Month: June 2015

I didn’t go, but Dick Simon did.  He writes:

I recently returned from leading my third delegation of YPO-WPO CEO business leaders to Iran.  The changes over the past three years have been dramatic.  We were provided more access this year than ever before, including being the first American group since the Iranian Revolution/ Hostage Crisis to meet with an Iranian Ministry Official and to be allowed to re-enter the former American Embassy.  In addition to Iranian and international government officials, we met with a Grand Ayatollah, top business leaders, young entrepreneurs, students, and artists.

Learnings included:

• Americans as people are welcomed and loved
• 70% of population is under age 35, having been born after the Revolution
• 60% of university graduates are women
• Lack of anti-Semitism, as distinguished from anti-Israel sentiment
• Jews and Christians allowed to import alcohol in an otherwise dry country
• Religious leaders talking about “death to America” is in the past and relations with Israel could “become more positive” if there is resolution on the Palestinian issue
• Dynamic tech startup environment. We met with founders of Iranian versions of Kayak, Groupon, eBay, and Amazon
• A “workaround economy” impacted by restrictions yet with 6.5 million iPhones (officially blocked under sanctions) and half the population connect to 3/4 G service.
• 15 million Facebook users in a country where Facebook is officially banned

There has been tremendous media attention about our trip as it comes at such a critical time in American-Iranian relations.  On return, several of us have been briefing the US Senate Foreign Relations and Banking Committees and senior State Department officials.   Through sharing our experiences, we hope to create a more nuanced understanding of this very important geopolitical player that is generally considered difficult to access and understood only as an adversary in the West.

Press about our 2015 Experience:

– American businessman preps for ‘huge’ opportunities to come in potential Iran deal – Interview with Dick Simon on The World – BBC/PRI/WGBH

– American CEOs Eye Iran – Interview with Christopher Schroeder in “Iran Primer” for US Institute of Peace

– Billboards in Iran Say ‘Death to America,’ but Officials Say ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ – Thomas Erdbrink in New York Times

– Iran: Ready for Business – Ned Lamont in Medium/News Decoder with photographs by Dick Simon 

– What we get wrong about Iran – Linda Mason for CNN

– A Rare Tour of the Former US Embassy in Iran – The “Den of Spies”– Dick Simon on SoundCloud – PRI/BBC/WGBH

– Stepping into the U.S. Embassy in Tehran is a Step Back in Time to 1979 – by Cathy Weiss for ABC News Cleveland

– U.S. CEOs find crowded field in Iran – Barbara Slavin in Al-Monitor

– US investors feted in Iran despite sanctions uncertainty – Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Financial Times

– Why an open Iran offers extensive upsides – Jay Pelosky in Financial Times

– Behind the Headlines: Discovering Iran’s Business Complexities – Mary Woods in YPO Ignite

(Other articles and links are at www.pannetwork.org/press/)

While Iranian-American relations remain a very complex issue, I hope that leading these delegations, and sharing experiences and images from our travels, help contribute to better understanding.

One wonders how the world might have been different if the CIA hadn’t overthrown Iran’s democracy in 1953.  (Or we had not invaded Iraq in 2003.)  Ah, those unintended consequences.

As I’ve long argued, our friends who fit that mold — “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” (as I do myself) — are basically Democrats.

Because it’s Democrats in recent decades who’ve shrunk the Debt relative to the economy as a whole; Republicans who’ve exploded it . . .

. . . waging wars without paying for them, chopping taxes on the rich when we couldn’t afford to lose that revenue, neglecting basic maintenance of our national infrastructure (like a business that fails to set aside reserves for depreciation and is basically borrowing from the future).

Well, here’s another take on the same theme, 7 Things People Who Say They’re ‘Fiscally Conservative But Socially Liberal’ Don’t Understand, by Greta Christina for Raw Story.

I’d want a shot at persuading her the President’s Trans-Pacific Partnership is not likely to reflect the kind of “free trade” she rails against (#7).  But there is so much else in here that strikes me as truly important — and spot on.

Let me know your thoughts.