As young progressives ramp up their efforts to end the war in Iraq, fear is in the air regarding growing tensions with Iran, and the rhetoric is sounding eerily familiar.
In the most recent Republican debate, frontrunner Rudy Giuliani suggested that a nuclear strike against the country should not be off the table. And earlier this month, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) advocated a missile strike against Iran if the country does not suspend its nuclear program immediately.
As tensions intensify between the U.S. and Iranian governments, it’s important to hear from those caught in the middle of all the geopolitical posturing. With emotional and actual ties to both Iran and the United States, Iranian-American college students offer a unique perspective that digs deeper than the Western media’s often superficial take.
According to a 2004 report by the Iranian Studies Group at M.I.T., there are 691,000 Iranian-Americans living in the United States. A largely successful group, the report found that more than one in four have a master’s or doctoral degree and that the average family income is 20 percent higher than the national average.
They’re a group living the American dream. But many Iranian-American students find worrying misconceptions in the American media’s depiction of the conflict.
It’s easy to see why these students feel there is ignorance in Western thinking about Iran. How many Americans know, for example, that Iranians are largely Persian, not Arab? How many could identify their language as Farsi rather than Arabic? It is also not clear from most reports on the country that it is incredibly diverse and culturally rich, with over a dozen different ethnic populations and religious minorities including Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Zoroastrian.
The lack of knowledge that most bothered those interviewed, however, didn’t concern demographics, but the attitudes of the Iranian people.
“Right now my mom is living in Iran, and what they say in the media is totally not representative of what’s happening there,” said Adam Bejan Parast, a 2007 graduate of the University of Washington whose father, like many Iranians, came to America for college. “The thing about people in Iran, everybody wants to come to the U.S. Everybody wants to live here and they all love Americans, but if you tell someone that here, they’re shocked.”
They shouldn’t be. After Sept. 11, 2001, when many in the Muslim world were celebrating in the streets, thousands of Iranians also took to the streets—in solidarity with the United States. The tragic war in Iraq has certainly helped to sour many Iranians’ feelings towards America. However, according to a recent poll by World Public Opinion, more Iranians have a favorable impression of the American people than the American people do of Iranians—45 percent and 29 percent respectively.
But according to those interviewed, one would hardly know it from the mainstream media coverage.
“All that Western media shows are the bad things and not the good things about Iran,” said Sahand Shafiee, University of Oregon ’07. “Iran is not a country of hate. … There are things in Iran and the people of Iran that the Westerners don’t see: Demonstrations against the regime, the beauty of Iran, how the people dress nowadays, the economy, and how much Westernized culture is still having influence in Iran despite the regime trying to stop it.”
While most Iranian-American students interviewed for this article believe that Americans are generally ignorant about Iran, some remained hopeful because Americans are also curious about the region and its people.
“When I tell people [about Iran], they’re very interested,” said Parast.
Sadly, the basic facts of Iranian-U.S. relations make up a sordid and complicated history that feeds into today’s conflict. Most who tell the tale begin with the CIA’s reinstallation of the repressive Shah of Iran in 1953, which the United States formally apologized for 47 years later. The United States backed the Shah over the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh, who wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil reserves. But the brutality of the Shah’s regime led to a popular backlash and then a revolution in 1979 that installed Iran’s current government, an Islamic republic with a theocratic constitution and severe limits on political opposition, free speech, and women’s rights.
On Nov. 4, 1979 came the Iranian hostage crisis, an event that greatly damaged relations between the two countries, shattered U.S. credibility, and probably cost Jimmy Carter a second term in office. For 444 days, an American diplomatic mission was held hostage in Iran by student militants, creating an intense standoff that finally ended when Ronald Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 19, 1981.
Immediately after the revolution, Iran entered into a bloody eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The combination of the theocratic revolution and the hostage crisis created by the war led many Iranians who could afford to do so to immigrate to the United States. Toward the end of Reagan’s second term came the Iran-Contra scandal, in which it was revealed that his administration illegally sold weapons to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Some alleged the deal was part of a quid-pro-quo for releasing the hostages as Reagan took over as president.
These are just some of watershed moments in U.S.-Iranian relations that most Americans know nothing about. Iranian-American students lay the blame at the feet of a shallow media and politicians who take a hard-line stance toward Iran for their own benefit.
Hope lies not only in the passionate democratic movements in Iran, sustained by freedom-hungry students, but also in the potential power of dialogue between the two nations.
“The current administration won’t even talk to Iran. It’s just completely ridiculous,” says Parast. “At the very least, they can talk about something; it doesn’t have to be a contentious issue. A dialogue between the two countries, I don’t see how it can hurt in any way.”
Considering the history of gaffes and misunderstandings between the United States and Iran, American foreign policy toward the nation should take into consideration those who know Iran best. In Iraq we are now witnessing the devastating costs of the alternative, a conflict fed by misinformation and ignorance about the region. To allow this to happen again so soon would be tragic.
--------
Comments
While I agree with the thrust of Pat Boyle’s recent piece, “Ill Communication,” namely that better understanding of Middle Eastern culture and religion is of crucial importance, his conclusion is quite problematic. “In Iraq we are now witnessing the devastating costs of… a conflict fed by misinformation and ignorance about the region,” Boyle writes, “To allow this to happen again so soon would be tragic.” Perhaps surprisingly, the false logic upon which it rests is reproduced commonly in the mainstream press, and hardly ever raises an eyebrow.
The first, and most obvious, problem with his conclusion is that Boyle offers no evidence on its behalf throughout the duration of the article. Instead, he simply blurts it out at the end, without tying it to his justified musings about the state of cultural awareness. The reason he has not offered such support is clear: none exists. There can be no evidence that the Iraq war, or a possible Iran war, are in any way tied to a lack of cultural sensitivity. To argue otherwise shows a rather selective and naive view of international relations. Cultural understanding is important, but it had no bearing on the US decision to invade and occupy Iraq, and has no bearing on its views on Iran.
This argument is routinely made after US wars “go wrong” by “liberal” commentators throughout the media, whose arguments are just as lacking in the required evidence as Mr. Boyle’s. After the Vietnam war, the suggestion was routinely made that had the United States just taken the time to understand Vietnamese culture, the whole war might have been avoided. It isn’t hard to see what a massive oversimplification and distortion this kind of argument really is. In the case of Vietnam, for example, it ignores wholesale the vital ingredient: the zero-sum geopolitical worldview of US planners during the “Cold War.” Far from being caused by a lack of cultural knowledge, Vietnam was begun as part of the official US policy of “containment” outlined by George Kennan in the now-infamous NSC 68.
Obviously, cultural sensitivity had little to do with the Vietnam war, and it had equally little to do with Iraq. The decades-long alliance with Iraq went sour once Saddam decided to invade Kuwait in 1991, Iraq’s southern, oil-rich neighbor, populated with wealthy oil tycoons who don’t shy from US investment. The US-Kuwaiti friendship was tested repeatedly, as when the US used it as a conduit to funnel money into Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and the illegal US re-flagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers just prior to the ’91 invasion. The friendship was again tried when Saddam invaded Kuwait (with the accidental permission of US ambassador April Glaspie) under the pretense of Kuwaiti slant-drilling into Iraqi territory. Calls from President Bush to defend “free Kuwait” ensued, despite the fact that only 15% of the population was allowed to vote at the time, the complete lack of free speech, and other serious human rights violations.
But Saddam’s trouble-making didn’t end there. Just prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam succeeded in persuading the UN to use Euros, not dollars, for the trade of Iraqi oil under the oil-for-food program. This is a serious offense, and it increasingly became clear Saddam would no longer be a reliable US client. He would have to be replaced to ensure both continued, unabated access to Iraqi resources and to guarantee the permanent, unbridled US hegemony that was the stated goal of the American neo-conservatives. An invasion became necessary.
In the case of Iran, our cultural knowledge is actually being used to facilitate any future war, as the US has been funding opposition groups within the country. It has also supported the Pakistani terror group Jundullah, which makes incursions into Iran, kidnapping officials and soldiers and murdering them, often on video camera. Israel has also been secretly training Kurdish soldiers in Iraqi Kurdistan, which also extends into Northern Iran. Obviously, cultural awareness will not prevent war here, either.
Cultural sensitivity has little to do with wars, as I have shown. However, it has a lot to do with our ability to coexist with one another on a diverse planet. The fact that some commentators use the press as a platform for bigoted criticisms is truly a problem, particularly as it relates to increasingly – ostracized Muslims, as Mr. Boyle has shown.
While Boyle’s piece was lacking in logic, it was completely devoid of necessary context. Boyle has a good deal of material available on the web which seems to contradict his thesis. It would seem he owes his readers an explanation as to how he came to believe what he now writes.
In an opinion piece from 2005, he himself employed cultural stereotypes and absolutist rhetoric. He defended the War in Iraq as “a battle between modernity and religious fundamentalism, freedom and oppression, and yes, I dare say, good and evil.” The implication is obviously that the Muslims are “evil,” since the US is obviously the “good.” And despite the anti-war sentiments expressed in Ill Communication, he also said “I don’t believe for a second that the far left cares about the troops, and it’s quite clear they don’t care about the people of Iraq.”
Mr. Boyle’s decision to publish the controversial Mohamed cartoons in his school paper, the Berkeley Beacon (a move I agree with), earned him coverage from the Boston Globe. In the piece accompanying the cartoon, Boyle again employed stereotypical and insulting rhetoric against Muslims, claiming they exhibit “primitive, barbaric thought.”
On Mr. Boyle’s blog in late 2006, he took on the issue of the removal of 6 Muslims from an airplane for praying and of criticizing US Foreign Policy. “Am I scrutinizing them more because they’re Muslim? Of course I am,” he boldly states. “ If an old granny were saying the same things, would I think twice? Of course not. But that’s the world we live in, and I’ll choose offending a handful of zealous Muslims (with apparently no self awareness) than taking my cultural sensitivity all the way to the grave.” As recently as January of this year he stood by these comments.
Putting aside the obvious logical faults of Mr. Boyle’s piece, it is rather confusing to see the same person who very recently admitted to scrutinizing people more “because they’re Muslim” and supported the war as a battle between “good vs. evil” serve as a voice for cultural understanding and peace. Given these contradictions, some kind of acknowledgment from the author was owed to the readers of Campus Progress.
Best,
Steve Maher
— Steve Maher - Jul 12, 02:07 AM - #American University Grad Student
Here’s another version of this essay with links
— Steve Maher - Jul 12, 02:20 AM - #Pat,
As an Iranian-American, it is extremely encouraging when someone makes an effort to relate our experience living in this country. It is important to be clear that although we love our lives in the United States and hope to become great citizens and leaders, it is very disheartening to see our heritage often belittle and degraded. Your article is great first step in what should be a much larger awareness project.
However, it is not enough for us to sit here and say, “America, you do not understand our culture.” It would be more proper, in fact, to raise people’s knowledge of the efforts Iran made in the post-9/11 international arena in engaging the U.S. to combat the terrorists that occupy the region (namely the Taliban in Afghanistan).
If the Iranian culture was better understood, Americans would know that we are sympathetic and compassionate people. When a travesty like 9/11 occurred, Iran stepped forward to be a leader in helping the U.S. fight whoever caused the destruction.
On several occasions, Iranian diplomats attempted to sit down with the Bush Administration and offer their support in the War on Terror to strengthen diplomatic relations. Let me reiterate this, Iran offered America support in combating Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Imagine that. Unfortunately, these requests were denied and even those in Washington who were aware of these attempts by the Iranian Government have been silenced by the Administration.
A specific example of the Administration silencing American citizens can be observed with the Flynt Leverett situation. Basically, Leverett, a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote an Op-Ed for the NYTimes acknowledging Iran’s efforts. He was soon contacted by the White House Press “people” and was accused of jeopardizing national security because article “contained confidential material” even though, Leverett had CIA and FBI clearance on the article. The article was not permitted to be published.
Perhaps, Campus Progress should speak with Mr. Leverett and uncover some disheartening truths…
In closing, Pat’s piece points to a larger problem in the U.S. Our perceptions are narrowly and purposely constructed (media/politicians) to render us at the mercy of the will of a few…Look at the build up to the Iraq War…90% of this country was convinced that Iraq had WMD’s and that Saddam was directly linked to the attacks on 9/11. Now, as Mr. Maher somewhat aggressively asserts in his response piece, there is no specific link between cultural understanding and foreign policy. Nonetheless, in our “democratic society,” perceptions play a major role in the amount power we give our elected officials. We need to understand other culture’s to understand intentions and perspectives. If America had a stronger understanding of the Iraqi people, their perspectives, and the leader’s intentions, we would not be stuck in the mess find ourselves in today. The same ABSOLUTELY MUST occurs with Iran because frankly, this administration would be there tomorrow if they weren’t politically bankrupt in terms of support.
— Arash Massoudi - Jul 13, 01:11 PM - #I agree with Steve Maher’s analysis of what drives American foreign policy, but it seems that he’s missing the point in applying it to Boyle’s article (not that Boyle was clear on the distinction). Understanding other countries’ history and culture doesn’t have anything to do with American foreign policy goals, but it does have a lot to do with imperialist administrations’ ability to sell the policy to Americans who are generally not inclined to feel comfortable with being consciously imperialist.
I’m guessing that, if most Americans had understood that most Vietnamese didn’t give a rip about communism versus capitalism, but that their identity is defined by more than a thousand years of bloody resistance to foreign domination – a sentiment Americans can proudly identify with – it would have been harder to sell the idea that the U.S. was trying to ‘save’ the Vietnamese by bombing the shit out of them.
Understanding the history and culture of other countries is only half of the problem. Generally Americans don’t understand what determines our own foreign policy – that our biosphere destroying consumer economy entails imperial domination of the global economy. A lot more people in the rest of the world understand that, but ignorant Americans remain mystified by their resultant attitude.
— G.P. Franck-Weiby - Jul 13, 06:53 PM - #No one ought to judge the American people by what Mr. bush is doing, but they know that the people elected and reelected him. Likewise we must judge the Iranian people by he fact that they elected Mr Ahmadinejad ,a hypocritical and cynical demagogue, although I have nothing against the people of Iran personally.
— Martin Ben-Ari - Jul 14, 10:41 PM - #Martin,
I understand what you’re trying to say, but I think that’s a superficial and somewhat uninformed way of looking at the Iranian election cycle.
First, it’s important to realize who in the Iranian population actually voted for Ahmadinejad and why they did so.
A great deal of Ahmadinejad’s supporters were first-time voters who were in the economic lower classes and from rural areas(read: many villagers). They voted for him not because he made them promises of religious fundamentalism and the pursuance of nuclear power but because he campaigned on a platform of giving money back to the people. He fooled them into believing he was a common man from outside the system that would make the bureacratic government work for them and so on and so forth. All of it was crap of course, but they believed him and mobilized. The middle class of Iran, the more educated and urban populations, did not support him but instead Rafsanjani. They considered Ahmadinejad’s candidacy a joke and were shocked when he won.
Second, the Iranian people have ALL demonstrated that they don’t support him anymore. In the recent local and provincial elections that took place all over the country, urban and rural voters alike made sure that candidates from Ahmadinejad’s party were overwhelmingly defeated by their opponents. It was a parallel to the 2006 midterms here.
So don’t jump to conclusions that those in the Iranian population knew what they were getting themselves into when they voted for Ahmadinejad the first time. Just like us Americans, they’re capable of getting duped.
— Dorna Mohaghegh - Jul 16, 10:44 AM - #