By: Bahman Aghai Diba
The governments of the countries in the present world represent their people to varying degrees. The dictatorial systems are the least transparent regimes and you never know what percentage of the people really support the government. However, in one dictatorial regime, which is in power in Iran, the distinction between the regime and the people is very clear. This distinction is important for many purposes: 1- The people of Iran are not responsible for the policies of the regime (such as wiping out Israel, sending money and weapons for Palestinians, opposing all Western notions, and so on). The people of the other countries must take notice of this distinction and not treat Iranians as people who support the policies of the regime.
2- The other governments must note that the Iranian government does not represent the people of Iran and they should treat the regime as an institution opposing the people
3- The people of Iran, unlike the regime that rules the country through the Mafia of Velayate-Faghigh (government of Mullahs), do not like to live and act like the ancient nomadic Arabs and there is no wish among the people to revive the laws of the ancient nomadic Arabs of 1400 years ago.
4- The people of Iran, unlike the Islamic regime of Iran, do not like to look like terrorists, support or glorify the acts of terrorism at any level. It is wrong to treat the Iranian people as the nation of terrorists. It is ridiculous that the agents of the Islamic regime of Iran, including the Mullahs and their lackeys travel with diplomatic immunity and diplomatic passport everywhere including the USA (The top criminal Mullahs of Iran, like Messabah Yazdi, the ideologue of violence and the spiritual father of the president of Iran, is a frequent visitor to the USA. His son has recently immigrated to Canada), and the ordinary people of Iran who have nothing to do with the policies of the regime are subjected to many difficulties.
It is time that the officials of all countries, including officials at places like the airports and such draw a clear distinction between the people of Iran and the regime of Iran. In the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there are so many differences between the regime governing the country and the people of Iran that you can easily make the distinction. The government of the Islamic regime of Iran represents less than 10 percent of the people. Even this ten percent do not really support the regime. It is just in their interest to pretend to do so for the time being. The people who have been given housing by being placed in the houses illegally confiscated by the so-called Islamic courts, are very well aware that if they miss one pro-government demonstration ordered by the Supreme Leader, they are going to end up in the street the next day. The Basijis (these are street thugs that act as the religious vigilantes who were used in the wartime as “disposable” items. Sometimes they were sent along with domestic animals over the mine fields before the Revolutionary Guards staged their attack) who have entered the university without going through the difficult university entrance examinations (the test called Kounkor, like conquer), know that if they do not take part in attacking the other students in the universities or if they fail to threaten the academicians to stay in the governmental lines, they are going to return to the previous status: working as simple construction worker.
5. The people of Iran and the present government differ in one significant way. The People of Iran are not seriously religious, they do not like the expansion of Islam in Iran, they are in love with progress, they love the USA, and many Iranians inside Iran when they talk about going to a foreign country they mean the USA. The Iranians in other places are only on their way to the USA or something similar. USA is the final destination of many Iranians. The people of Iran do not care about the Muslims in other countries, especially Palestine, Chechen, Saudi Arabia and so on. The people of Iran wish to live in peace with all other nations and try to get to the highest scientific level which is clearly reflected by the extremely high number of the Iranians in the academic and scientific positions in the most advanced countries of the world.
On the other side, the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran is dreaming about the expansion of Islam (as the limited ideology of Shiites), expanding Arabic words, including the Arab nomads’ law in the Iranian laws, especially when it comes to criminal law and women’s rights. For example, in the Islamic criminal codes murder is considered as a personal thing. If the next of kin forgives the murderer, he or she is free to go. If a father kills his son, there are no murder charges. It is a source of embarrassment for the society of Iran, which is more advanced than many other third world countries, that its judicial system is based on the laws of 1400 years ago of the nomad Arabs. The people of Iran certainly do not like this and the government that imposes such laws on the people of Iran is very far from representing them.
The government and the people of Iran differ in the fields of politics, economy, foreign relations, nuclear energy, terrorism, and so on. The Iranian people have a long history and are proud of that. The government of Iran acts as if Iran was born after the invasion of the Arabs against Iran. The Iranian people are proud that they have had literary figures like Saadi, Hafez , Ferdowsi and Forooghe Faraokhzad in the past, and the Iranian regime acts as if they do not exist when these figures speak about love, sex and humanity.
The Iranian people are respectful of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (and the International Conventions on the Civil, Political, Economic and Social Rights), and the government of Iran is trying to replace them with what it calls Islamic human rights which a collection of outdated rules of the nomadic Arabs of 1400 years ago. The people of Iran do not consider women as the property of men, and government of Iran, which is not ready to accept women as human beings (and for the same reason refrains from adhering to the United Nations Convention on Elimination of All kinds of Discriminations Against Women), considers women as inferior persons and something like slaves.
The people of Iran are happy to celebrate their historical occasions such as Nowruz, Sizdahbedar, Charshanbesoori, Sadeh, Mehreghan and others, but the government of Iran undermines those celebrations by not allowing them under the guise of keeping order. The people of Iran, unlike the government of Iran, do not care really when a couple of ancient Arab tribesmen killed each other to get political power under the name of Islam 1400 years ago. The heroes of the Iranian people are Rostam and Jamshid, Feraydoun, Bahman, Gordafarid, Tahmineh and so on and the government of Iran is after several Arab figures that Iranians do not know almost anything about.
The people of Iran, unlike the government are not afraid of men and women shaking hands and men looking at women who are not wearing Islamic head scarf. The people of Iran see nothing wrong with men and women gathering in parties, reciting poems, dancing, and mingling, but the government of Iran thinks this is criminal act. The people of Iran think that they should be able to have a couple of beers and live decently, but the government of Iran thinks this is criminal behavior that calls for lashing.
The people of Iran oppose the occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran and look forward to the day the American Embassy is re-opened in Iran, but the government of Iran celebrates the date of occupation and has appointed the criminals who did this act as Iranian ambassadors in the foreign countries.
The Iranian people, unlike the regime, do not consider the 12th of February (22nd of Bahman) as the day of Revolution; the people think of this date as the day that the Mullahs deceived the Iranian people. This is the National Deception Date and it will remain as an embarrassing point in Iran’s history, comparable to the date that Rostame Faraokhzad, the commander of the Iranian forces, lost the war to a group of nomadic Arabs that were determined to get their hands on the wealth and civilization of Iran. Unfortunately these Arabs succeeded to capture and redistribute Iranian culture and civilization as their own. However they never succeeded to eradicate the identity of Iranians (as they did in places like Egypt). The people of Iran dream of a world in peace and progress, but the regime of Iran dreams of domination of its retarded ideology over the world. The people of Iran have the greatest level of tolerance towards all other religious minorities and racial groups, but the narrow-minded regime of Iran is not able to tolerate even the offspring of its own ideology. The people of Iran, unlike the government of Mullahs, have no problem with women taking part in all fields of sports and watch sporting events as they like. The people of Iran, unlike the regime of Mullahs, do not agree with the hallucinations of Ahmadinejad, who is imposed on the people of Iran as the president through sham elections and the Mafia of the ruling Mullahs.
The people of Iran, unlike the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, do not agree with the activities of the revolutionary and paramilitary forces of Iran that act like an Army of Occupation in Iran. The people of Iran, unlike the government, are proud that in Iran’s history there were women who reached the level of the Head of the State, long before many other nations and at a time when the ancient nomadic Arabs buried their new-born girls alive (the Prophet of the ancient Arabs asked them to stop this practice. This is mentioned as a glory point for the human rights in the history of Islam.)
Those who do not differentiate between the people of Iran and the Islamic regime of Iran (whether they be politicians, journalists, or ordinary people) run the risk of reaching contradictory and unreasonable results and analyses about the situation of Iran.
