November 14-2014
In a surprising development, a delegation of Iranian officials has received US visas to attend a business forum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this week.
The United States has loudly opposed business groups abroad promoting trade with Iran, so the fact that it would issue visas for Iranian officials to join such a conference was startling.
Some thought the State Department had been confused and thought the meeting was cultural, since four of the visiting Iranians are cultural officials, and since this week’s visit was arranged by an Iranian-American from Pittsburgh who previously worked with the State Department on a visit to Iran by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
The United States actively promotes culture exchanges with Iran while actively discouraging business links.
The visit first came to light in a report by the Washington Free Beacon published Tuesday.
Greg Sullivan, the State Department’s senior adviser for strategic communications on Iran, also attended the Pittsburgh gathering, which was clearly identified as a business meeting. It was titled the OASIS 7th Annual Business Conference.
The Free Beacon said Sullivan gave a brief speech on cultural diplomacy before turning the stage over to Ali Moradkhani, Iran’s deputy minister of culture and Islamic guidance.
The other Iranians in attendance were one of Iran’s former nuclear negotiators, Hossein Mousavian, who until recently was a scholar at Princeton University, Ministry of Culture official Farzin Pirouzpey, director of the Fajr Music Festival Ali Torabi, and Mehdi Faridzadeh of the International Society for Iranian Culture.
However, in an interview with the reformist khabar-online.com, Mousavian denied he attended the conference. He said he was invited but could not attend because of a previous speaking engagement in Washington, DC.
Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Free Beacon the Pittsburgh visit appeared to be an attempt by Mousavian “to mobilize the US business community as a pressure group calling for removal of the sanctions regime.”
The State Department said it had no role in organizing the trip other than approving the delegation’s visas and sending Sullivan to speak.
It told the Free Beacon the visit was designed to promote cultural diplomacy and to its knowledge did not involve business discussions—despite its name.
“We are not aware of, and would certainly not approve of, any discussions or meetings outside of the discussions about cultural collaborations,” a State Department official said.
In Tehran, hardliners denounced the Rohani Administration for attending the conference and for not publicizing its decision to attend. The hardliners clearly thought there was something nefarious and that the Rohani Administration was doing something behind the public’s back.
After word of the Iranian presence was publicized by the Free Beacon, the Culture Ministry issued a statement saying its officials had no meetings, either official or otherwise, with any American officials, indicating its main concern was to defend itself from allegations it was negotiating clandestinely with the United States.
The Mehr news agency asked, “Is this trip a cultural cover-up for a political move? And a more important question is why was there no news about the trip, while, for the American side, providing information about the trip was a winning card that was used to challenge our country?”
Actually, the US government did not publicize the visit. The story was carried by a very conservative news website that disparages the Obama Administration.
The title of the conference was “Growing Business Between the US and the Middle East,” and it was officially billed as “a high-level gathering of Middle East Ministries, American and Middle East decision makers from leading global companies focused on growing business opportunities between the United States and the countries of the Middle East.”
According to the State Department, the main purpose for the visit was to arrange a musical exchange between Iran and Pittsburgh.
“Our understanding is that Mr. Moradkhani’s visit is for the purpose of discussing a possible collaboration between the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Tehran Symphony Orchestra,” a State Department official told the Free Beacon.
The organizer of the business conference, Iranian-American Simin Curtis, was also involved in the earlier Pittsburgh orchestra plans to visit Iran.
She said this week’s Iranian delegation did not meet with the Pittsburgh symphony, and that plans for the orchestra to go to Iran were put on hold last March. The Iran Times reported extensively on efforts to arrange that visit and the inability to raise enough funds in time.
“This [trip] was not about the symphony,” said Curtis, who serves as president of the American Middle East Institute in Pittsburgh. “[State Department officials] were aware that that [orchestra] trip has been delayed. … Initially we worked with the State Department on the idea, but it’s been postponed.”
It wasn’t clear why four cultural officials were attending a business conference.
Curtis said she coordinated the Iranian delegation’s visit with the State Department. She said the trip was intended to focus on cultural diplomacy in general, adding that she invited Sullivan to speak on the issue at the conference.
According to the Curtis, the interactions between the Iranian delegation and the business community were minimal. “The deputy minister was sitting at a table watching the proceedings, he was not interacting with the businesses actually—which would have been nice—but he was just watching the proceedings,” said Curtis. “We had no special meetings set up.”
Alfoneh said he was puzzled by the State Department’s decision to issue visas to the delegation for such a trip in the first place. He said the US government “sends the wrong signal by allowing the delegation from Tehran to participate at a public conference.”
Furthermore, Alfoneh said, “Mr. Ali Moradkhani, Mr. Mehdi Faridzadeh, Mr. Farzin Pirouz-pey, and Mr. Ali Torabi, have all been and still are involved in enforcement of censorship of literature, cinema and music in Iran. Does State Department approve of censorship? If not, why issue visas to the enforcers of censorship?”