Authors push for diplomacy

By Mary Daly

Published Feb. 19, 2008

Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times foreign correspondent and award-winning author, said it would be the ultimate day when he reads about man’s triumphs on the front page of a newspaper.

That is why he is encouraging diplomacy rather than military threats in Iran.

Kinzer and Trita Parsi, National Iranian American Council president and author, came to MU on Friday night to discuss relations between Iran and the United States.

The event, entitled “The Folly of Attacking Iran,” drew students, professors and community members to Middlebush Auditorium for a lecture and a question and answer session lead by Kinzer and Parsi.

“It’s great to be back in a state that has roots in reality and common sense,” Kinzer said about Missouri.

He said he has a great appreciation for Missouri and its native former President Harry Truman.

Kinzer’s talk highlighted the fact that foreign conflict does not happen by accident.

In Iran especially, there is a great deal of history that caused U.S. and Iran relations to sour.

“I think if most Americans know one thing about U.S.-Iran relations, it’s the hostage crisis,” Kinzer said. “This is the image that we’re given of Iran.”

Kinzer explained that the 1979 hostage crisis is not when U.S.-Iran relations went bad, but rather in 1953 when the United States led a secret operation to help overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the dictator who was widely seen as a puppet of the United States, replaced Mosaddeq.

Pahlavi was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Islamic revolutionaries, inspired by the 1953 coup, also overthrew the American embassy in Iran and took soldiers and staff hostage.

Kinzer said he had looked for a book about the 1953 coup in Iran but found nothing.

He then proceeded to write the national bestseller “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.”

“If I ever wanted to read this book, I knew I’d have to write it myself,” Kinzer said.

Parsi, who wrote “Treacherous Alliance — The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States,” said the only way to fix U.S.-Iran relations is for the countries to enter into negotiations.

“There’s absolutely no guarantee that negotiations will work, but it is simply un-American to not give them a chance,” Parsi said.

In 2003, Iran proposed negotiations with the United States through a Swiss ambassador, but President George Bush gave no response, predicting the attempt would be fruitless.

Parsi said it has greatly undermined the security in the United States to ignore Iran.

“There’s not a single problem that has been resolved,” Parsi said. “It’s just that we’re paying less attention to those problems.”

Parsi told the audience there would be more opportunities for negotiations if people encourage Congress to support the Iran Diplomatic Accountability Act of 2008, which calls for the appointment of a high-level U.S. representative or envoy to Iran for the purpose of easing tensions between the countries.

Mid-Missouri Peaceworks spokeswoman Lily Tinker Fortel helped organize the event and said she was thrilled by the turnout.

“Diplomacy in Iran is such an important subject that often gets put on the back burner by the media,” Fortel said. “I think everyone who came tonight really benefited from hearing two experts tell us the whole story about Iran.”

Kinzer is traveling around the nation with various experts, making a case for a different approach to diplomacy in Iran. His 22-city tour wraps up on March 7 in Washington, D.C.