and i think started to feel -- to feel their old preoccupations sort of creeping back and at this time with a bit of suspicion. why was the government supporting hamas when iranians were suffering so much at home? why were they devoting resources to this militant group when iranians needed so much help and even things like bread and gas were becoming so expensive. and it reminded me of an experience i had back in 2006 and i was living in iran at the time and if you recall that year, israel and lebanon had at least a month-long confrontation of their border and basically hezbollah, the militant lebanese group and it's sort of wildly considered a war. and iran was a supporter and continues to be a supporter of hezbollah, of course, at the time and i remember there being the same constant tv footage of lebanese civilians suffering and

of that war. and at the time iranians, i think, were quite resentful of that support. they were very sympathetic again towards the lebanese. i don't want to suggest that they are not sympathetic to the lebanese or the palestinians who suffered during these conflicts but they felt as though this was not iran's fight. and one morning i had gone to the bakery to buy fresh bread as i did sometimes. and as i got there very early, the bakery was closed which was unusual for that hour and other neighbors started to congregate and we were all waiting to see when the bakery would open and when it didn't, people began to wonder, well, what's going on? and suddenly all of these murmurings produced a conclusion was that the government had sent all of the country's flour to lebanon to help the lebanese. and there was no flour left for iranians and there was no bread and, look, they have forsake generous once again. they sent all the flour away and we have no bread and what are they going to give them next?

and why do we have to be a part of this fight? we're iranians. we're not even arab. why aren't the arabs helping the lebanese? and so all this went on and on and everyone went home very grumpy. and it emerged later in the afternoon that the bakery was actually just remodeling. [laughter] >> there hadn't been a massive air lift of flour to lebanon after all. but it just underscores, i think, how suspicious iranians have grown to be of their government and how convinced they are that it puts these ideological causes before the iranians welfare and how cynical they have gotten. that cynicism is going to be a factor to contend with in the upcoming elections certainly because many iranians sat out the 2005 election and some regret that because they see that it contributed to the rise of president mahmoud ahmadinejad. some still believe that their vote doesn't really matter and

are ambivalent again about voting. but i think one thing that everyone is hopeful about is president obama. and the sense there's once again a president in washington who will deal respectfully with iran and will not resort to belittling or humiliating rhetoric and i think there's a real excitement that perhaps he will recognize iran's ancient culture and it's contributions to world civilization. and sort of whether or not there's grand reconciliation on the political level i think people are also hopeful that there can be once again some space for at least cultural exchange, for filmmakers and athletes and scholars to go back and forth so these two countries can get to know each other once again after all of these 30 years of acrimony. i think it's potentially a very hopeful time and i think certainly iranians feel that way, and i think we'll have a

fascinating year ahead to see where and how it all unfolds. thank you very much. [applause] >> there's a microphone right here. by these books, by this shelf. >> from all accounts there's a sustained economic problem in iran, and i'm wondering with the decline in the oil prices, it's put more strain on it. and who do the iranian people hold responsible for this? for their economic -- because it has been a very prosperous

place. >> that's a great question because certainly the issue of who is to blame for this economic decline is a very sensitive and politicized one. i think the government certainly does try to divert some of the blame to the west because, of course, right now iran is surfing from sanctions because of its position on the nuclear program. and the government does make the case that our economy is suffering because we refuse to buckle under all of this pressure from the west to give up our sovereign right to nuclear power. i think for the most part people are aware, though, that there's a serious level of economic mismanagement by the government and that's why -- that's why the economy has declined the way that it has. there's been a certain steadiness in the level of how inflation rises, for example, that jumped under mahmoud ahmadinejad. the economic decline has been

very acute and very easily tied to his presidency. and i think that there is reporting about that in the iranian media. not quite as explicit and as loud as perhaps the iranian media would like to report the issue but the message certainly gets across and i think people for the most part do blame the government for the downturn that the economy -- the economic downturn and their sort of decline in their own standard of living. >> thank you. that was very interesting. i go to a lot of meetings about the iranian conflict in town. it seems there are two basic approaches and the dominate approach is we must not let iran get nuclear weapons and so far from what i can tell the difference between obama is that he's going to talk to them but also the whole ideas, you know, sort of rewards and punishments carrots and sticks which are -- can be humiliating and provoke

defiance and i can see where that could break down and the other approaches is the grand bargain which is promoted by hillary, trita parsi where we need to transform our relationship. there have been attempts that have failed on both sides over the years and that there's something to work with but it seems like the other view is much more dominant and there's not a lot of imagination for the possibility and people are saying, well, if we talk with -- if obama talks with mahmoud ahmadinejad, it might increase his popularity he might win which i don't think necessarily makes sense. so what are your thoughts about? the possibility of a grand bargain? >> of course, i follow all of this and i'm very sort of aware of the different lines of reasoning.

my sense is that -- my sense that there's a lot of expectations riding on a very immediate how can -- outcome. i think iran's relationship with the u.s. has been so dismal for so many years that it's a little bit unrealistic to think that there can be immediately some sort of grand bargain or that there can be sort of immediate and meaningful progress on all of these issues. i'm sort of of the camp that argues that there has to be sort of a series of confidence-building measures that the two governments can sit down about iraq and afghanistan and these shared interests that they have and once there's a degree of trust and confidence built after those discussions that then they can move on to the bigger thornier ones like the nuclear program, like hamas and hezbollah and these other things. i think that iran has felt very

vulnerable in the last few years, although, the sort of conventional sense or the conventional reading is that iran has been empowered because of the two u.s. wars on its borders, afghanistan and iraq. i think that iran feels very much that it's marginalized in the region and it doesn't really see any way forward to assert its authority without using these tools that it feels like it has to rely on, the nuclear program, its support for the militant groups and i think it's all sort of a much bigger picture, you know, the united states has alliances with arab states that are historically very wary of iran. iran doesn't feel as though it has any place in any gulf security arrangement. i think that if there's a real effort made to sit down and

talk but i think these issues are intractable right now because of where the two governments stand. and i think that if the u.s. renounces the policy of regime change, if it -- if it adjusts its rhetoric towards iran and iran sort of takes some steps in kind, that we could find ourselves in a very different -- a very different political situation where the issues don't seem so utterly intractable and impossible to solve. so i see it as sort of an incremental and slow process and i think that if there's a really meaningful commitment to a diplomatic solution, there will be a lot of patience to see this all unfold gradually. >> well, i think the -- there are forces that have an exaggerated sense of thread of urgency and time. and so i agree about the incrementalism except for the fact there are forces that we feel that we don't have that much time. >> well, i think there are forces on both sides that are willing to do anything to

sabotage rapprochement and you see it playing in both cases. there are political factions who don't want the relationship to improve and who will sabotage it all they can. >> i very much enjoyed your book. and throughout it you talk about the intimidating presence of mr. x. i was wondering if you could comment on the arrest on the american journalist. i understand if you don't, but -- the timing of it which comes two weeks or so after obama came in as a president. >> i'm aware of this. i haven't -- >> can you repeat the question. >> do you want to repeat the question? >> she's asking about -- >> she's very hard to hear. >> i just want to ask about the arrest of the american journalist. >> i'm aware of it.

and i see the headlines and i'm aware of it. what i can speak to is the overall challenge of reporting in iran. it's certainly one of the challenging places in the world operate as a journalist, and i've written about this in both of my books, certainly, especially, as a woman it can be a difficult place because even in the very most basic sense you show up for an interview or you show up for an event and there's some guard at the door who says there's something wrong with what you're wearing. and this is, of course, at the heart of what women go through but also if you're reporting, it suddenly means there are beyond that, i think very often journalists are victims of this political strife between the two countries. and very often during times of tension, when that relations deteriorate, at least on the iranian side, it seemed that journalists sometimes get caught

in the middle and i certainly experienced that in the aftermath of september 11 when president bush labeled iran as part of an axis of evil and i think that made the iranian government at the time very paranoid. they weren't sure if america was going to go about changing the regime and they were very fearful and that led to a lot of parano paranoia and what went in their work and how that ended up sort of making us and the press feel constrained on what we could report. and i think overall it's a tough place to report but it's also a situation very much sensitive to the grand sort of political state of relation between iran and the u.s. >> can you generalize it all about the feelings of young people in coffee shops, in bars

or wherever young people hang out in iran as to the recent imposition of shari'a law in sections ofof pakistan and afghanistan by the taliban? from apathy to grave concern, where do they come down on that if you can generalize? thank you. >> hmmm, i think in a way iranian young people tend to be similar to american young people in that they don't often follow foreign news very closely. and don't often feel very comfortable to foreign policy like that. there's a feeling like places like afghanistan or pakistan where there is a very strict form of islamic law practiced that these are very -- i mean, this is what i think a young iranian would say, you know, it's unfortunate that these are very backwards customs that are being imposed on men and women,

of course. i would say there would be concern but i think young iranians are very much focused on their own lives. i think the society around theme is so often so chaotic and difficult to navigate that they very much turn inward in reaction to that and are just preoccupied to, you know, my job, my apartment. although they're very connected to the outside world, they're on the internet. they follow sort of mass entertainment culture around the world. they're very plugged in, i think that somehow politically they've somehow contracted and so apathetic about what they can do about politics that they might not -- you know, while they would be concerned about it they wouldn't be animated about it. >> isn't that very understandable because they can't do anything about politics?

isn't it -- you speak of elections as though it were a democratic country but these are elections in a nondemocratic country, isn't that true? and the supreme leader, the council of -- i'll call it a guidance council. i don't know the exact name of it, screens candidates for office. disqualifies half or two-thirds of them, et cetera, et cetera. you know that better than i. and i think you can talk about that or please do. >> sure. well, certainly, i don't think anyone would call iranian elections perfectly free or democratic in the sense that we think about those terms. they are not free, of course, because the government does screen candidates in advance. but that said, they are often unpredictable in outcome. they are often fiercely competitive. there are also meaningful

differences between the candidates. and people at times and perhaps in june will go and vote there's voting for and his -- it's always his because women run for president but his competitors. and i think your question sort of gets at the heart of really iranian politics and how at the same time, it's a very closed and repressive system but at the same time, it does permit some measure of openness or at least competition where politicians with very different visions of iran's future with very different ideas about how they run the country can compete. i think especially the experience of the last few years has convinced iranians that although they may have been very disillusioned with the political process, that there's a very meaningful difference in their own lives, a difference that they can feel between a very

conservative president like mahmoud ahmadinejad and a moderate like khatami. would come back with what came after and the heart of that goes back to elections. they can go and they can vote for him again and choose a different leader because i think they feel as though who they choose makes a direct -- or has now, now they realize, makes a direct impact on their daily lives. >> yeah, thank you. i'm from voice of america persian news network. i have a bunch of questions so i just chose one of them. you talked about the iranian society, and you also described different aspects the cultural aspects and the economical crisis, how have these factors affected the iranian culture or the national identity? and is there any national or cultural identity crisis or not?

and how this political situation impacted there the definition of their cultural identity? >> uh-huh, uh-huh. that's a really interesting question. i think that certainly -- i think we came to see during the mahmoud ahmadinejad years that there was a sort of dormant iranian nationalism all of these years after the revolution that sort of rose up during perhaps the year of 2006. mahmoud ahmadinejad made a point of making the nuclear issue one of national pride and that really resonated with iranians especially because this fell in the aftermath of the axis of evil and they felt very offended and belittled by that and i think that that created a very fertile ground for them to feel they wanted to believe in a strong iran, an ascendant iran. and i think to that extent, you

know, there's a sort of incoherence because people are so critical on the government on the one hand and yet very proud and convinced that iran has sovereign rights and should have status in the region with its resources and its population so i think it does sort of lead to a kind of incoherent nationalism in a way that will sometimes rise up and then at other times just go quiet. when it comes to culture identity, and i write about this a lot because i think especially for young people it's been almost impossible to sort of create and to hammer out a sense of self in an environment that is on chaotic. when you have such a divide and such an increasing divide between public and private life, it's hard to have a sense of who you can trust and who your real self is. if you're one person outside and a different person inside the house and maybe a different

person at university. and so i think it's tremendously difficult and i think this is why many iranians call this generation the lost generation because they have such a hazy sense of self. i think it's hope that they're trying to make sense of themselves through culture, through art and music and literature and painting and i think you can see that -- the sort of all of that energy going into creativity in the arts as they try and struggle with these questions. but i think that it has led to a very incomplete sense of self for iranians. >> thank you. >> a question on how the young folks think about the overthrow by the u.s. and the imposition of the shah for 30 years. to what extent has that overthrown view among the youth as a rallying cry of resentment

towards the u.s., either indigenoususly on their own or used by the government? and then another question, if i could, it's been said that, particularly, visa the arab world, that iranians are incredibly chauvinistic, you know, look down upon arabs in general. to what extent do you think that's true, and to what extent would it be as perceived from the gulf states as a reason to fear iranian moves in the gulf, the insistence that it's a persian gulf? >> uh-huh, uh-huh. well, i'll start with your first question. of course, just quickly i mean, i'm sure you're all aware of the history but in 1953 iran had a prime minister, and he was very popular, and he had nationalized iranian oil. his government had been democratically elected and it was a very exciting moment for

iran because it was the closest iran had come from a democratic moment in which people believed in their government and felt the government was doing what was best for iranians by nationalizing oil. and in 1953, he was overthrown by a cia and british-plotted coup and, of course, this left a tremendous scar on the iranian consciousness and a permanent sense of suspicion about foreign intervention in iranian affairs. i think he's still very much a hero for people. where his ancestral home is a place of pilgrimage and young people will go there. i remember during the student demonstrations of years past people would hold up his poster, his picture. and i think that his symbolism very much still appeals to young people as a very nationalist -- in a way a secular nationalist leader and i think that's something that they yearn for and don't really see within the political establishment. even the moderates in the

iranian context are very often, of course, still religious moderates so the legacy, i think, certainly is still very vibrant and iranians connect with it. the government, of course, is ambivalent about him because he was not -- he was very suspicious of islam and government and the clerics taking power and so although he certainly for iranians, you know, that legacy is one of resentment of the united states for intervening and overthrowing him and, of course, leading to more years of the shah's repression which led to the revolution it's not something the government, i think, can make easy use of. in the end he did have a secular vision for iran. the question about persian chauvinism and the gulf and how does this contribute to maybe fears and anxieties in the gulf about iran's rise in the region. well, i think certainly there's a very real persian chauvinism

even in politics and i always found it very fascinating especially among religious leaders and religious officials in iran how chauvinistic they are because, of course, real political islam doesn't -- knows no national boundaries and it's one islamic nation and it's dangerous to get preoccupied of one nation. that's not part of the overall project. but in iran, of course, no matter how religious, i think, officials can be, they're still very much at heart a persian gulf and -- i don't remember what it was. i think there had been some sort of arab proposal put forth for perhaps something to do with the nuclear program and this very much offended a few of the iranian officials i was dealing with at the time that, you know, were prepared to listen to a european proposal but do we really need to listen to a proposal from the arabs? and i think this is historical but i've spent years reporting

in the arab world as well and i would say this is certainly the case on the other side as well. to the extent that iranians are chauvinist, arabs can be very chauvinist as well and look down on iranians and persians and having lived in different parts of the arab world and sort of held in a great deal of suspicion and sometimes contempt for being a shia, an iranian shia this is a chauvinism that is mirrored on the other side so i think this is sadly a dynamic that's a parallel in the region. >> hi. we spoke a lot about iranians in iran and their opinions of the government, but given your unique position being in touch with the iranian community here in the united states, do you think you could juxtapose a little bit the differing opinions or the philosophies of the iranians in america and their opinion of the government

and politics? >> i think that -- it seems to me and i will admit it's been almost a decade since i haven't lived in the u.s. but to the extent that i go back and forth and i'm familiar with what the diaspora in america thinks, i think attitudes really run the spectrum of opinion. there are certainly iranians in diaspora are diehard monarchists and cling to the idea that the shah's son will go back and iran will be restored to the monarchy and, of course, along with that attitude comes a lot of unrealistic perceptions about iran and how young people are ready to overthrow the regime and how the u.s. should have nothing to do with iran. it should just contain iran and ignore it. and those iranians in the diaspora are critics of any kind of engagement with iran. and then i think that you can go all the way to the other side and you have the iranians who

are a little bit over-leftist and have been here for 30 years and read too much noam chomsky and edward sayeed and that they are misunderstood and there's a lot of freedom in iran all the time and that certainly iran is made out to be a bogey man and i think they sort of go too far in the liberal reading of iran as the victim and don't really recognize the iranian government for what it is at times. and so i think there's also a lot of iranians in the middle who have a more balanced view of all of these things and they tend to be a bit more silent. you don't hear from them as much. you hear from the loud liberals and the monarchists, it seems. maybe here in washington because there's people who go about and talk about iran and you can sort of tap into a kind of debate on the outside of the country that a sense of them being a moderate middle but i would imagine, you

know, most iranians in the diaspora would just be happy to see -- to see a kind of improvement in relations that it would at least mean that their families could go back and back and forth. it's difficult for families to get visas in this country to visit their family. and i think there's a lot of concern about visa issues like that and iranian students, for example, when they come to this country to make sure that they get due process in the aftermath of the laws that changed after september 11 and there are concerns like that but i would say the political spectrum runs the gambit. the iranian dias pa is very diverse but i would hope most would fall somewhere in the moderate middle. thank you very much. [applause]