I am unashamed to admit that the title of this piece is misleading.
There are no [known] plans for the White House to host an upcoming conference on Iran.
But there should be.
And since I’ve likely sparked your curiosity by now, while we are in the depths of your other mind, why not take advantage and dwell and dream. As the famous American poet Jackson Browne once said, “Oh won’t you stay? Just a little bit longer?”
Imagine you are with me, in DC. Say, at the Reagan Center. The conference is a 3-day event (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), and we’ve just passed through security (of course!), and entered the convention center grand auditorium.
On stage a bespectacled balding man in his early sixties, is pointing to a large screen showing bar charts and graphs. He is decrying the folly of Iran’s lack of gasoline production capacity, and is predicting a grim end of year deficit to Iran’s fast depleting annual budget. He wraps up his presentation by outlining specific line items in Iran’s national budget that could be easily diverted, as well as a slow paced gas price increase, to eliminate the need for the government’s gasoline subsidy, while increasing domestic gasoline production.
Wow! What a concept!
After the Q and A, a smattering of applause is heard and the buzz of audience conversation builds, as the old gathers up his papers shuffles off-stage, as the next presenter shuffles on-stage. Some boos are heard, since this is a representative of the Iranian government who has chosen to report on the increase in wheat output and the great progress Iran has made in becoming more self sufficient in agriculture.
In an adjacent great hall, all around the convention floor there are tables and booths, with flyers, books, tapes, all about Iran. Heated discussions by more gray haired men arguing with dark haired younger men, are happening everywhere. Occasionally a shove leads to a slap and a fight is stopped just as it is about to break out, and someone, probably an elder, is hauled away to the food court to calm down. After a chaie or two, and a pastry, he eventually returns and apologies are traded.
And so it continues, speech after speech, by academics, representatives of both the Iranian government and the US, by clerics and sinners, by gentry and royalty, by gay and those less happy, for three solid blessedly free, idea and debate-filled days.
Obama opened AND closed the event.
The papers and presentations had to meet just 3 requirements:
– Clearly and freely define ANY issue or problem facing Iran today
– Provide a reasonable solution
– Do it in less than 10 minutes with 10 minutes left over for Q&A. More discussion taken offline to the great hall.
Some of the Presentations included:
“Why Supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is not in the long term interests of Iran”
“Why go nuclear, when we have all this Gas?”
“Iran has Gays, just like the ones in America”
“Why I think I should be King”
“The problems and pitfalls of insisting on using the ghoran to interpret everything in the modern era”
“Iran has more agricultural land than all of France combined, yet has to import food?”
“Iran exports oil, but imports gasoline?”
“Why Iran needs a free press”
“Why the hejab does not actually protect women from men”
At the end of the conference, all the papers that were presented, would be collected and published, made available as a massive PDF download, online, for anyone who cared to download, read, and god willing, implement any one of them.
Nice dream, huh!
