Date & Time: Thursday September 13, 2012 – 7:30 PM
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Location: Montgomery Community College (Rockville Campus) – Humanity Building (HU), Conference Room 009 (Get Directions, Campus Map )

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Speaker: Professor Rudi Mathhee

Language: English

Synopsis:

The decline and fall of Safavid Iran is traditionally seen as the natural outcome of the unrelieved political stagnation and moral degeneration which characterized late Safavid Iran. “Persia in Crisis” challenges this view. Rudi Matthee revisits traditional sources and introduces new ones to take a fresh look at Safavid Iran in the century preceding the fall of Isfahan in 1722, which brought down the dynasty and ushered in a long period of turbulence in Iranian history. Inherently vulnerable because of the country’s physical environment, its tribal makeup, and a small economic base, the Safavid state was fatally weakened over the course of the seventeenth century. Matthee views Safavid Iran as a network of precarious alliances subject to perpetual negotiation and the society they ruled as an uneasy balance between conflicting forces. In the later seventeenth century, this delicate balance shifted from cohesion to fragmentation. An increasingly detached, palace-bound shah; weakening links between the capital and the outlying provinces; the regime’s neglect of the military; and its short-sighted monetary policies combined to exacerbate rather than redress existing problems, leaving the country with a ruler too feeble to hold factionalism and corruption in check and a military unable to defend its borders against attack by Russians, Ottomans and Afghans. The scene was set for the Crisis of 1722.

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Date & Time: Thursday August 9, 2012 – 7:30 PM

Location: Montgomery Community College (Rockville Campus) – Humanity Building (HU), Conference Room 009 (Get Directions, Campus Map )

Speaker: Armin Kiany

Language: Farsi

Synopsis:

As the world ever increasingly relies on technology for everything from entertainment to the functioning of sophisticated industrial operations, the battlefield of the future will evolve to take advantage of this growing dependency. Nations and criminal organizations are developing capabilities to wage cyber warfare against unsuspecting and unprepared adversaries. This talk will walk you through a short history and the landscape of cyber warfare, its battlefields, worriers, techniques and motivations deriving it forward.

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Date & Time: Thursday July 12, 2012 – 7:30 PM

Location: Montgomery Community College (Rockville Campus) – Humanity Building (HU), Conference Room 009 (Get Directions, Campus Map )

Speaker: Mr. Hossein Ebneyousef

Language: Farsi

Synopsis:

Energy is the world’s largest business and as its integral part, oil in the modern petroleum industry, with 150 plus-years of history, has been the most political commodity of the era. In such circumstances, as a pioneer in every segment of this colossal business in the Middle East for more than a century, Iran is no stranger to the intricacies of oil politics and unfortunately is most often on the receiving end! In addition, while prior to 1980 such pressures by the West (even on the aftermath of nationalization of the oil industry) were often inflected on Iran covertly, well-advertised and intensified economic sanctions imposed ever since have been largely ineffective on their intended targets, despite the claims of the imposers, and far more damaging to the average Iranian despite the official denials of the authorities on both sides of the conflict. In the absence of any clarity and transparency on issues related to the sanctions it was of paramount importance to study this complex issue in order to: present a balanced and objective assessment of the practice, particularly the characteristically far more disruptive nature of the latest rounds of sanctions announced by the U.S. and its major European allies since December 2011; identify their net impact on Iran, international oil markets and the global economy; and share the findings of the study with the stakeholders–most importantly the public.

At this critical juncture in our history the inspiration to undertake this work came from the following observation by the world-renowned Iranian poet and our beloved Sa’di who said:

“Although intelligent men consider silence civil,
It is better for thee to speak at the proper time.
Two things betoken levity of intellect: to remain mute
When it is proper to speak and to talk when silence is required.”

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