This weekend I attended and spoke at The Iran Democratic Transition Conference in George Washington University. The conference was organized by The Institute of World Politics and The Confederation of Iranian Students.
I attended as an independent activist and with an open mind; because I believe that if we want to promote democracy we have to start practicing it today! Although this was a very controversial conference, and I had received numerous calls from various political activists urging me not to attend, I decided to attend and judge for myself.
While this conference had the potential of accomplishing something very useful and positive, unfortunately it fell very short of that goal. Overall the goal of the conference seemed to be the self promotion of “The Confederation of Iranian Students” as well as an undertone of reformist propaganda.