Hooman Majd's Blog

Iran is once again back, with a vengeance befitting the summer behavior of its Basij and after a brief post-post-election respite, in Western headlines. And as is customary, Iran experts and analysts and watchers are falling over themselves to explain this frustratingly un-explainable nation and its intentions to the masses. (Of course there are no real Iran experts, not here, not in Iran, not even in the Iranian government, but hey, these days it's an occupation that at least keeps people bu...

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New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman rarely disappoints when it comes to inane, or even spurious arguments and ideas, but in his latest column, he demonstrates such a lack of understanding of not just diplomacy, his subject of the day, but also of how the world has changed (beyond its now flatness), that one has to wonder if his peripatetic lifestyle has taught him anything about the way all those foreigners he meets actually think.

Continuing to view the world through the myopia of his all t

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The United States, which under President Obama has promised to engage Iran on the basis of mutual respect, and which under both presidents Bush and Obama has professed its admiration for the Iranian people and their culture (if not for their government), this week announced the appointment of Dennis Ross as the point person in charge of the Iran portfolio at the State Department (but curiously not the White House). In its announcement, however, the State Department referred not to Iran, but to s

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With President Obama making Middle East peace a welcome top priority early in his presidency (and dispatching the highly respected George Mitchell to the region this week), analysts, "experts," and opinion-makers are falling over themselves to offer their two cents on what will work, and what won't. Tom Friedman, ever anxious to give advice, writes in the New York Times that a "five state solution" is the answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His imaginary letter from King Abdullah to Pres

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Susan Rice, President Obama's new Ambassador the United Nations and a member of the cabinet, today for the first time spoke publicly about the Iran nuclear issue. During the long campaign for the presidency, President Obama repeatedly vowed to begin negotiations, to talk to Iran (even as he backpedaled on tea with President Ahmadinejad), "without preconditions" as he put it. Obama recognized that the failed Bush policy of only agreeing to talks with Iran if they first agreed to what the desired

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The Bush White House and its State Department, in their final days and even as Hillary Clinton undergoes the confirmation process to become the next Secretary of State, continue to be oblivious to irony, or at least to the almost comical aspects of their records and official statements. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that George Bush specifically denied Israeli requests for assistance in bombing Iran's nuclear sites, instead advising the Israelis that covert activities were underway by t

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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's congratulatory letter to President-elect Barack Obama, the first of its kind in the thirty-year history of the Islamic Republic, has so far gone unanswered. President-elect Obama has understandably been busy with filling cabinet and sub-cabinet posts, as well trying to figure out what on earth he's going to do with the various messes he's inherited (including the Bush administration's jaw-dropping position on the situation in Gaza, an aerial bombardment with Ameri

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On Sunday, President-elect Barack Obama once again waded into the treacherous waters of U.S.-Iran relations without the benefit of some understanding of who Iranians are, and how they might respond to a certain kind of language (employed in public). Language that may seem perfectly reasonable to us, but when heard on the other side of the world, provokes, as the Iranians have put it in the past, an "allergic" reaction.

Obama suggested on Meet the Press that U.S. policy towards Iran would involve

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In February of 2007, when I was sitting with former President Khatami of Iran in his office in North Tehran, he asked me about Barack Obama, whom Iranians were hearing (and were very curious) about. "He could be the next president," I said, "but you know, his middle name is Hussein, and that won't go over well with many Americans." President Khatami was surprised to hear of Obama's father's Muslim connection of Obama's, one that he hadn't ever bothered to deny. "Ajab! Really?" he said with a big

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Occasionally, even an Op-Ed columnist of great repute gets something so wrong that his views literally beg for a rebuttal. Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times today about Iran, and about (President) Obama's potential to negotiate with our adversary from a position of strength, or with "leverage", as he puts it. From where Mr. Friedman sits, in Bethesda, Maryland, Iran is looking "very Soviet" to him, a view that most Iranians sitting in Tehran, Iran, might disagree with. (Some of those

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