Opinion: Can Washington rethink Iran?
Iranian women look at Persian-language copies of Michelle Obama's book,"Becoming," displayed during the Tehran International Book Fair in Tehran on Friday. By Jason Rezaian Jason Rezaian Global Opinions writer Email Bio Follow Global Opinions writer April 30 at 1:38 PM During the Obama administration, critics of the president’s engagement policy with Iran constantly complained that journalists and analysts with little knowledge of Iran were parroting the White House line.
“U.S. policies against Iran, even if you don’t want to concede that they’ve failed, have not produced the desired results,” Narges Bajoghli, the SAIS professor who developed “Rethinking Iran,” told me. “To have a more robust relationship between the U.S. and Iran, even if it remains cold, it’s imperative for us to have a fuller understanding of the country, its policies and society,” she added.
In the absence of direct contact with Iran and Iranians, such gatherings fill an important void — and particularly at a moment of growing tensions. We need scholars and commentators who can claim some actual knowledge of contemporary realities in Iran to inform the discussion, and the SAIS program aims to do this.
The situation improved a bit as President Barack Obama launched his policy of engagement in the run-up to the nuclear deal. A flurry of journalists, scholars, investors and tourists arrived in Tehran and began to reimagine a country that had been reduced by the American imagination to hollow stereotypes.
The run-up to the nuclear deal was a period when Iranians felt empowered to speak their minds and make demands. The most urgent concern was the incredible damage caused by years of sanctions on the country’s economy. Missing from the current policy discussions are even the slightest signs of an intention to empower the Iranian people. There are plenty of ways that we could help with that. But so far the Trump administration and his State Department have only taken steps — from the travel ban to criminalizing military conscripts — to make life more difficult for Iranians.
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