Iranian of the Day

courier-journal.com: Securing peace in the Middle East depends on re-establishing and improving relations between Israel and Iran, as well as even-handed American engagement with Tehran.

That is the view of Trita Parsi, co-founder and president of the National Iranian American Council and author of a controversial 2007 award-winning book, “Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.”

For his insights in that book, Parsi has been awarded the 2010 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

Parsi, 35, will receive $200,000 for his award, one of five given in the name of the late H. Charles Grawemeyer, an industrialist and philanthropist who was a graduate of U of L’s Speed Scientific School. The other awards are in education, music composition, religion and psychology.

“I was at a loss for words because I actually did not expect it at all,” Parsi said of his reaction to being told he had won the U of L prize. He was selected from among 54 nominees worldwide.

Rodger Payne, a U of L political science professor who administers the awards, said the judges thought the potential for conflict in the Middle East was one of the largest threats to world order and that Parsi’s book “addressed this problem very effectively.”

Parsi said “the thesis of the book is that what you are seeing in the Middle East right now is not an ideological battle between democracy and theocracy. You’re seeing a classic power struggle between some of the most powerful states in the region.”

Iran and Israel are using the rest of the Middle East as a stage for that competition, he said.

“When you do have a strategic competition, and a strategic rivalry, there actually is room for compromises, there is room for accommodation and there is a possibility of a win-win situation,” Parsi said. “But if you have an ideological battle, then you are left with a position in which there is only the victory of one side over the other and conflict essentially becomes inevitable.” >>>