One topic which often brings liberals and conservatives together in the U.S. is Iran. There is a general consensus that the Revolution was the embodiment of backwardness and barbarism.

Also, as a result of the involvement of American foundations that have backing from the U.S. State Department in Iranian internal politics, cultural exchange and dialogue have become more and more problematic.

I was born in the U.S. Why should anyone who has an unfavorable view of the American government renounce his or her citizenship? Why don't its supporters relinquish their citizenship first?

The fact that the American government has formally set aside an enormous yearly budget of nearly $75 million to increase cultural exchanges in order to bring about what it calls "regime change" has muddied the waters and complicated American Studies in Iran more than anything else.

In my opinion, the continued popularity of these gross distortions of Iran in the U.S. seems to reveal more about certain aspects of America than about Iran. It seems that the popularity of these memoirs is largely due to the fact that, while claiming to do the opposite, they regularly reinforce the dominant representations of Iran in America by constructing an exotic, backward, and barbaric Iran principally based on U.S. archives.

By dehumanizing others, among many other things, these people are also aiding the neocons and other forces of darkness to justify more war, more suffering, and more destruction.

The students often like to talk about movies that they feel are Orientalist like 300 or Babel. They talk a lot about the possibility of U.S. aggression against Iran and the Iranian hostages being held by the U.S. in Iraq.