The 20-something State Department dude who talked Twitter into delaying a service upgrade so tech-savvy Iranians could keep tweeting is a handsome hipster who hobnobs around as a judge at the Tribeca Film Fest and engages in debate with Hezbollah members.
Jared Cohen — who, at 27, is the youngest member of the department’s policy-planning staff — has traveled throughout the Middle East and has written several books on the region.
In one book, he writes of bumping into Hezbollah members at a McDonald’s in Lebanon.
When he asked them what they would do if they met a Jewish person, one responded, “We would cut his head off.”
After spending time talking to them, he told them he was Jewish.
“They didn’t respond with anger,” he writes. “They didn’t threaten me.”