Regarding AIC, I can report two key events that we organized: 1) A meeting in May 2007 that included Senator Chuck Hagel, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ambassador Javad Zarif of Iran, and Mr. Nicholas Kristof of New York Times, along with about 45 other distinguished guests which included current and former Ambassadors, business executives, community leaders and leading academics; and 2) A meeting in September that included President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Said Jalili who is now Iran's new nuclear negotiator, Mr. Mohammad Khazaee, Iran's Ambassador to the UN, several other high-ranking Iranian officials, and about 50 representatives of major American media, business community, academia, and thank tanks. The first meeting focused on Iran's nuclear file at the UN Security Council and the second included a lengthy discussion with Mr. Ahmadinejad on various issues of concern to the audience.

We can also report two major changes regarding the Council: 1) A newly redesigned AIC website, making it more interactive and attractive as well as reflective of the Council's stature, mission and achievements; and 2) Moving the AIC offices to a new location in Princeton. We ask that you please visit the new site at www.american-iranian.org and let us benefit from your feedback. We will also be pleased to meet you in person at our new location at 29A Wiggins Street, Princeton, New Jersey. The AIC Update has been redesigned and integrated with the new website. We have also continued to expand our email and mailing lists. We believe these changes will increase the Council's efficiency and effectiveness significantly.

I am particularly pleased to report that AIC has received two grants in recent weeks from the Open Society Institute and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. We also continue to receive financial support from corporate sponsors and many individual donors. The funds are used to pay for AIC events and operations, to restructure the Council's financial management using an outside firm (BTQ Financial Management in New York City) and redesign its administration. We have also changed our past focus on high-profile events to low-profile but high-impact meetings to better serve our cause in the current tense environment and heated debates that surround US-Iran relations. We have increasingly included public officials and elected representatives in the Council's meetings.

Some of these events and developments have been reported in the previous AIC Updates (http://www.american-iranian.org/publications/aic-update/). During the summer we also broke our silence regarding the Council's involvement in the 2003 "Grand Bargain" initiative between the US and Iran. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times was provided with the documentation detailing the "Grand Bargain" by the AIC. His Sunday Column on the matter was published on April 28th, 2007. The key documents of the "Grand Bargain" proposal are posted on the Times' website (http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/iran/2007/04/28/). As Mr. Kristof argues and our documents show, the Council came very close to bringing the two nations together in 2003. However, as in previous cases, the saboteurs got to work and destroyed the well-planned deal in-the-making.

Following the New York Times column on the Grand Bargain, I was interviewed by several radio and television stations. I particularly wish to bring to your attention the lengthy interview I gave to PBS Frontline on US-Iran relations, focusing on the Grand Bargain initiative and the US war plans for Iran. The program, produced by Greg Barker, first aired on October 23, 2007 with selected excerpts from my interview. I am hoping that you were able to view The Showdown with Iran when it aired, but if not it can be viewed at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/. A second television program, called Iran and the West, is being produced by Norma Percy for the BBC, and I have been interviewed on our role in the 2003 Grand Bargain initiative and in the US offers to Iran that were previously announced by Secretary Albright at the AIC's March 2000 conference in Washington, D.C.

In the last several months, the Iran has been the subject of vicious characterization by newspapers and individuals in both the United States and abroad. A cartoon by Michael Ramirez in the Columbus Dispatch depicted Iranian "extremists" as coach roaches leaving a sewer and spreading throughout the region; and Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs at the Pentagon, reportedly commented to a visiting foreign delegation that: "I hate all Iranians." We condemn these and other malicious acts and words directed against the Iranian nation and its people. However, as a think tank, rather than protest such misdeeds, the Council considers its main mission to help with a better understanding of Iran and US-Iran relations as well as put forth strategic ideas for Washington and Tehran to mutually act upon.

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In the past few months I have participated in several open and off-the-record meetings on Iran and US-Iran relations. Two such meetings were organized by AIC itself, one in May with Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and another one in September with Iran's President Ahmadinejad, as reported above. The text and pictures from the May meeting is posted on the AIC website and was reported in the AIC Update after certain editing to ensure the anonymity of the attendees (http://www.american-iranian.org/publications/aic-update/60.php). The September event with Iran's President will also be reported in some detail in a forthcoming report which will be distributed through the AIC Update and the AIC website. In the May event, I put the following question to the audience: Is confrontation between Iran and the US necessary? I argued it is not. And in the September event, I raised and discussed the following question: Is a strong Iran a dangerous Iran? I argued it is not.

Let me also highlight four other major events in London, Lichtenstein, Greece, and New York City. The London event, organized by the "Farm Group," a select number of prominent Iranian-British, included a conservative MP from the House of Commons who had just visited Iran with the help of a prominent Iranian-British businessman. The focus of the meeting was on the utility of initiating exchange programs focused on civil society, culture, charity and commerce, the so-called "Four C" approach. I thought this was an intelligent idea and it was even more important because a prominent businessman, Mr. Ardeshir Naghshineh, had it formulated. For my part, I tried to dismiss the troubling assumption about Iran by major western powers that "a strong Iran is a dangerous Iran." I argued that, as evidenced by 250 years of history, the opposite was true: that a strong Iran has been a stabilizing force in the region while a weaker Iran has only served to encourage regional conflicts.

The meeting in Lichtenstein, organized by the Lichtenstein Institute at Princeton University, was focused upon Iran's nuclear dispute. The off-the-record meeting included officials from Iran, the US, and prominent former statesmen, diplomats and experts. The important debates often came down to whether the US will take military action against Iran or the dispute will be resolved diplomatically. While most experts did not think that the option of war is real, former statements and diplomats took pains to warn about the real possibility of a war. I also argued along this same line, saying that the "no war, no peace" state of affairs between the two nations is rapidly coming to an end. The two remaining options are peace or war of varying degrees. While the US and Iran have strategic imperatives to normalize, the growing power of the war mongers and their push for an urgent military action must be taken seriously and not readily dismissed.

The Athens (Greece) Conference, organized by the Center for Middle Eastern Development at UCLA and sponsored by the Greek Foreign Ministry, was also off-the-record. The meeting was on security and democracy in the Middle East, focused on Iran's nuclear programs and troubles in Iraq. The role of Iran in regional security was prominently highlighted throughout the meeting. Again, must participants saw the country through the lenses of the assumption that a strong Iran is a dangerous Iran and that its powers have to be contained and curtailed. Worse, many argued that Iran was a "rising power" and given the assumption, military actions to "downsize Iran" were urgently required. I argued against the rising power thesis, showing that Iran was indeed a weak country and that its weakness is the source of trouble in the region. Even if Iran's power were to be rising, it would pose no danger any neighbor, including Israel.

Another focused and off-the-record meeting was held by the German Heinrich Boll Foundation in New York City. The event focused on Iran's nuclear programs and what might happen to the dispute in November when the UN Security Council meets. As per an Ambassador of a major European country, unless Iran agreed to the terms set by the Council, a new series of sanctions will be imposed. He made the point that the worst possible scenario would develop if Russia or China were to oppose additional sanctions. In that case, the diplomacy will end at the UN. The US and its allies will then put together a "coalition of the willing" and use the opportunity to attack Iran's strategic sites, including its nuclear facilities. This argument was supported by a high ranking official from the UN in the audience. I also share this view and had originally expressed it months ago on CNN with Lou Dobbs. Again, the issue of war or peace took center stage in the debate, with many believing that the war is a real possibility.

My activities have also included speaking at several open conferences, most notably in Dubai, UAE, on "The State of U.S.-Iran Relations and the Way Forward," and at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, on "Iran's Nuclear Geopolitics in the Middle East." The Dubai conference was organized by the Middle EAST Petroleum and Gas Conference, chaired by Dr. Fereidun Fesharaki, an AIC Board member. I argued that the US and Iran have to soon make a choice between war and peace as the current state of "no war, no peace" is no longer sustainable. I proposed a "Grand Bargain" approach in which both carrots and sticks offered are huge. The conference in UBC was organized by the Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research (SCDNPR). My speech on the nuclear geopolitics is available on the AIC website at http://american-iranian.org/publications/articles/2007/10/iran-and-nuclear-geopolitics-in-the-middle-east.html.

Last May I helped organize a major event at Rutgers University, sponsored by the AIC and the Rutgers University Center for Middle Eastern Studies, on Women Rights in the Middle East. The events keynote speakers included Dr. Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel laureate for Peace (Iran) and H.E. Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa (Bahrain), President of the sixty-first session of the UN General Assembly. Dr. Richard McCormick, Rutgers University President, gave the opening speech. Program descriptions, photos and videos of the event are at http://mideast.rutgers.edu/EVENTS/Events-Past.html. Both of these honorable speakers emphasized the fact that the gender problem in the Middle East goes well beyond restrictions that Islam has imposed. Indeed, Middle Eastern women suffer from problems faced by women elsewhere in the non-Muslim world. Patriarchy has been singled out as the most intractable problem globally and educating the younger generation of Muslim women was said to foster women's liberation.

I have continued my search for US-Iran understanding and dialogue by visiting officials and personalities in the US Congress and State Department as well as the Iranian government officials and the leaders of Iranian-American and Iranian-British communities, appearing on television programs, giving interviews to radio stations, and writing for the AIC Updates and other publications. I particularly want to bring to your attention my article on "From the Discourse of Democracy to the Discourse of Normalization in the Islamic Republic." The English and Persian versions are available on the Council's site and on my personal website at www.amirahmadi.com (http://www.payvand.com/news/07/may/1338.html; http://www.iran-emrooz.net/index.php?/politic/more/12464/). Currently, I am finalizing an article on the Structure of Political Power in the Islamic Republic, which will appear soon in an upcoming issue of the AIC Update.

Finally, I will be participating in three events in the next two weeks. On November 5th, I will speak at a conference organized by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation at the US Senate (Dirksen Building). My speech will be on "Iran and Nuclear Geopolitics in the Middle East." On November 12th, I will speak at the British House of Commons on "Iran's Power Structure and Nuclear Geopolitics." On November 14th, I will participate in the meeting of the Farm Group in London and update the group on the latest developments in US-Iran relations. As in the past, I will carry a single message to these and other meetings in the coming months: the way forward in US-Iran relations, in resolving the nuclear dispute, and in helping bring security and development back to Iraq is engagement not sanctions or military conflict but through meaningful engagement and dialogue. Let us hope that the voice of reason will prevail.

Hooshang Amirahmadi
October 2007
Princeton, New Jersey