President Bush Should Engage Iran's Reform Movement
President Bush Should Engage Iran's Reform Movement
As the "rent-a-crowds" of the clerical regime in Tehran prepare
to celebrate the twenty-second anniversary of the Islamic Republic by
chanting their customary "Death to America," U.S. policy makers
grapple with a continuing problem: how to deal with Iran.
The United States should not invest its diplomatic and political energies
on apologizing for "past mistakes" in exchange for normalization
of relations with Tehran. Instead, Washington must lend its moral support
to Iran's nascent reform movement much like we did with dissident movements
in the Soviet bloc, says Fariborz Ghadar, director of the Center for Global
Business Studies in Penn State's Smeal College of Business Administration.
"Within Iran the youth who make up a majority of the population,
journalists of reformist newspapers, junior clerics who question the legitimacy
of clerical rule and women are at the forefront of defying the ruling
theocrats. They are Washington's natural allies. President Bush should
use the up-coming Iranian New Year (March 20) to outline his vision of
engagement and collaboration between these groups and America," says
Ghadar.
REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.
Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.
