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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2008, pages 52-53 Human Rights Iran on the Menu and in the Crosshair
BUSINESSMAN AND peace activist Andy Shallal and his Iranian-born wife, Marjan, invited friends to their Washington, DC home on April 30 for dinner and to hear Carah Ong, the Iran policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, discuss her recent trip to Iran. “For two years I have been trying to get a visa to go to Iran,” she said. She said she believes it took so long because she has been equally critical of both the Iranian and American governments. While she was there, she and her husband spoke with government officials, human rights and women’s rights activists, including 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, as well as people in the city streets and countryside of Iran. Ong found Iranians welcoming and hospitable, she said, especially when they heard that she and her husband are American. They were even more excited when Ong answered yes to their question “Are you political?” in Farsi. Ong considered it amazing that the Iranian people could distinguish between U.S. government policy and individual Americans. “We need to do a better job in this county of not demonizing an entire country when we don’t agree with their government’s policies,” she said. “Any attack or the threat of an attack by the U.S. undermines any chances of resolving the conflict diplomatically, and the efforts of those working for democracy, women’s and human rights,” she emphasized. Ong said she found that Iranians feel the time for revolution has passed, and that no one is interested in toppling the government. Instead, she said, Iranians are attempting to work within the system, and within their government’s view of Islam. “They are working toward democracy that is indigenous,” she explained, adding that “our work should be to highlight their work and not come from the outside and say this is what you should be doing in Iran.” Iranians are closely following the U.S. elections, Ong said. Hard-liners like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like to see a McCain presidency because the neocons within the Bush administration help the hard-liners in Iran. The average Iranian, however, Ong said, is dismissive of the Bush administration and is “waiting them out.” Iranians are worried about their future if McCain is elected to office because “they know he has been singing ‘Bomb, bomb, Iran,” Ong pointed out. Ong said that President Ahmadinejad is unpopular with Iran’s elite but liked by the masses in the rural areas. “Ahmadinejad has spent $40 billion of the government’s $80 billion reserve to pay for things like buying chickens for the population in the countryside, his political base,“ she explained. Ong told her audience that the best way to deter a war with Iran was by informing the American public and its leadership about Iran. Shallal asked Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, co-author of Iran in the Crosshair, to say a few words on this point, and she also stressed how important education is when it comes to this issue. “Iraq is now out of the picture,” she said. Instead, “Iran is in the crosshairs and it can contend with the U.S. in a way no other country can in the region.” Bennis went on to say that Washington’s propaganda against Iran has not been that effective, and that the American public is not buying U.S. talk of nuclear weapons this time around. Bennis said that Iranian Americans had a very important role to play by writing their local newspapers and letting them know that they oppose any attack on Iran. —Jamal Najjab |
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