Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarggggghhhhhh. Thomas Friedman has written something that makes sense (well, not sure about the last part about granting student visas). Also at the Agonist, a link-full post on the propaganda effort for a strike on Iran.
(Incidentally The Agonist is a great site that was a direct inspiration for this one. Bookmark it if you haven’t already.)
He’ll surprise you every now and again, that Friedman. Not sure how he thinks squeezing Iran financially is going to promote ‘engagement,’ though. And those students given visas to the US are probably not going to go back and take their cultural learnings of America for make benefit amazing debate explosion in Iran, either, they’ll likely stay on in the US while their families back home still have to deal with censorship and intimidation.
getting along with Iran seems to be easy….! The world is flat, isn’t it ?
Check out the second part of http://asharqalawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=3&id=7860“ rel=”nofollow”> this article which says the U.S. govt is, in fact, already doing a lot of what Friedman suggests, through its “Iran Regional Presence Office” in Dubai.
slightly off topic
The Agonist is one of my must-read sites that I visit every day. The same goes for this site.
/slightly off topic
@ SP….! Thanks for the link….!
And here’s another http://www.slate.com/id/2158733/“ rel=”nofollow”> Slate article that makes a case for engaging Iran similar to Friedman’s, but argues against sanctions.
I think the exchange students are a good idea, although I agree with SP on the likely result. Perhaps the US should send medical students over to Iran to investigate their stem-cell program. More to the point, US students should go to Iran so they can see that 60% of uni students are women, just as a f’rinstance. (I am perpetually amazed that every person I speak to about Iran doesn’t seem to know that women in Iran not only have the right to vote, but have had it since the 50’s. Every single person. Bloody hell.) Of course, no-one speaks Farsi, so I don’t know how big an uptake there’d be amongst Americans who don’t already have Iranian heritage.