Soref Symposium: Assessing the Winds of Change

His remarks to the Washington Institute's 20th-anniversary Soref Symposium, alongside speakers from Kuwait, Egypt and Lebanon. He argues that Khatami's reformists failed to advance democracy and human rights, but that Iranian society has changed through literacy, urbanisation, global communication, women's work and a growing urban middle class, while the government has regressed. He asks outside powers to refuse to recognise questionable elections and to back human rights in Iran.

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