July 15 – Did Iran Pull Off a Clever Bluff?; Life for an American Teenager in Tehran; The Challenge to North Carolina’s Naked Voter Suppression Laws

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an assessment of whether the just-signed P5+1 deal with Iran was a clever bluff on the part of Iran to negotiated away a nuclear program they never had and never intended to have. William Beeman, a Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and author of “The ‘Great Satan’ vs the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other” joins us to discuss his article at New America Media “Iran Won the Vienna Accords by Agreeing to Stop What it Never Was Doing” and what he saw on a recent trip to Iran of a country that is self-reliant with a GDP growth, according to the IMF, of 3% last year, with less poverty that the United States.

Part 2

Then we get a flavor of life inside of Iran from the perspective of an American teenager who was transplanted from Brooklyn to Tehran and had to adapt and conform to life in an oppressive society controlled by religious police. Shaghayegh Farsijani, a former reporter and anchor joins us to discuss her new book “The Burden of My Red Lips in Tehran” and how Iranians in the diaspora feel about the possible opening up of Iran to the outside world.

Part 3

Then we speak with Dr. Charles van der Horst, a retired professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina’s Center for Infectious Diseases. He was arrested outside of the North Carolina State House while peacefully protesting on “Moral Monday” and we discuss the massive demonstration last Monday in Winston-Salem against the North Carolina Legislature’s naked voter suppression and blatantly discriminatory laws that are being challenged by the Justice Department, the NAACP and the League of Women Voters in a federal trial underway in Winston-Salem.