The Brookings Institution Saban Center for Middle
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION SABAN CENTER FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY ELECTIONS IN IRAN Washington, D.C. Monday, November 20, 2006 MODERATOR: KENNETH M. POLLACK Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy; Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies 2 The Brookings Institution SPEAKERS: MOHAMMED HADI SEMATI Assistant Professor, Tehran University; Visiting Fellow, The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings DANIEL BRUMBERG Associate Professor, Georgetown University Special Advisor, U.S. Institute of Peace Anderson Court Reporting 706 Duke Street, Suite 100 Alexandria, Virginia Tel. (703) 519-7180 Fax (703) 519-7190 3 P R O C E E D I N G S MR. POLLACK: Good afternoon and welcome to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. The Chinese expression, “doomed to live in interesting times,” seems to be kind of a leitmotif for those of us who work on Iranian affairs. I have been working on Iran for almost two decades, and I can’t seem to recall a time that wasn’t incredibly interesting in Iranian history during the period of time. Of course, now is no exception. As our invitation noted, within a month, Iranians will go to the polls once again, this time to vote for the Assembly of Experts. As has been the case in every election over the last eight or ten years, there is considerable controversy over who is being allowed to run, who the different leading candidates are shaping up to be, and what it all means for Iran’s future. So we asked, as always, two of the leading lights in town to come to the Saban Center and to help us to try to make sense of all of this, to help us understand the elections and what they say about the internal politics in Iran which are, as usual, in a state of upheaval.
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