Our June 2 salon, The Persian Paradox: Understanding Iran and its People, proved a bustling, gregarious evening with leading pundits and professionals from across the Iranian American community-- and well beyond. Early evening light streamed through the Victorian-era windows of New York's Norwood Club, as guests milled about with glasses of wine and champagne.  

Hossein Khiabanian, a scientist completing his post-doc work in genetics at Columbia, leaned against a wall with his friend and fellow Iranian-born brain Huss Banai, a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Brown University. Not far away, Atossa Leoni, the lead actress in The Kite Runner and dear friend of Shohreh Aghdashloo, sipped a glass with Sudhir Kandula, a software entrepreneur and restaurant investor. Leoni recounted some of her recent projects.

“I read for Three Cups of Tea and A Thousand Splendid Suns,” the actress said, referring to her recently completed audio book projects. “I define myself as a global nomad,” Leoni continued, tipping back her glass. “This is a great way to connect with other like-minded people.”   

Newsweek foreign editor Nisid Hajari called the evening to order, sitting down with Hooman Majd, author of the “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ” to discuss the current political landscape in Iran just ten days before the June 12th elections. “I don’t like hyphenated names,” opened Majd, still jetlagged from his Saturday flight back to the United States. “Over there I am Iranian, over here I am American.”  

Majd wasted no time delving into Iran’s current political landscape. Most recent developments include the increasing power of candidate Hussein Moussavi’s once-wan campaign, which came to fill a stadium with 25,000 people just two days prior to his speech. The candidate, billed as the greatest threat to incumbent Ahmadinejad, has found strong support among the nation’s youth (75 percent of Iran’s 70 million people are under 30).  

During elections, the Iranian government has typically eased social restrictions, leading to boisterous scenes of “partying” in the streets of Tehran: “Green fingernails and green-painted faces, dancing, shouting, signs for Moussavi… there are currently only two billboards advertising for Ahmadinejad, hundreds for the other candidates,” Majd said. “This time is extremely crucial to the elections in Iran.”  

When asked how important normalizing relations with the U.S. is to Iranian citizens, Majd responded it is “second” priority given Iran’s having accustomed itself to thirty years of U.S. multilateral and unilateral sanctioning, which has given rise to a cash-only society void of foreign investment and a low 20% GDP from oil (compared to Saudi Arabia’s 80% GDP from oil). “Iran could save General Motors,” Majd joked. “But that’s not going to happen.”   

As the floor opened up to more questions from the audience, talk of Iran’s human rights situation spurred brief reflection on journalist Roxana Saberi’s recent release, likely the result of “media and international pressures,” said Majd.

The turbulent issue on how much money Iran puts into nuclear and scientific research arose toward the end of the discussion. Majd denied that there was nuclear funding of any sort. “There are no 747’s or nuclear submarines but technologically speaking there is a lot of effort.” Iran is surprisingly the number one country for stem cell research and for conducting transsexual operations, he noted, continuing to emphasize the widespread access to satellite T.V, internet blogs and programming.  

The night closed out with a brief performance by Iranian singer Haale, who delivered enchanting Farsi verses. My particular favorite was “Off-Duty Fortune Teller,” in which Haale sang: “When the fortune teller stops looking into the future, she breathes and checks out the river and realizes that’s where it’s at.”

As some started to depart, others returned to the bar for more champagne and cheese and to talk of the broader region. Blair Blackwell of International Crisis Group provided guests with ICG’s latest policy briefing on U.S.-Iran relations, while Maryam Ishani stood talking to Pakistani writer Abid Shah.

Ishani described her work as the founder of the Journalist Connection, an organization that seeks to train and support independent journalists in conflict situations.  “I’ve worked in this field a lot in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Ishani said.

“They weren’t looking to become journalists but I found them,” she joked. “I went into their schools and classrooms and just said, ‘which one of you can speak English? Who knows how to work a computer?’ Sometimes, that's what it takes." When asked if she had set up shop in Iran yet, Ishani smiled. "That's high on my list." 

For the last few weeks a certain colour has been seeping into the fabric of the city, turning public space into a political arena. Green was never without meaning in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was always the colour of the Shiite Imams, the colour of the silk sashes that old village elders would wear around their waists on the way to the mosque. Green was always the background of the banners and flags that characterized the mourning ceremonies of Ashura.

It can’t have been more than a month ago that the bright young things of the Mir Hossein Mousavi presidential campaign adopted green as their team colour. First came the simple green ribbons that supporters could buy from any flower stall on Valiasr Street. Then the marketing machine kicked in and soon ‘Mir Hossein Green’ accessories became essential reformist fashion gear.

Green headscarves, headbands, t-shirts for the boys, and stamped rubber bracelets. These days it seems one can’t see green without wondering, “is that green for Mousavi or is that just green?”

It had even gotten to the point that I’d put away the green coat I had purchased at the beginning of the spring in the interests of journalistic impartiality. Too many young lads with green ribbons round their wrists were winking at me in the streets. I even heard disapproving whispers behind my back at a rally in support of current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There are voices in the current government who are criticizing this new trend as too visible a display of political partisanship, a sensitive issue in a country where people usually seek to keep their allegiances to themselves.

I have spoken to plenty of Iranians who remember the atmosphere that carried former president Mohammad Khatami to a landslide victory in 1997. Few would deny that this year too, the election has created a wave of excitement and hope. This year however, color has crystallized the zeal for reform and given it a banner to unite under.

Ever since Ahmadinejad won the elections in 2005, I never experienced political debate except behind closed doors with jaded journalists and over-nostalgic uncles. Now, young reform-minded Iranians are no longer waiting for permission to participate in political debate. For the remaining few days until Iran goes to the polls on June 12, green will be their license to take their political agenda onto the streets.

Capucine Kermani is a Tehran-based journalist specializing in Iran politics and society.

Iranians head to the polls on June 12 to select among four candidates in the tenth presidential election in the history of the Islamic Republic.

While the incumbent president, Mahmoud Adhmadinejad, is a formidable candidate and will be difficult to defeat, the reform-minded Mir Hussein Moussavi has a number of different constituencies that support his candidacy and should make the election at least competitive.

To what extent would Moussavi be able to reorient Iran’s foreign policy, particularly over the nuclear issue, should he win the election next month? Where does Iran’s nuclear program currently stand?

In August 2002 an Iranian dissident group, the National Council of Resistance in Iran, revealed that Iran had been working on an undocumented nuclear program for the past 18 years. While Iran, which has both signed and ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has a legitimate right under the terms of the treaty to have a nuclear program for civilian purposes, the country is also required to provide complete information on its nuclear activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog (here is the full IAEA Iran dossier). Iran has argued that Western countries have no right to obstruct Iran’s indigenous nuclear program, which now includes both uranium and plutonium enrichment, reprocessing, and related activities.

There is some truth to Iran’s argument. However, only states that are in good standing with the IAEA have the right to operate a nuclear program, and Iran is no longer in good standing. The Security Council has passed three separate sets of sanctions (see here, here and here) against Iran and has demanded greater transparency and cooperation from Tehran for the past six years. These UN sanctions are in addition to the near-total trade embargo the United States has imposed on Iran, alongside the U.S.'s and the European Union's separate sanctions. While Iran may have a “right” to a civilian nuclear program, this right does not come without certain conditions and responsibilities.

Is the development of nuclear weapons in Iran inevitable? What are Iran’s strategic calculations, particularly as it faces increasing international opposition? Many think that Iran’s strategic objective is to develop a “surge capacity,” in which it possesses the technological and scientific know-how to potentially produce nuclear weapons, but doesn’t actually produce them. Should Iran decide to do so, however, it could have one or more usable nuclear weapons within months. And while Iranians seem to be divided over the question of whether the country should explicitly pursue a nuclear weapons program, there is widespread public support for uranium enrichment on Iranian soil.

Iran has made progress on two of the three areas necessary for developing a nuclear weapon: uranium enrichment, reprocessing, as well as related activities: development of ballistic missiles as a means of delivery, and fitting a nuclear warhead within the nosecone of a ballistic missile. There is no evidence that Iran is currently working on reprocessing. If evidence emerged that Iran was working on this technology, however, this would constitute the proverbial “smoking gun” that Iran viewed its nuclear program for both military and civilian purposes.

Iran currently has over 5,000 operating centrifuges, which work to enrich uranium to various grades, depending on the purpose. Uranium must be enriched to around 3.5% for use in civilian nuclear reactors; for nuclear weapons, enrichment must be in excess of 90%. Iran is still far from producing uranium enriched to weapons-grade, and projecting when Iran might have this ability is difficult to predict. That Iran has been able to master the basic elements of enrichment suggests that making weapons-grade uranium will be more of a political decision rather than an insurmountable technical or scientific obstacle. 

Iran has been making improvements in the range, accuracy, and general sophistication of its ballistic missile program. The most sophisticated ballistic missile currently in the Iranian arsenal is the Shehab-3, which has a range of 2,000 kilometers, or about 1,250 miles, placing Tel Aviv and even some locations in southern Europe within easy missile range. Moreover, the latest Shehab missile, the Shehab-3b, has a distinctive nosecone that is widely suspected of being the possible delivery vehicle for a nuclear weapon. Iran recently test fired the Sejjil-2, a surface-to-surface solid fuel missile, which is more durable and more easily transportable than liquid-fuel missiles such as the Shehab series. It has a range similar to that of the Shehab-3b and could also be outfitted with a nuclear warhead.

Perhaps the most difficult step in developing a nuclear weapon is finding a way to fit an actual nuclear weapon into the nosecone of a ballistic missile. There is no evidence that Iran is currently working on this technology. A December 2008 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which represents the consensus view of the United States intelligence community, declared that Iran had stopped working on this technology in 2003. This report created a stir when it was released, particularly because it contradicted a 2005 NIE assessment that claimed Iran was still working on a nuclear weapons program.

It is fairly certain that at least the tone of Iranian nuclear diplomacy would shift under Moussavi. The president is the public face of the regime, and while he ultimately must submit to the decision of Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, the president’s authority and influence is not negligible. The Iranian decision-making structure, particularly regarding the creation and implementation of foreign policy, is composed of overlapping authorities, formal and informal hierarchies and linkages, and competing bureaucracies and institutions which have the combined effect that, contrary to popular belief, no single person, even the Supreme Leader, holds unlimited influence and authority.

The Obama administration would doubtlessly find Moussavi a more attractive figure to negotiate with. This does not mean some kind of settlement would be easy, of course. In interviews, Moussavi has insisted that Iran has the right to enrich uranium on its own soil. Any stipulation from the United States that Iran must permanently suspend uranium enrichment will be a non-starter. The clerical establishment would undercut Moussavi every step of the negotiation process, as they did during Khatami’s presidency, when Iran reached two agreements (see here and here) with the so-called EU-3 (Britain, France, Germany, together with Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief), only to see them fall apart. Moussavi, should he be elected next week, may find himself able to change the tone—but not the substance—of Iran’s negotiating position.

There’s a great passage in the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski’s account of the decline and fall of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shah of Shahs, which, to me anyway, anticipates and captures the paradox of post-revolution Iran and its relationship to the outside world better than any book or article published on the subject since:  

All over the world, at any hour, on a million screens an infinite number of people are saying something to us, trying to convince us of something, gesturing, making faces, getting excited, smiling, nodding their heads, pointing their fingers, and we don’t know what it’s about, what they want from us, what they are summoning us to. They might as well have come from a distant planet – an enormous army of public relations experts from Venus and Mars – yet they are our kin, with the same bones and blood as ours, with lips that move and audible voices, but we cannot understand a word. In what language will the universal dialogue of humanity be carried out? Several hundred languages are fighting for recognition and promotion; the language barriers are rising. Deafness and incomprehension are multiplying. [My emphasis]  

I was reminded of this passage after reading Hooman Majd’s recent cover story in Newsweek. That “deafness and incomprehension” have become the defining features of a non-relationship between the United States and Iran over the past thirty years is depressing enough; but to actually be exposed to their insidious effects upon ordinary people’s hearts and minds is to be alarmed by the supersonic rate at which “the language barriers are rising.”  

As Majd observes through his travels to central provinces and encounters with people from all walks of life (e.g. shopkeepers, taxi drivers, clerics, students, politicians, on and on), Iranians’ frustrations with themselves and the outside world and their cynical attitude toward an increasingly outmoded political system don’t seem all that different from our seemingly perennial irritations about the general state of things here in the West. The young poke fun at the embarrassing hypocrisy of their supposedly pious elders while the working classes grow more disillusioned by the day with the corruption (moral and otherwise) of their elected representatives.  

But if there is one force that unites Iranians regardless of political persuasion, it is their persistent wish to see their country independent “of both East and West,” as Majd puts it. In many respects, this has been the overarching theme of the Islamic Republic since those early days of the revolution when the cacophony first began. “Neither East nor West, but the Islamic Republic,” was the slogan we used to chant every morning out in the schoolyard before being directed to class in a straight line, an army of ants in search of sweets.  

But slogans are just that, slogans; they are meant to convey desires, not to actually provide the means for achieving them. Thirty years on, although the Islamic regime in charge has managed to put an end to foreign exploitation of its political class and resources, it has done so at the cost of isolating itself from the community of nations altogether—isolation is not the same as independence. Of course, there are a whole host of reasons for why this is so– but surely the theocratic essence of the regime coupled with its poor (to say the least) treatment of dissidents and activists rank high on the list.  

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be a figure of fascination for the moment, given his ultra-conservative ways, anti-democratic means, and über-combative rhetoric, but what matters to most Iranians is the collective report card of the regime at every election cycle. Majd is right in singling out the tenure of reformist president Mohammad Khatami as a brief rupture in the system, but his curious approval of Khatami’s current role as a latter day “kingmaker” emulating “behind the curtain” behavior of past puppeteers is unsettling. After all, Khatami’s landslide victories in 1997 and 2001 were largely due to his appeal as a trustworthy and accountable leader committed to restoring transparency and public confidence in the affairs of government. That he should now envision a role for himself not unlike those fancied and exercised by former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and supreme leader Ali Khamenei (both living monuments to secrecy and graft in the minds of the public) is a disturbing prospect.  

What Iranians need most is a way out of the maddening cycle of intimidation, hypocrisy, corruption and secrecy spurred on by the incomprehensible rhetoric of their leaders and their Western counterparts. The reform movement in Iran has suffered major blows at the polls in the recent presidential and parliamentary elections because it failed to deliver on its promises and to take on the hard line establishment. Engaging in “behind the curtain” tactics can hardly restore faith in the movement, whose raison d’être and chief mission have been to put an end to such practices.  

Putting an end to deafness and incomprehension requires an even more strident return to such principles. There can be no more ambiguity about the object of reform.

Huss Banai was born in Iran and raised there until the age of 15, when he moved with his family to Toronto, Canada. He is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Brown University, where he is writing a dissertation on the relationship between universal democratic norms and local values. He earned his masters in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He lives in Providence. 

The life of Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967) could easily be treated as shorthand for the challenges that Iranian women have faced: A discriminating court system that deemed her unfit to raise her only natural born child, granting all custody rights to the father, a Mr. Parviz Shapur, who was himself a distant relative of Farrokhzad.

A nervous breakdown followed, when Farrokhzad was all of twenty, landing the young poet in a hospital for months. And then there was the public reception to her work, which riffed on classical forms of Persian poetry, an establishment that itself had rarely included women writers. For her art, Farrokhzad was derided as a loose and amoral woman, a devastating condemnation at a particularly conservative time in Iran. Then, on Valentine’s day 1967, Farrokhzad was in a head-on collision and died in the car accident.  

Her toughest periods seemed to coincide with her most productive ones, a troubling cliché of the arts. In the time following Farrokhzad’s breakdown and depression, she produced a series of hard-hitting documentary films, including the unparalleled The House Is Black. Farrokhzad scholar Ahmed Karimi-Hakkak describes the film as a “poetic treatment of the life of lepers, which she made during the twelve-day sojourn in Baba Baghi lepers colony. (The film) remains her best by far.”  

New Yorkers will be treated to a special screening of the film on June 8 at BAM, where Karimi-Hakkak will appear in conversation with present day Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat for an exploration of Farrokhzad’s work and her lasting impact on the arts of Iran.  

Iranian women face a troubling set of challenges. But perhaps the lesson of Farrokhzad is not one of women’s rights, or even social issues, but rather a bleak picture of the lone struggle of the artist to stand alone, define her mission and make her statement. Farrokhzad’s triumph was her ability to have done that. Iran’s artists, and broader society, no longer look the other way.         

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When you think of Iran, what comes to mind? "Death to America" scrawled on walls, women in chadors, and a conservative government that bans satellite T.V., alcohol, and dancing and that arrests American reporters on trumped-up charges of spying?  Or do you think of intricate Persian miniatures, the stunning lost city of Persepolis, or Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel or movie "Persepolis?" 

Or do you find yourself (against your better judgment) conjuring that SNL skit, a faux music video where Andy Samberg serenades an Ahmadinejad look-alike? 

It's hard to know what Iran is really like, since many of us are discouraged from visiting. Though it's legal for Americans travel to Iran, getting a visa is a lengthy and arduous process. And foreigners who live in the U.S. say that returning with an Iran stamp on your passport makes getting through immigration even more hellish than usual. Unless you've read the recent spate of books by expat Iranians, you can't help but rely on the media for your knowledge and impressions of Iran. (Not that "the media" is a bad thing. But news reports tend to focus on the government rather than giving a holistic or nuanced view of the people or the country.) 

Having traveled to Cuba and Sri Lanka—two countries that Americans are not exactly encouraged to visit—I know that there's a huge gap between the governments of a country (its repressive policies and its "anti-American" sentiment) and its people. Clichéd as it may sound, this fact is worth remembering—epecially at a time when our government and Iran's are locked (hopefully for not much longer) in a stalemate.  

Looking for a traveler's perspective of Iran, i recently re-read this article by my friend and former colleague at Travel + Leisure, Peter Jon Lindberg. His evocative descriptions of a gritty, cosmopolitan Tehran (bordered to the North by the snow-covered Elburz mountains), the magnificent ruins of Persepolis, and the soulful city of Shiraz are a breath of fresh air. Lindberg counters stereotypes of Iran as a cheerless place with passage after passage about the effusive generosity of Iranians and their fabulous behind-closed-doors parties—complete with caviar, whiskey and vodka (the latter smuggled in from Turkey). Not to mention their secretive satellite-radio dishes—so they can tune in to A Prairie Home Companion.  Priceless. 

Lindberg's explanation of the curious etiquette of ta'arouf is the best I've read yet: 

To understand Iranians, it is essential to comprehend ta'arof, which mandates self-effacement in social interactions. Stepping aside at a doorway to let your companion through first is ta'arof. Declining an offer of tea is ta'arof, even if the host, per custom, repeats the offer three times. (A fourth try means the offer is probably genuine, and it's okay to accept.) In Iran, even taxi drivers and shopkeepers practice ta'arof, to the bewilderment of foreign visitors. At a newsstand I try to buy some gum. "Paying is not worthy of you," the cashier says, pushing my money away. "But I insist," I say. "Please, agha, no charge," he replies. This goes on for a full minute—there are customers waiting—before he takes any money. Sometimes ta'arof reaches absurd heights, as when, after dinner at a restaurant in Tehran, our waiter presents the bill. My father-in-law reaches for his wallet, whereupon the waiter launches into florid protest: "Your money is too good for me!...On my eyes, I am your humble servant!"

Have a read. And if you get the travel bug, check out this new trip that San Francisco-based Global Exchange is offering this fall. 

Last night, at the IFC's "Stranger Than Fiction" series, a large audience gathered to see The Glass House, an Iranian film about teenage girls living on the fringe of Tehran struggling to overcome drug abuse. 

Impoverished young women in Iran have it rough. All the misery and misfortune of the country just seem to descend on them like water flows downhill. Living in close quarters with their families, they are the scapegoats for everyone else's frustration. Father upset about unemployment? His daughter gets beat up. Drug addicted brother feeling horny? Sister gets raped. If she speaks up, more punishment.

Marjaneh Halati, an Iranian expatriate practicing psychotherapy in London, came back to Tehran and, moved by this reality, decided to start a center to empower these women in their lives. Not a refuge but a training ground, the The Omid-e-Mehr Foundation teaches the girls to advocate for themselves and mediate their relationships with the abusive men and women in their lives. At times, intervention is necessary, as in the case of a 14 year old girl being fed drugs by her mother. The girl was seized by the center and taken to rehab (and then another clinic for severe depression), before finally being reconnected with her father.

After making the fiction film Day Break about the prison system in Iran, Hamid Rahmanian discovered the center with Melissa Hibbard, his wife and producer, and decided another film needed to be made. He followed the girls around for nine months without any crew, generating an intimacy with his subject matter that is palpable in every scene. After many years and stacks of permissions later, "The Glass House" was made.

Both the center and the film itself provide a space for the girls to build self-awareness and gain compassion. Sometimes, this is all they can get—the satisfaction of an emotional catharsis and feeling heard—while they remain trapped in their abusive situations. Other times, the joy of articulation has led them to build creative passions and maybe even budding careers, as in the case of Nazila, a rapper, or Mitra, a short story writer. Either way, their voices constitute an obstacle in the flow of misfortunes upon their heads.  

The film will be playing in New York on June 22nd at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn, New York.