With the first United Nations General Assembly Meeting in New York City just three days away, the Cornell International Affairs Affairs Review held a panel discussion yesterday focusing on the political issues surrounding this upcoming meeting, especially the controversy surrounding Iran’s recent presidential elections.

CIAR’s first panel of the seminar, “Tehran Divided: Iran’s Presidential Election and Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy,” sought to address issues such as the controversial 2009 presidential elections in Iran, the history and future of Iran as a political power and the implications of these issues on the General Assembly meeting, where both President Barack Obama and President Mohamoud Ahmadinejad of Iran will be present.

The discussion was led by some of Cornell’s leading scholars in Iranian and Middle Eastern politics, including Prof. Ziad Fahmy, near eastern studies; Prof. Iago Gocheleishvili, near eastern studies; and Prof. David Patel, near eastern studies.Consider the following: Prof. Ziad Fahmy (right), near eastern studies, speaks about Iran’s past elections at the panel discussion yesterday in Warren Hall.

“The issues our panelists will delve into today are tangible and they are real,” said Mitchell Alva ’10, president of the CIAR and a member of The Sun’s editorial writing board. “Current events on the ground in Iran raise important questions about the future of free speech, freedom of assembly, democracy and, quite simply, human rights.”

The panelists offered a wide perspective on current events in Iran, each of them bringing a variety of experiences, research endeavors and opinions to the table.

Gocheleishvili recently worked with the Central Asia and Caspian Basin Project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education, as an expert on the Iranian world. He also conducted field research in 1997 following the election of former President Mohammad Khatami, which saw the beginning of the reformist movement in Iran.

Each panelist gave a 15-minute presentation, after which the professors answered questions where the audience were allowed to be critical of the issues presented as well as the panelists’ perspective.

Gocheleishvili and Fahmy focused their presentations on the history of Iran’s past elections, the role of new forms of media such as Twitter and Facebook in these political events and what effect Iran’s history will have on its future.

“We don’t need to invade Iran in order to make them change. They will change from within, we just need to give them time,” Gocheleishvili said, giving his opinion on how the U.S. should handle the issue of nuclear weapons in Iran.

To add to the debate, Patel commented on whether Obama should attempt to push the nuclear weapons issue with Ahmadinejad at the upcoming U.N. meeting.

“The center of gravity in the Middle East has shifted in the last decade,” Patel said. “The U.S. doesn’t have the capabilities to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons program, and the U.S. has to learn to live with that.”

Although the panelists provided the estimated 100 students attendees with a variety of perspectives, Alva said that the CIAR had difficulties finding professors willing to speak about Iran.

According to Alva, many of the professors that the CIAR board of advisors approached to speak at yesterday’s event declined, saying they were not knowledgeable enough on the topic to provide an adequate perspective.

The panelists who did attend were the first to admit that, although they all had various levels of knowledge and experience revolving around Iranian politics, there were limits to this knowledge that prevented them from answering certain questions.

One student who asked a question regarding religious homicides in Iran was met with Fahmy’s response: “Well, I’ll give it a shot, but my perspective is from an outsider looking in.” Fahmy afterwards passed the question to Gocheleishvili to have him contribute his input.

Despite the difficulties with finding panelists, Alva said he was pleased with the number of students who showed up, considering the event was scheduled on a Monday night.

“[The students’] questions were insightful and were a reflection of genuine interest in the event,” Gocheleishvili said. “It was obvious the students came because they had read something about Iran and wanted to learn more.”

The CIAR, which was founded in the spring of 2007, has been organizing panel discussions in an effort to keep Cornell students in touch with the world around them, according Executive Vice President Cecilia De Lenquesaing ’11.

“Over the summer these really important demonstrations occurred in Iran, and it’s important to bring a critical lens to campus to analyze this,” Alva said, commenting on the significance of yesterday’s panel discussion.

Past panel discussions have focused on topics such as the U.S. financial crisis, the war in Georgia, fighting in the Gaza Strip and the 2008 Iran elections, which was led by an all-student panel.

“[The CIAR] is doing really good things, and they need to keep doing it,” Gocheleishvili said.