Jim Blight and janet Lang of the Watson Institute recently returned from an eleven-day visit to Tehran, during which they worked with their Iranian partners on a new project, which has the working title: U.S.-Iran Relations During the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988. Blight and Lang will summarize their findings from this, their first trip to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The project is conceived as a series of exercises using the method of critical oral history (COH), which involves the simultaneous interaction, in conference settings, of present and former officials, declassified documents, and top scholars. COH has been pioneered by Blight and Lang in previous Watson Institute projects on the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam war and the collapse of U.S.-Soviet detente.
No event since the 1979 revolution itself is as powerful a force in the minds of Iranians who lived through that experience. No other episode so completely knits together notions of national pride and loss, a sense of collective injury at the hands of the international community - especially the U.S. - and feelings of personal trauma. These are not just historical memories. They represent powerful emotions that persist today, that permeate the society, and that influence Iran's outlook on the world, including its policy toward the United States. We ignore these dynamics at our peril.
This project is being undertaken with colleagues at George Washington University’s National Security Archive, and MIT’s Center for International Security.
Video from this event: