CASMII Establishes High-Caliber Academic Advisory Board on the Iran Conflict

CASMII (Germany) Press Release

20 August 2008

The Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) is pleased to announce the establishment of a high-caliber Academic Advisory Board. Against the background of the immense discrepancy between the current Iran policy tending to escalation on the one hand and the unexhausted peacekeeping measures for conflict resolution on the other, the advisory board feels compelled to further public and political discussion for the latter.

Members of the Academic Advisory Board are the political scientist Dr. Behrooz Abdolvand (Free University of Berlin), the Afghanistan expert Dr. Matin Baraki (Marburg University), Reiner Braun (managing director of the German section of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, IALANA), the political scientist and founder of the advisory board Ali Fathollah-Nejad,, the Iraq expert Joachim Guilliard, the political scientist and economist Professor Mohssen Massarrat, the development researcher Professor Ahad Rahmanzadeh (University of Bonn), the peace and conflict researcher Professor Werner Ruf, the international law expert Dr. Yvonne Schmidt (University of Graz), former Ambassador Dr. Arne Seifert (the spokesman of Diplomats for Peace with the Islamic World), the strategy expert Professor Albert Stahel (director of the Institut für Strategische Studien, Zurich) and not least Professor Udo Steinbach, long-time director of the German Institute for Middle East Studies (also known as the German Orient Institute).

CASMII is a politically and financially independent international network with the purpose of opposing sanctions, foreign state interference and military intervention in Iran.

With its expertise the Academic Advisory Board would like to contribute towards replacing an emotionalized debate by a rationally-driven one, and moreover, a policy based on threats by a one that respects prescriptions of international law. In order to be able to prevent a new catastrophic war, the immediate and earnest realization of existing conflict-reducing policy approaches is necessary, which would contribute to guarantee international stability and peace.

More about the Academic Advisory Board can be found at http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/70.

Information on the Iran conflict can be found on CASMII’s website at www.campaigniran.org.

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