Thirty-four years ago the Iran hostage crisis forever transformed our view of that nation. For many of us, our memories of and attitude towards Iran and the Middle East, were frozen in place at that moment in time. Until recently very little has happened to change those views. In fact, the hard line views of the former Iranian President Ahmadinejad, only further reinforced them.Today as change seems to be in the air, as a new regime takes over in Iran, as new overtures are made, Iran is still, as Winston Churchill once described the former Soviet Union, " a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
Few understand this dynamic better than Hooman Majd. Born in Iran, educated in the US, he was an American music executive before becoming a journalist. In 2008 he was the formal translator at the UN, for a speech given by former Iranian president Ahmadinejad.
Hooman Majd has now written about taking his family for a year of living differently, in The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran
My conversation with Hooman Majd:
