Saturday, February 27, 2010

Listen To The Greens

The USC publication Neon Tommy asked for an op-ed on engaging Iran in public diplomacy. I could have written a whole book on the subject. But here is the cliff notes version;

This month Iran
celebrated the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. Along with it came another significant anniversary. Thirty-one years ago U.S.-Iranian relations collapsed.

The first blow to U.S.-Iran relations occurred in 1953 when the CIA staged a coup d'état in Iran, ousting the first democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. In his stead, the U.S. installed the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Iranians overthrew the Shah in 1979. A group of Islamist students stormed the American Embassy in Tehran taking 53 Americans hostage for 444 days. These events resulted in the dissolution of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Read the entire article...

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