Zogby in Iowa: Shaping National Discourse on US-Mideast Policy

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based political advocacy organization, will tour Iowa next week, speaking in Iowa City, Des Moines, Marion and at the Center for Multi-Cultural Education in Cedar Falls to discuss the domestic and international showdown over Iran’s nuclear program and its effect on future U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status makes the state the ideal location to frame the national discourse on future U.S.-Middle East relations and U.S. policy toward Iran, issues which will most likely be among the most pressing foreign policy concerns in the upcoming presidential election.  Zogby is author of Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, And Why it Matters, which draws on three decades of extensive polling conducted on Arab public opinion and highlights the vast deficit between what is at stake in the region and the political culture here in the U.S. which does not serve our national interests.

“I have been coming to Iowa for over two and a half decades now because it is one of the most important platforms to shape national discourse on vital political issues,” said Zogby. “Iowans have a keen sense of how important it is for U.S. interests to bring Middle East issues to the center of the national electoral debate. They are informed and they take their politics seriously.”

In a recent column published in The Huffington Post, Zogby stated the following about the political dynamic playing out between the U.S., Israel, and Iran over the Iranian nuclear program:

“While Israel projects itself as facing an ‘existential’ challenge from Iran, this is hyperbolic nonsense. An Iranian attack on Israel would amount to Iran signing its own death warrant.”

“Make no mistake, the regime in Tehran is a meddlesome menace and their aspirations for regional hegemony do pose a threat, not to Israel (which serves more Iran's foil, then its target, and vice versa), but to the Arab Gulf States—whose concerns are rarely, if ever, considered in U.S. political discourse.”