Lawdan Bazargan

As the United States intensifies its war against Iran, Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service (SFS) organized an “Iran Lecture Series” for students and faculty. The impetus behind this series is laudable — the war’s impact has spread far beyond the battlefield, disrupting global energy markets, driving up fuel and transportation costs and imposing growing human and economic costs worldwide — but the SFS’ current lineup lacks informed critics of the Islamic Republic.

The problem facing Iran’s oil industry is not just sanctions or a shortage of investment. It is a question of governance: who makes decisions, who signs contracts, who receives the money and, ultimately, who is accountable? Iran’s oil industry is more than a collection of wells, pipelines and refineries. What turns those assets into an industry is an integrated chain of reservoir expertise, production planning, engineering, safety, financing, sales and accountability.

Four years have passed since Zhina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had travelled to Tehran to visit family, died after being detained by the morality police. She could never have imagined how her name would appear on walls, streets and university campuses, or on the lips of millions of Iranians, or how three simple words, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” would become one of the most enduring slogans in Iran’s modern history. The story of 2022 is not only the story of a slogan.