In Defense of the Iranian People

Hi everyone!

With all this belligerent talk being hurled back and forth between the West and Iran and speculation about whether Iran has reached a "zone of immunity" as far as its nuclear aspirations are concerned, one is at risk of losing sight of the fact that Iran is a nation comprised of 74 million people who are all, for the most part, concerned with getting on with their daily lives--raising families, working to make sure they have money to put food on their tables, a roof over their heads, and clothes on their backs with perhaps a little saved over to splurge on the occasional vacation. In other words, the average Iranian is really not all that different from you or me. Yes, thirty-three years ago, the "people" violently overthrew a secular (and corrupt) dynasty in favor of an Islamic theocracy, but much of that fervor was derived from a collective--and perhaps naive--belief that the ayatollahs would strip the government of corruption and install a society that made up for the inequality and lack of morality that had been rife for decades under the Shah.

Thirty-three years later, those revolutionaries are now senior citizens. Two-thirds of the current Iranian population is under the age of 30, which is significant in that more than 50 percent of Iranians alive today were either not born during the Islamic Revolution, or were too young at the time to understand what it was all about and what it was in reaction against. All these young people know is that they live in a repressive and paranoid society that prevents them from enjoying personal freedom and has become the pariah of much of the civilized world.

As the U.S. and its allies assess the effectiveness of ever tightening sanctions and debate how best to destroy Iran's nuclear aspirations and cripple Iran's economy, let's pause for a moment to consider how all of this affects the average Iranian family mentioned above. A recent Gallup poll, quoted in today's New York Times, shows that "nearly two-thirds of Iranians though the sanctions would hurt their livelihoods. The poll also found that almost half of Iranians said there were times in the past year when they lacked enough money to buy food their families needed--triple the level from 2005."

I ask, how is this fair? Are these sanctions meant to incense the average Iranian to rise up against the government in the spirit of Tunisia or Egypt? They tried this in 2009--unfortunately, to little positive effect. Iran is essentially being held hostage between two rival political powers--Ayatollah Khamenei and the religious council versus President Ahmadinejad--each of whom is more concerned with preserving their grip on power than improving the lives of their citizenry. Put yourself in the shoes of our average Iranian. If your livelihood was indirectly being destroyed by a foreign power collective, would you be more likely to express anger at your own government or at the country/countries that were making your lives more difficult on a grass roots level? My guess is you'd choose the latter.

This column is not in defense of the ayatollahs. I am merely taking the humanitarian approach. Let's think about the Iranian people for once. Iran possesses a culturally diverse and rich history with a highly educated and sophisticated population. Until these people can effect positive change in their country on their own, we need to adapt a more compassionate and nuanced approach to how we deal with their government, otherwise we risk destroying an ancient civilization and inadvertently fostering an anti-U.S. mentality out of which nothing good will come.

Ciao.