Letters

June 2006
June 27

FAR too much credit

On Meir Javedanfar's "Genuinely popular":

I think that Political Analysts are giving FAR too much credit to Ahmaninejad and his so-called popularity in Iran and amongst the people.

First and Foremost Ahmaninejad best Allies have been many well informed political analysts be them well intentioned or not and who have been playing with the idea of seeing Iran as the counter geo political alter ego to Israel in the Middle East.

If this is the case and if there is some truth or validity in this assessment then we should also take into account the political and moral responsability of such so-called Pragmatists. I am not including you Sir for I do not think that you are supporting the current theocracy. And I noticed and read your nice comments in a very interesting article in Reuters not long ago.

However even if Ahmaninejad's comments coming from the President of a Non Arab country appears as if it is indeed favorably supported by many arab countries it strangely finds an echo from the same news sources such as the San Francisco Chronicle, which in a recent past has not hesitated to distort historical facts by claiming such absurdities as the Historical Responsability of Imperial Iran (That of the Pahlavi Regime) in the Holocaust.

These arguments were refuted by well known and respected Iranian Historian Abass Milani who himself is not particularly known for being either pro-Pahlavi nor belongs to a political organization opposed to the Islamic regime of Tehran to be biased in his arguments.

If Ahmaninejad's approach in defending the Iranian Right to Nuclear Energy has been supported by a wide Majority of Iranians from all political backgrounds such as Nobel Peace Prize Shirine Ebadi, or former Ambassador of Iran to Washington during the Imperial Era Ardeshir Zahedi (Also son of the ill famed General Zahedi who overthrew the Democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh)

Whatever the analysis' we can make on the aftermath of a diplomatic defeat or victory for Iran in this diplomatic battle, President Ahmaninejad and the Islamic Republic bear on their shoulders for the coming decades to come, if they stay in power that is, the moral responsability to have unleashed a debate not to say debates that were long buried in the annals and dustbins of History : That of the Nazi Responsability in the Jewish Holocaust Tragedy.

If diplomacy is by definition the Art of avoding military confrontation then the Ahmaninejad administration has entirely failed on this ground whatever its reasons and the economic justification linked to them.

Never in 2500 years of History were Iranian Jews a subject of attack or segregation. Iranian Jews as you well know and I believe you correctly refered to in a recent article were never considered as being seperate from other Iranians and were always an integral part of the Iranian Nation as any other Iranian religious or ethnic minority if we set the ill fated Bahai minortiy aside ( some of whom were to occupy major positions in the Imperial Era of MR Pahlavi ).

The situation of Iranian Jews is probably at most uncomfortable today in regard to the Islamic Republics new anti-semitic stand.

This is not new in that since the advent of the Islamic Republic the Iran-Israel relations have been that of Cat and Mouse. A mixture of indirect support and criticism due to the fact that Israel had very good and ambivilent relations with Imperial Iran and that the Jewish population were always supportive of Democratic and popular reformes since the  advent of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906.

The Jewish minorities also were under the protection of Shah Mohamad Reza Pahlavi.

And that despite the Pro-German Regime of his father who later abdicated under the pressure of the Allies in their war against Nazi Germany.

The Pahlavi Regime despite the humiliation of being militarily occupied by the Allied forces (who forced its founder to abdication at the Break of WWII) brought a great deal of humanitarian Aid to the refugees ( many of jewish origins ) fleeing both Nazi occupied Poland or Stalinist Russia thus fleeing two regimes that were strongly anti semetic and totalitarian.

Please also read  Dzieci Syjonu, The Children of Zion, The Path of Agony of the "Tehran Children" (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 1995) as well as Oil to what was to be dubbed as the Bridge to Victory of the Allies.

Far from being humiliated the Iranian Participation in the War Effort was even acknowledged by the Allies and Iran even sent a small but noticed regiment that participated in the Victory Celebrations in London :

If like most regimes moderate or not in the Middle East, Reza Shah the Great's regime was indeed dictatorial and openly pro-German or Pro-Mussolini in its support of Nationalism ( Even if the years that followed was to prove them wrong in their assessment most observers of the Time saw Nationalism as compatible with the notion of social progress and modernity thus the subtle confusion of National-Socialism) with Italy that trained its navy and provided military logistics to the new Pahlavi Dynasty nevertheless many Iranian Diplomats helped save Jews in France and Germany from being deported to an unkown destination that was later known as Hitler's final Solution.

Nothing can seriously or Historically imply an ideological anti-semitic militancy against Jews or the Jewish population in Iran. Had Hitler won, Iran like most other anti British, Middle Eastern Nations such as Turkey or Egypt sensitive to the nationalistic encouragements would certainly have become a satellite nation of a Nazi Dominated World. But it was not the case for even if Pahlavi Iran's record in Human Rights is debateable and that the Shah was accused of being a puppet of the successive Republican or Democratic US administrations in 38 years of rein, Fortunately for Iran at least it was neither to become a Nazi Run State nor a Communist Satellite puppet regime.

Nevertheless President Ahmaninejad and the henchmen of the Islamic Republic are not only preaching a historical abberation which they openly hope to use to manipulate in their own economic and geo strategical interests but more dangerous they have opted to a morally condemnable policy of Historical denial of the Holocaust and its crimes in an attempt to revise history. This has led to some misinformation and alarmist comments including amongst some relatively responsible and respected columnists and journalists such as Amir Taheri.

That said who is more responsible : the so-called incompetent journalist who was one of the first Iranian Journalists to openly critisize the Islamic Republics machievelic terrorist run policies, and assassinations for more than 26 years, or the so-called responsible democratically elected Head of State that becomes the President of a Nation of more than 70 Million people and speaks in the name of ALL his compatriots without consulting them and who has kept his country on a boiling kettle and bans its Women ( that form the majority of its population ) from demonstrating peacefully or participating in popular Soccer matches by sending them its brutal thugs.

Or under age young girls to the hangmen pole like the case of Nazanin Fatehi for which a petition has been launched by former Iranian Born Miss Canand Nazanin Afshin-Jam.

Both the Regime of Tehran and the Revolution it defends has a deep moral responsability in the current crisis but also beyond that it has perverted the ideological foundations that could have justified the Islamic Revolution of 1979 : The SAVAK Crimes often compared to the methods of the Gestapo but surpassed since by the infamous SAVAMA in the very same Dungeons of Evin (that were initially compared to the Bastille Prison ) that was never destroyed , the inequality between the Rich and Poor has never been so drastic as today where key Mullahs like Rafsanjani and Co own the country, The Corruption so vehemently critisized by the Iranain population at large including in Rural Iran.

Non of the promises of the Revolution were honored by the successive leaders, Prime Ministers and  Presidents of the Islamic Republic.

If Khatami provided a Gorbatchevian image of an Islamic Republic with a human face supporting soccer and Iranian Filmmakers, it failed to convince anyone that his regime was reformeable. The tragic events of September 11th were to doom his fruitless efforts and vain promises.

If some people see Ahmaninejad the new Kaveh Ahanghar they also fail to see that behind his so -called popular image rests a totally unreliable regime that has no other interest that to survive in a race it knows will either doom it or prolong its survival for a few more years.

The Good mayor of Tehran which Ahmaninejad was indeed personificating can only survive within the framework of a crumbling and discredited regime.

What any future Iranian Leader will have to deal with will be to satisfy the growing aspiration to Freedom and Democracy in Iran. They will also have a moral responsability in that they will also have to channel the extraordinary energy of the Iranian Youth that wants to create, innovate, master and controle its own future and destiny as never before in its long or more modestly its recent century old history.

Such a desire is legitimate but also requires responsability of not only the population but also of its political representatives be it a friendly faced Restored Constitutional Monarch in the shape of Reza Pahlavi or a charismatic president of a truly Democratically elected Secular Republic. In either case the future leader will have to rely on a clear, human and pragmatic vision to lead its people out of the current troubled waters. That providential Man needs to be uncorruptable like a Winston Churchill or Charles De Gaulle or if one thinks of an unlikely restoration of the Monarchy in Iran then Reza Pahlavi has to be made of the same moral and political integrity as King Juan Carlos of Spain or King Bedouin of Belgium both of whom were put on the throne against all odds.

History never repeats itself but lack of vision and political oppurtunism have always if not often led to fatal miscalculations that could have their share in shaping a people's destiny be it for Good or for Bad.

A Secular Iran also needs to consider the fact that the transition from a society where its moral religious tenants will be sent back or irradicated from political life after more than 26th years of interference will also need to work on inspiring if not political responsability at most a minimum of moral responsability they so terribly failed to have credibility on all accounts. Even the secular French Republic has not entirely wiped off the spiritual dimension of its society in that the freedom of cult is respected as long as it does not interfere in the political sphere. This is probably less the case for Israel which on all accounts is a secular State as far as its institutions are concerned but which was created upon a moral observation and necessity: That of the Reality of the Holocaust and a religious foundation that goes back to the Times of Abraham and Moses Tables of Laws.

The solution to the current crisis is certainly not War with Iran, but it certainly is not passivity particularly on behalf of political leaders or of respectful intellectuals such as Shirine Ebadi nor the interesting YET debateable arguments of pragmatist Zoroastrian expat turned political scientist like Mr. Trita Parsi.

Politics and Nation Building is anything but an exact science. May the political wit and sagacity of these enlighted men and women of knowledge and experience be genuine otherwise they will be leading not only our nation but our world into a mine field they may not even controle.

Let us not forget that Hitler and his henchmen came to power democratically and perverted the Weimar Republic from inside. The major difference between the Weimar Republic and the Islamic Republic if one has to make such a comparison is that one was democratic while the other is still a rampant theocraticle dictatorship.

Ahmaninejad takes its legitimacy from a regime and a system that is far from popular. However it  plays on nationalistic sentiments of a country that lost more than a million of its compatriots in the marshes and no man lands of the 8 year Iran Iraq War whose ruthlessness has been compared to the worst Arms conflicts of the last quarter of the 20th century and whose trenches have been compared to those of WW I. The Iranian Nation and its globality suffered terribly in human losses and material and moral damages so rightly exposed by some of Iran's great film directors like Bahman Ghobadi in A Time for Drunken Horses, Samira Makhmalbaf Blackboards or Bahram Beizaei's Bashu.

The urge for the right to nuclear energy resides more in this reality : That of a Nation knowing that it can no longer rely on Blood and Oil (Also a title of several books )  than that of Ahamaninejads so-called popular support.

The Iranian Nation in its globality needs to restore its faith not only in its leaders but also in the true essence of political life and civil participation and most importantly in the Democratic Values that sustain it and on which most civilized Democratic nations are built upon despite inevitable shortcomings.

That will be the major challenge of Iran and its future leaders in the 21st century.

Best,

Darius KADIVAR

Free World Citizen who hopes he still can remain one ...

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