership organization in New York dedicated to promoting the social
and economic climate of the city. Prior to that, she worked in
leadership positions in the United States Senate from 1970 to 1986.
Vance has a B.A. in History from Vanderbilt University and an
M.B.A. from Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. She is married to Dr.
Attila Askar, President of Koç University.
Josee Vrignon-Reboul
Josee Vrignon-Reboul, an attorney, was born in France, where she
studied at the Institute for Advanced International Studies and the
Center for the European Communities of the Faculty of Law in Paris.
Since moving to the United States in 1975, Vrignon-Reboul received
her LLM from New York University and became a member of the
New York Bar, working first at the law firm Skadden Arps in New
York and then as Assistant General Counsel at Prudential Insurance
Company in New Jersey. After full-time motherhood, she became a
mediator for a community center.
Fluent in French and English with some conversational skills in
Spanish, she travels frequently to France and has kept a residence in
Nice.
Christiaan van den Hout
As the son of a Dutch diplomat, Christiaan van den Hout was born and
raised till age four in New York. Later he attended the British School
in The Hague and returned to New York City for a time before
attending boarding school in England. While completing his education
at Eton College, he was “house captain” of his boarding house and
captained and played in Eton’s varsity teams for soccer, rugby,
cricket,
tennis, squash, fives, and rackets.
32
Before commencing university, he interned for Senator Ted Kennedy
in Washington, D.C., then backpacked through South America,
Australasia, and Southeast Asia. He is now in his second year at
Edinburgh University, a Politics major, studying History.
Van den Hout is interested in film and art, foreign cultures, and
international relations. At Eton College he was a member of the
Political Society Committee, and he is currently involved in Edinburgh
University’s Political Society. He interned for nine weeks with
Network 20/20, contributing to the Appendix of this report.
Network 20/20 Fellows from the
Center for International Law at New York Law School
In July, 2006 the Center of International Law and Network 20/20
interviewed more than a dozen candidates, selecting two of them as
Network 20/20 Fellows to conduct research on Iran. They are:
Matt Abrams
Matt Abrams is in his third year of studies in law at New York Law
School. He graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in
Political Science. He has held internships with Congressman Jerrold
Nadler (D-NY), the Legal Aid Society of New York, and Associate
Justice Phyllis Gangel-Jacob of the Appellate Term of the First
Department of the New York Supreme Court.
Abrams has worked as a research assistant with Professors Anthony
Fletcher and Tai-Heng Cheng, both of New York Law School. After
graduation he plans to practice law in New York and eventually to run
for public office.
Shahab Ghalambor
Shahab Ghalambor is a third-year law student at New York Law
School. A graduate of California State University, San Bernardino
with dual bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Finance, his
academic interests before law school focused on international
relations
policy and theory. His primary fields of legal interest are commercial
litigation and international law.
Ghalambor was born in Tehran, Iran, and immigrated with his family
at the age of four to Southern California, where his family currently
resides. He is fluent in conversational Farsi and Spanish. He is
recently
engaged to Kathryn Poole, a middle school teacher in Manhattan.
33
Appendix D
Iran Report Readers
Azadeh Moaveni Tehran Correspondent, Time Magazine
Vali R. Nasr Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern
Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Professor of Middle East and South Asia
Politics, Naval Postgraduate School
Iran Project Advisors
William O. Beeman Chairperson, Anthropology Department
University of Minnesota
Rachel Bronson Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern
Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Richard W. Bulliet Professor of Middle Eastern History
Middle East Institute, Columbia University
Godfrey Cheshire Film Critic, Independent Weekly
Hossein Kamaly Librarian, Middle East and Jewish Studies
Columbia University Libraries
Priscilla Lewis Deputy Director, American Strategy Program
Director, U.S. in the World Initiative
New America Foundation
Alidad Mafinezam Director of Research
Mosaic Institute
Sayyeda Mirza-Jafri Project Manager
One Nation - With Liberty and Justice for All
Housed at the EastWest Institute
Trita Parsi Managing Director
National Iranian American Council
Mohammad Reza Salamat Senior Economic Affairs Officer
Division of Sustainable Development
Department of Economic and Social Affairs
United Nations
34
Appendix E
Select list of persons interviewed in Iran
Names withheld by request
Academia
Dr. Abdol karim Biazar shirazi Chancellor
Islamic Religions University
Massoumeh Ebtekar Professor, Immunology Department
School of Medical Sciences
Tarbiat Modarres University
Vice-President (1997 – 2005)
Islamic Republic of Iran
Head (1997 – 2005), Environmental
Protection Organization of Iran
Azarakhsh Mokri, M.D. Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
Tehran University of Medical Science
Anonymous Professor
University of Tehran
Business
Ali, mid-30s Restaurateur, Tehran
A hmed, 34 Businessman/Energy Sector, Tehran
Anonymous, 37 Computer Salesman/Entrepreneur
Tehran
Mehdi, 27 Network Administrator/Small
Business Owner, Esfahan, Shiraz
and Tehran
Sami, 26 Entrepreneur, Esfahan and Tehran
Think Tanks and NGOs
Laleh Daraie National Coordinator
Small Grants Programme
United Nations Development Programme
Saied Ferdowsi Programme Analyst
Energy, Environment, and Disaster
Management Cluster
United Nations Development Programme
Hamidreza Taherinakhost Clinical Psychologist
Iranian National Center for
Addiction Studies
35
Anonymous International Agency, Tehran
Anonymous Women’s Rights Advocate, Tehran
Science
Mostafa, late 30s Agricultural Professor, Tehran
Anonymous Medical Researcher – Drug Treatment
Tehran
Anonymous Medical Researcher – Drug Treatment
Tehran
Anonymous Physician, Esfahan
Anonymous Physician, Esfahan
Iranian Voices
Anahita, 23 Graduate Student, Tehran
Mehdi, 24 Graduate Student, Tehran
Sarah, mid-20s Tour Organizer, Tehran
Woman, 40s School Teacher, Tehran
Man, mid-60s Tour Guide, Tehran
Man, 50s Former Naval Officer; Driver
Tehran
Man, 40s Scientist, Tehran
Man, 50s Diplomat, Tehran
Man, 67 Driver, Tehran
Man, mid-60s Driver, Tehran
Woman, 32 Nurse, Tehran
Woman, 30s Activist - Women’s Rights, Tehran
Man, 40s Taxi Driver, Tehran
Man, late 40s Shop Owner, Shiraz
Women, 20 and 23 Graduate Students
Islamic Azad University, Shiraz
Pega, 20 Student of Architectural Design
Islamic Azad University, Shiraz
Woman, 21 Student of Architectural Design
Islamic Azad University, Shiraz
Man, early 20s Software-Engineering Student
Islamic Azad University, Shiraz
36
Man, 50-60s Shopkeeper, Shiraz
Men, mid-20s Jobseekers, Shiraz
Sarah, 21 Student of English, Yazd
Maryam, 20 Student of English, Yazd
Men - 20, 20, and 22 Computer engineers, Yazd
Man, late 50s Occupation Unknown, Yazd
Man, 28 Entrepreneur, Yazd
Man, mid-50s Professor, Yazd
Hazera boy, 14-15 Student, Esfahan
Man, mid-40s Research Doctor, Esfahan
Men, early-mid 30s Accountants, Esfahan
Neguin, 30 Scholar, Caspian Coast
Media
Azadeh Moaveni Tehran Correspondent, Time Magazine
Anonymous Journalist, Tehran
Religion and Culture
Anonymous Cleric, Qom
37
Appendix F
Persons interviewed in North America and Europe
Academia
Reza Aslan Doctoral Candidate, Sociology of Religions
University of California, Santa Barbara
William O. Beeman Chairperson, Anthropology Department
University of Minnesota
Richard W. Bulliet Professor of Middle Eastern History
Middle East Institute
Columbia University
Fatemeh Haghighatjoo Visiting Scholar
Center for International Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Member (2000-2004)
Iranian Parliament
Bernard Haykel Associate Professor
Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
New York University
Hossein Kamaly Librarian, Middle East and Jewish Studies
Columbia University Libraries
Alidad Mafinezam Director of Research
Mosaic Institute
Vali R. Nasr Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern
Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Professor of Middle East and South Asia Politics
Naval Postgraduate School
Gary Sick Senior Research Scholar
Middle East Institute
School of International and Public Affairs
Columbia University
Neguin Yavari Assistant Professor of History & Humanities
The New School for Social Research
Business
Amir Farmanfarmaian Managing Director
Fortune Asset Management Ltd.
Nazanine Farmanfarmaian Designer, Tassoudji Designs
Salman Farmanfarmaian Principle, SCP Partners
38
Law
Cyrus Amir-Mokri Partner
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
Think Tanks and NGOs
Mehdi Faridzadeh Founder and President
The International Society for Iranian Culture
Stephen Heintz President, Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Lt. Col (Ret.) Paul Hughes Senior Program Officer, Center for Post-
Conflict Peace and Stability Operations
United States Institute for Peace
Priscilla Lewis Deputy Director, American Strategy Program
Director, U.S. in the World Initiative
New America Foundation
Genevieve Lynch Director, Kenbe Foundation
Co-Chair, the Pluralism Fund
Sayyeda Mirza-Jafri Project Manager
One Nation - With Liberty and Justice for All
Housed at the EastWest Institute
John Edwin Mroz Founder, President, and CEO
EastWest Institute
M. Baquer Namazi Chairman of the Board of Directors
Hamyaran Iran NGO Resource Center
Siamak Namazi Managing Director, Atieh Bahar Consulting
Trita Parsi Managing Director
National Iranian American Council
Mohammad Reza Salamat Senior Economic Affairs Officer
Division of Sustainable Development
Department of Economic and Social Affairs
United Nations
David Speedie Special Advisor to the President and Director
Islam Project, Carnegie Corporation of NY
Stephen Tankel Coordinator of Studies, EastWest Institute
Anisseh Van Engeland Consultant, Action des Chrétiens Pour
L’ Abolition de la Torture, Paris
39
U.S. Government
R. Nicholas Burns Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs
Department of State
Suzanne Maloney, Ph.D Policy Planning Staff
Office of the Secretary
Department of State
Karen Volker Policy Planning Staff
Office of the Secretary
Department of State
Iranian Government
H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad President
Islamic Republic of Iran
Bahman Naimiarfa First Counselor
Permanent Mission of the Islamic
Republic of Iran to the United Nations
H.E. Dr. M. Javad Zarif Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of the Islamic
Republic of Iran to the United Nations
Mrs. Maryam Zarif Member
Network 20/20 International Committee
Anonymous Current Government Official
Islamic Republic of Iran
Media
Godfrey Cheshire Film Critic, Independent Weekly
Roxane Farmanfarmaian Editor
Cambridge Review of International Affairs
40
Appendix G
Background Meetings and Briefings
2005
March 9
Network 20/20 Off the Record Briefing
Iran: The Next War? An Insider’s View
Roxane Farmanfarmaian
Editor, Cambridge Review of International Affairs
April 19
Network 20/20 Off the Record Briefing
After Saddam: Iran’s Vision of Rebuilding Iraq
Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United
Nations
Ambassador Javad Zarif
Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United
Nations
July 25
Network 20/20 Off the Record Briefing: No god but God
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Reza Aslan
Doctoral Candidate in History of Religions at the University of
California, Santa Barbara,
former Visiting Assistant Professor of Islamic and Middle East Studies
at the University of
Iowa, and Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at the Iowa Writers’
Workshop
October 26
Network 20/20 Off the Record Briefing:
Money and Power in Today’s Iran
Siamak Namazi
Managing Director, Atieh Bahar Consulting
Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center for International
Studies, Princeton
2006
May 2
Network 20/20 Off the Record Briefing
H.E. Dr. M. Javad Zarif
Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Iran-U.S. Talks on Iraq: Common Ground?
Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United
Nations
41
September 20
Breakfast Meeting with U.S. Academics
H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
October 11
U.S. Policy toward Iran
Council on Foreign Relations
R. Nicholas Burns
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, U.S. Department of
State
October 11
Network 20/20 Off the Record Briefing with the Pluralism Fund
The Treacherous Triangle: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel, and the
U.S.
The Rockefeller Foundation
Dr. Trita Parsi
President, National Iranian American Council
October 26
Network 20/20 Off the Record Briefing
The Shia Revival
JP Morgan Private Bank
Vali R. Nasr
Professor, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate
School
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
November 20
Network 20/20 Off the Record Briefing
Iran’s Role in Regional Security
U.S. Trust
Ambassador M. Javad Zarif
Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran
42
Appendix H
Further Reading
Armstrong, Karen, Islam: A Short History (New York: Modern Library
Chronicles, 2000)
Aslan, Reza, No god but God (New York: Random House, 2005)
Atlantic Council, Thinking Beyond the Stalemate in U.S.-Iranian
Relations,
Lee H. Hamilton, James Schlesinger, and Brent Scowcroft, Co-Chairs;
Elaine L. Morton, Author-Rapporteur; C. Richard Nelson, Project
Director.
(Washington, D.C.: Atlantic Council, 2001)
Beeman, William O., The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the
United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Westport, CT: Praeger,
2005)
Berkeley, Bill, “Know Thine Enemy,” Columbia Journalism Review
September/October 2006, available at: http://cjr.org/issues/2006/5/berkeley..asp
Biazar, Abd al-Karim, The Covenant in the Quŕân: The Key to Unity of
the
verses contained in Qur’anic Surahs (Tehran, Office for Diffusion of
Islamic Culture, undated)
Bowden, Mark, Guests of the Ayatollah (New York: Atlantic Monthly
Press,
2006)
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
Geopolitical Imperatives (New York: HarperCollins, 1997)
Bulliet, Richard W., The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (New
York:
Columbia University Press, 2004)
Council on Foreign Relations, Iran: Time for a New Approach, Zbigniew
Brzezinski and Robert M. Gates, Co-Chairs; Suzanne Maloney, Project
Director (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2004)
Ebadi, Shirin, with Azadeh Moaveni, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of
Revolution
and Hope (New York: Random House, 2006)
Ebtekar, Massoumeh, with Fred A. Reed, Takeover in Tehran: The Inside
Story
of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2000)
Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report Iran (London: The
Economist,
2003)
43
Elliot, Jason, Mirrors of the Unseen (London: St. Martins Press, 2006)
Esfandiari, Haleh, Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic
Revolution
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997)
Iran CSOs Research and Training Center, A Report on the Status of the
Internet
in Iran (November 2005) available at:
http://www.irancsos.org/english/publications/reports/index.htm
Klebnikov, Paul, “Millionaire Mullahs,” Forbes (July 21, 2003),
available at:
http://www.forbes.com/global/2003/0721/024.html
Moaveni, Azadeh, Lipstick Jihad (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006)
Molavi, Afshin, Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys across Iran (New York:
W.W.
Norton & Co., 2002)
Mottahedeh, Roy, Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran
(Oxford: Oneworld, 1985)
Mozaffari, Nahid, ed., Strange Times, My Dear (New York: Arcade
Publishing,
2005)
Nasr, Vali R., The Shia Revival (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006)
Pollack, Kenneth, The Persian Puzzle (New York: Random House, 2005)
Roy, Olivier, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2004)
Salehi-Isfahani, Djavad, “Revolution ad Redistribution in Iran:
Poverty and
Inequality 25 Years Later,” paper presented at the Third Annual World
Bank Conference on Inequality, Washington D.C., June 5-6, 2006,
available at: http://www.filebox.vt.edu/users/salehi/Iran_poverty_trend.pdf
Schnellinger, Lisa and Mohannad Khatib, Fighting Words: How Arab and
American Journalists Can Break Through to Better Coverage (Washington,
D.C., International Center for Journalists, 2006)
Scolino, Elaine, Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran (New York:
Simon
& Schuster, 2000)
Sick, Gary, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (New
York:
Random House, 1986)
Stern, Roger, “The Iranian Petroleum Crisis and United States National
Security,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 104, No. 1,
377-382
(January 2, 2007) available at: http://intl.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/104/1/
377
44
Takeyh, Ray, Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic
(New
York: Times Books, 2006)
UNICEF, Under-Five Child Mortality Data available at:
http://childinfo.org/cmr/revis/db2.htm
Ward, Terence, Searching for Hassan (New York: Random House, 2002)
Watkins, Kevin, et al, Human Development Report 2006; Beyond Scarcity:
Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis (New York: United Nations
Development Programme, 2006), information on Iran available at:
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_IRN.html
World Bank, Data and Statistics for Iran available at:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/MENAEXT/IRANEXTN
/0,,menuPK:312982~pagePK:141132~piPK:141109~theSitePK:312943,00.html
___________, “Country Brief: Iran” (September 2006) available at:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTIRAN/Resources/IRANBRIEF-2006AM.pdf
Wright, Robin, The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation
in
Iran (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000)

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