Pop culture can be bigger bridge between U.S., Iran

I just learned through Facebook that my 21-year-old cousin is now a fan of Woody Allen. Normally, I probably wouldn’t give this much thought. However my cousin is a young Iranian woman living in Tehran, and her cultural taste gave me an idea how the United States might confront my former homeland.

Much of the news about Iranians since the 1979 Islamic Revolution is that Iranians live a very repressive lifestyle. From what I gather from my relatives who experienced the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, that indeed was the case. A country used to many of the same liberties and economic advantages of Western nations pre-revolution, was suddenly thrust into a harsh mandate of strict fundamentalist Islamic codes.

Some 30 years later, Iran’s government is still ruled by conservative mullahs. But unlike the early years following the revolution, the people of today’s Iran amply indulge in Western pop culture. Eighty percent of Iran’s population is under the age of 30. Combined with interconnective technology such as the Internet, that statistic has led to Iranians waging their own cultural revolution.

It occurred to me that the most effective method of effecting regime change in Iran probably isn’t via military strike but through a more concerted and coordinated “soft war.”

This soft-war campaign would simply be a greater infiltration of the Western culture that many Iranians already fervently consume. Getting American products and culture to the Iranian people shouldn’t just be happenstance facilitated via market forces. It should be done through a decisive grass-roots campaign.

The approach should be much like how studios market their products to a target demographic. In this case, America would be marketing itself as a brand via pop culture to the people of Iran. Branding is a highly effective outreach method in corporate America, so why not extend that notion toward foreign policy?

Iranians have enthusiastically embraced technology and they love gadgets. The Tehran cellphone market has almost three times the average demand of Western cities such as Oslo, Norway, and Barcelona, Spain. Iranians’ zeal for the latest iPhone or BlackBerry reflects the access such technology affords them to pop culture.

While the Iranian government disseminates images of government-staged protests in which hard-liners chant “Death to America,” the extensive market for American pop culture in Iran bellies the propaganda. When the actor Sean Penn visited Iran in 2005, he wrote he was surprised to find how many people there complimented him on his films.

Cut to present day and we see even more cultural progress has been made. From what I have learned via Facebook from my relatives in Iran, bootleg DVDs of Penn’s latest movie, “Milk,” are a hot commodity, the new U2 album is being downloaded en mass, and an Allen movie viewing club in Tehran has apparently gained a new member.

Even President Obama’s recent overture to Iran yielded polar reactions. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave Obama’s Iranian New Year’s message two big thumbs down. But among the Iranian people, the video went viral and significantly augmented Obama’s fan base.

Recently, a delegation from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences visited Iran to further the relationship between the two countries’ film communities. Among the delegates was actress Annette Bening, who, in an interview stated, “That was a big step, and the people who were there were all cinephiles and they were thrilled.”

Allowing such a cultural exchange proves that the Iranian regime can’t stifle the will of the people forever, and cultural influence may be the best way to yield social and even political changes.

In the meantime, another cousin in Tehran just let me know through Facebook how much he’s loving this season of “Gossip Girl.”

• Farsh Askari, an Iranian-American, is a staff associate at the Harvard Business School.