Author: Sandro Furlan – 10/05/2019
Introduction
This paper starts with an important premise: I do consider myself a friend of Iran. I realize such feeling for this beautiful Country in relatively recent times. About 14 years ago, I had the privilege to visit some academic institutions in Tehran and, immediately, I felt accepted so pleasantly. In my life, I guess, I visited more than one hundred countries, and I do not hesitate to say that I have never experienced a so kind and warm environment as in Iran.
It is important to emphasize these feeling, as my words will be those of a friend that speaks to a special and important friend.
Celebrating a birthday of a friend usually can be the occasion of a “life review”. A 40 years old friend is an adult that has lived a lot but has still a lot of energy to imagine to progress to consolidate his life; even more, looking back, to learn from mistakes (“experience”, by the way, is the term we label our mistakes), trying to value the achievements and invest more energy in the future goals.
The celebration can follow two ways. One is the traditional one: all are happy to emphasize all the good, all the nice things happened during such period, telling how great our friend has always been. This is also the most common way we adopt everywhere, most of the time. It is nice, of course, and in a way has to be so.
The second one is rare, more complex, more difficult to express, sometimes, even, we do risk to be misunderstood but, I do believe, is more precious and more valuable. It consists in a rational analysis of the past, what happened, why it happened, which were the results we expected and which have been achieved.
This second approach can be adequate if between the friends there are common values at the core of the dialogue: values inspired by respect for each other. This is true for human relations, and this is true in political context, that, in fact, looks at the human relations inside and outside a country.
The paper would like to propose a vision of the Iranian Islamic Revolution from a Western point of view.
The peculiarity of this analysis is that it does not fit the mainstream thinking that, most of the time, we can read or listen from international media. As anticipated in the introduction, it will neither be an indulgent formal celebration. All the efforts will be devoted to a rational scrutiny adopting a scientific approach, even if we are in the field of the “social sciences” and not in a “pure sciences” investigation.
The conclusions will focus on the Education and Research as the drivers to develop achieving a stronger position. History showed that the economy needs technological developments achieved throughout massive investments in education at all levels. Iran, along its recent history, has had remarkable performances in this area. All experts can confirm that Iranian students, scholars, professors and researchers are among the best in the world in most study sectors. “This is the best natural resource” of the country and nobody can put it under embargo!,… even Mr. Trump can’t. By the way, Western Universities benefit from long time of the best talents from Iran.
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Dr. Sandro Furlan –
Professor, Geopolitics of Energy
Senior Researcher Vision&Global Trends. International Institute for Global Analyses Rome, Italy
Speech at the “First International Conference on Political Issues of Iran: A portrayal of Four Decades”, Allameh Tabataba’ i University (ATU), Tehran, 28/04/2019