Fewer than a thousand Americans visit Iran each year. An informational black hole is thus created into which those who seek to harm the people and institutions of that country and diminish its resources pour disinformation and propaganda. Western politicians and media generate an image of a country as bleak and unfriendly as North Korea. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I traveled there in May as documentarian with a group of 14 “citizen diplomats,” whose purpose was to demonstrate the friendship of ordinary Americans, and to experience Iran. Beyond Tehran, we visited Yazd, Shiraz, Esfahan, and Natanz. Religion is a subject at a middle school we visited, much as it has always been in parochial schools in this country — another, dedicated to training mullahs is like seminaries in the West. The Council on Foreign Affairs dispels the myth that terrorism is taught in these places.
While 70% of Iran’s population is under 30, the traumatic events that helped shape modern Iran – the 1953 British-American plot to control Iranian oil by overthrowing democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh and establish Shah Pahlavi in power, the 1979 Islamic revolution, embassy hostage-taking, and eight-year, American-supported Iraqi invasion of Iran — are seared into the memory of these people.
President Ahmadinejad’s 2006 International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, giving a forum to both Jews hostile to Zionism and outright Holocaust deniers, was indefensible — yet is part of this fabric of defense against the West. His own two speeches about Israel and the Holocaust have been deliberately misinterpreted in the western press.
With respect to Israel, his endorsement of Ayatollah Khomenini’s phrase “wiped off the map” referred not to Jews or to the State of Israel but to the Israeli government, specifically “this regime occupying Jerusalem.”
Three US carrier groups, some 60 ships with more destructive power than all expended in World War II, ride belligerently in Iranian waters. Americans are drummed toward war by lies, as they were for Iraq. “Regime change” in other countries, which the neo-cons proposed in “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” — is both illegal under international law and ill advised national policy.
Human rights is a very thorny issue, as is the supreme rule of the ayatollahs. At the former, the US has also been failing. “Democracy” is defined locally. At least the mullahs who select the ayatollahs are popularly elected.
While Shah Pahlavi’s drained the nation’s wealth and Iraq’s invasion sapped its strength, we experienced a prosperous country rapidly rebuilding infrastructure and self-sufficiency. History demonstrates such factors give people a stake in peace.
As for nuclear ambitions, what we heard repeatedly is that Iran has the right to peacefully develop nuclear power for energy and that, in order to block Iran’s technical progress, the US and Israel characterize theirs as a drive for nuclear weapons. A sidebar illustration is that Iranian oil continues to be refined in Haifa. Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, with whom I spoke in Israel, discounts the notion Iran seeks nuclear weapons.
Passing quite near the Natanz nuclear site, we had no way of judging Iran’s intent. It is deeply troubling that individuals in Washington make inflammatory accusations regarding a country about which they’ve learned far less.
Sharia law, derived from the Koran, proscribes alcohol, drugs, pork, and gambling, and covering of women is enforced, but religious observance springs from people, not the state. This is a deeply spiritual people and in the great mosques, as in our cathedrals, faith encompasses the visitor.
Iran is a place of deep cultural roots and history. Persepolis, Esfahan’s splendid mosques, and the ancient bridges of Shiraz, are world treasures, to be preserved. These and the splendid people we met must be spared the savage warfare witnessed in Iraq.
One member of our touring group, Leslie Angeline, responded to Senator Lieberman’s call for attacking Iran with a hunger strike. To date, her Gandhian effort to meet with him to describe a country he knows so little about has been rebuffed.
The Bush administration’s ideological perception, we “face no greater challenge from a single country than Iran” (2006 National Security Strategy of the United States) bears one element of truth. In March 1999, President Clinton apologized to Guatemala for the US role in repression there. Apology to Iran and negotiations without preconditions are the ways to meet the challenge. This would be negotiating from true strength.