Featured Panelists: Barbara Slavin, Senior Diplomatic reporter for USA Today (on leave this year as a fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace) and the author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S., and the Twisted Path to Confrontation
Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council and author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States
Moderated by: Joseph Cirincione, Senior Fellow and Director for Nuclear Policy and co-author of Contain and Engage: A New Strategy for Resolving the Iranian Nuclear Crisis
RSVP for this Event
In a timely discussion on U.S. – Iranian relations, the Center for American Progress will host two of the foremost authorities on the subject, Barbara Slavin and Trita Parsi. They have both recently authored books outlining the mercurial relationship between the United States and Iran and the influences of outside actors, including Israel. Both authors had unprecedented access to administration officials in both countries and provide keen insight into a very complicated situation.
Please join us for a lively and stimulating discussion with Barbara Slavin and Trita Parsi, as they draw on their research to illuminate post-NIE policy directions. The discussion will be moderated by Joseph Cirincione, Senior Fellow and Director for Nuclear Policy at the Center for American Progress.
Thursday, December 13, 2007 Program: 12:30pm to 2:00pm Admission is free.
A light buffet lunch will be served at 12:00 p.m.
Center for American Progress 1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor Washington, DC 20005 Map & Directions
Nearest Metro: Blue/Orange Line to McPherson Square or Red Line to Metro Center
Biographies
Joseph Cirincione is Senior Fellow and Director for Nuclear Policy at CAP and author of the new book, Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons (Columbia University Press, Spring 2007). Prior to joining the Center in May 2006, he served as director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for eight years. He is the co-author of Contain and Engage: A New Strategy for Resolving the Iran Nuclear Crisis (Center for American Progress, March 2007), Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats (Second Edition, 2005), and Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security (March 2005). He teaches at the graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007.) He wrote his Doctoral thesis on Israeli-Iranian relations under Professor Francis Fukuyama (and Drs. Zbigniew Brzezinski, R. K. Ramazani, Jakub Grygiel, Charles Doran) at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in 2006. He has conducted more than 130 interviews with senior Israeli, Iranian and American officials in all three countries. He has served as an advisor to Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH18) on Middle East issues and is a co-founder and current President of the National Iranian American Council (www.niacouncil.org), a non-partisan, non-profit organization promoting Iranian-American participation in American civic life. Dr. Parsi has worked for the Swedish Permanent Mission to the UN in New York where he served in the Security Council handling the affairs of Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan and Western Sahara, and the General Assembly’s Third Committee addressing human rights in Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Iraq.
Barbara Slavin has been senior diplomatic reporter for USA Today since 1996, responsible for analyzing foreign news and U.S. foreign policy. She has covered such key issues as the U.S.-led war on terrorism in Iraq, policy toward “rogue” states and the Arab-Israeli conflict. In Iran recently, she was the first U.S. newspaper reporter to interview President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. She has accompanied three secretaries of State on their official travels and also reported from Iran, Libya, Israel, Egypt, North Korea, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and Syria. She is a regular commentator on U.S. foreign policy on National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System and C-Span. Prior to joining USA Today, she was a Washington-based writer for The Economist and The Los Angeles Times, covering domestic and foreign policy issues, including the 1991-93 Middle East peace talks in Washington. From 1985-89, she was The Economist correspondent in Cairo. She traveled widely in the Middle East, covering the Iran-Iraq war, the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya, the political evolution of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism.