Iran Must Heal Herself
By David A. Yeagley
7-20-2002
American commentators and journalists are calling for a new, violent revolution in Iran. They are greatly mistaken, and show an irresponsible attitude toward the people of Iran. There will be no such violent revolution, because the people do not want it.
But Americans leaders want it, and S. Rob Sobhani writing for the Washington Times seems to think America is morally obliged to encourage it. Thus he speaks for many Americans who blame Iran for world terrorism, including the 9-11 attack on New York’s WTC, and who are still angry about the fact that Iran rudely kicked America out back in 1979. Americans would love to see the Ayatollahs kick out.
But the significance of the current Iranian student demonstrations is being exaggerated. Even the resignation of Ayatollah Taheri of Isfahan is over-emphasized. Students are young and easily excited to rally behind a new social movement. And anyone can resign, for any number of reasons.
These events are important, but no basis for American media to recklessly foment a new revolution. The students are calling for basic human rights, not a change in their religion or culture. A nation-wide change in Iran from ancient Islam and its Arabic influence is not something a few vociferous students can bring about.
And the Iranian population is much too genteel and quaint to be involved in such radicalism. They’d rather have tea together. They didn’t create the revolution of 1979, they merely lived through it. And then the long war with Iraq. They are tired of social drama, and they don’t like guns. In fact, neither the Constitution of 1906 nor the Islamic constitution of 1979 provides any rights for the people to possess guns. They simply don’t have them.
This means that any radical social change, such as a revolution, means intervention from the outside. Since American President Bush included Iran in the “Axis of Evil,” the American media feels free to advocate another bloodbath for Iran. Americans don’t distinguish between the Iranian people and that 1979 impression of the violent, anti-American students who were urged on by radical Islamic clerics.
Yet American media now seizes upon a few student demonstrations as evidence that Iranian people all really want to be American, and therefore are willing to create a civil war in Iran. But American media is showing desperate hypocrisy in this. In an attempt to win the war on terrorism, American leaders misread popular sentiment in Iran. Americans always think Iran should be like America. True, all decent, freedom-loving people want terrorism to end, but to say a few agitated Iranian students represent the population of Iran is a political manipulation.
I call it “student abuse.” When leaders manipulate university students to influence media and to bring about social change those leaders are to be held responsible. In America, for example, subversive Left wing communists have always dominated universities, because young people can be influenced, and they are the future of any country. Control their minds, and you control the future.
To use students as a tool to overthrow an oppressive government is certainly repeating the same tactic used in 1979, only then it was students who were used to bring on the oppressive government. Shall then students now be used to bring on another revolution, for freedom and democracy?
This is a superficial solution, and at best only plausible. It is specious, actually. The people of Iran just want the basic freedom to make a living for themselves and their families. The Islamic leadership has failed them in this, yet the people don’t want a different religion.
Rather than assert the idea that Iranian Islam must be overthrown by American intervention, I assert Iran must simply recover her own roots as a race and culture. Iran is Persia, not Arabia. Iran has always been Persia. Islam itself is always Arabic.
The crucial element in Iran’s Persian identity is the imperial beneficence of the Achæmenid emperors. Cyrus (650-530 BC), Darius I (522-486 BC), and Artaxerxes (465-424 BC) were all Zionists. They all issued royal decrees that Jews should live in Palestine, and should build their temple at Jerusalem (Ezra 4 & 6). The final decree was Artaxerxes’, issued in 457 BC.
If Iran were now to do an about face, and “bless” Israel, the Middle East would change over night. Iran could resume its ancient, imperial role as a leading, beneficent force in the world. This is what Iranian people deserve, not another make-shift, bloody revolution manipulated by “arrogant” Western powers to suit their own purposes.
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