Please tell Americans, that Iranians are kind and hospitable. Come and visit us. You are most welcome here.” This was a common refrain encountered in a recent trip to Iran.
At present the US military has mobilized a strike group of fighter jets and warships surrounding and awaiting the smallest retaliatory move by Iran after the Israeli assassination in Tehran on 31 July 2024, of Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian negotiator for a peace deal in Gaza.
US/Israel provocations and threats to Iran are reckless, extremely dangerous and based on false information.
Jews have lived in and made up Iranian society and civilization for thousands of years. The largest amount of Jews outside Israel in the entire Middle East live and practice their faith in Iran.
Iran does not believe in the destruction of Israel as is repeated in the Israel/West’s narrative, rather it rejects the policies of Israeli apartheid.
Jewish people have always been part of Iran. A close ally in the cabinet of the late President Raisi was Jewish. Two current cabinet members are Christians, and one a woman. Zionist policies of apartheid, occupation, and genocide, are considered anti-semitic actions, and opposed to the tenets of the Jewish faith.
Recently Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to a standing ovation, actually told the US Congress that the protests outside the halls in the streets were most likely paid for and encouraged by Iran. He labelled those insulted by his presence as “Iran’s useful idiots.”
The bus I rode to DC to oppose Netanyahu’s being invited to speak was hired by and filled with Israelis for Ceasefire, and met up with other busloads of Rabbi’s For a Ceasefire, Jewish Voices for Peace, Veterans For Peace, groups of faith leaders, unions, among many others, not to mention our Palestinian American brothers and sisters, students and all those who call for stopping slaughter. We were nobodies “useful idiots.”
Powers that be have conflated all “terror” and Iran in our media, with ISIS, ISIL, and Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, Iran was one of the first nations to offer to help our Administration during the World Trade Tower attacks on 9/11. Al Qaeda was Iran’s enemy long before us. The Bush administration rebuffed Iran’s offer.
Iran has had to deal directly with extremist ideologies and deadly attacks supported by US “ally” Saudi Arabia. The Houthi’s, and Yemen in general have long suffered from the blockades, the bombings, and the mass starvation of Yemeni children at the hands of Saudi Arabia. The US Congress only recently woke up to this and the relationship and talks with our “ally” began to ease these blockades and hostilities.
And then came Oct.7th and the massive Israeli response.
In the current actions at sea Houthi’s keep repeating, “stop the flow of armaments for genocide in Palestine, and we will stop.”
There are no orders from Iran for Houthi’s to stand up. There is, as there are in our own streets, support for the cause of peace and justice.
In a 2004 interview with me, Javad Zarif, the articulate former UN Ambassador of Iran spoke of Iran’s introducing and initiating the International Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. That was just before 9/11.
Imagine. This was a task he believed in and looked forward to. It was eclipsed and forgotten by our Administration’s turn toward revenge, and was an agenda unbeknown to the American people. The best way to honor all those lost on 9/11 and in resultant wars would be to stop the killing and create in their name a better, safer and more cooperative world.
During the horrific genocide of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900’s when the world was slow to recognize it and help, it was Iran that opened its borders and welcomed the survivors.
According to the 2023 accounting of the UN’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Iran hosts the largest amount of refugee’s in the world. Far more than the United States, some 3.5 million, many related to our devastating invasions for “freedom and democracy” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is a tremendous added burden for Iran to educate these children, provide health care, shelter and food, especially with our insistence on continuing crippling sanctions on their country.
This week I called an Iranian friend who is walking today in Iraq, in the largest annual pilgrimage in the world – from Najaf to the sacred Shi’a shrine in Karbala. All along the way, all faiths, ages, nationalities are offered food and lodging freely by an extremely materially modest people. Do we not see these Iraqis, Iranians and others, walking as humans hand in hand?
Iranians, do not comprehend the US labelling them as a terrorist state, nor as “supporting terrorists.” They see themselves supporting peace in the region, an end to the policies of Israeli terror, oppression and apartheid.
An apartheid that not only the ICJ recognizes, but that President Carter, Middle East negotiator U.S. Senator Mitchell, Archbishop Tutu, President Mandela, and thousands of Jews in the USA are opposing.
Our CIA and the UK’s M16 admitted that we propagated lies in 1953 and then orchestrated the coup that put in a leader who would not threaten our control of the oil in Iran. The Shah was not kind or benevolent. He was brutal to many.
In 1979 when the US Embassy was taken over by the citizens of Iran, and the Shah fled, the image of crazed people screaming “Death to America” and the burning of the flag, remains to this day the constantly repeated narrative promoted by US politicians and lobbyists dedicated to taking this regime down.
Not one US Citizen was killed or tortured in that takeover.
Citizens of Iran 45 years old and younger were not yet born. They have no personal memory to this adversarial mindset. They want peace, and connection with the West, and an end to sanctions so they may travel, exchange, trade and study with us. They see one world. They want to focus on the urgent issue of Climate with others on this one small planet. The literacy rate in Iran is 89%, as apposed to our 79 %, and their professionals wish to use their skills to contribute to earths solutions.
The US has about 800 military bases overseas. We actively participate in numerous military conflicts around the globe with US boots on the ground, an ever-growing list of invasions, and lead large joint military/manoeuvres (war games) around the world.
Iran has not invaded one nation, nor does it maintain outside military bases.
As our press and politicians echo constantly “Iran backed” Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi’s, these groups see themselves as having formed to stand up to injustice in their own lands, apartheid, and now clearly, genocide. They would be fighting this fight anyway, without any influence or guidance or support from Iran.
The same with those here in the US standing up to Zionist terror.
Meanwhile, the US is actively supporting Israel’s occupation and apartheid forces, supplying the tools of genocide, gas-lighting Cease Fire talks, and magnifying Israel’s narrative that they are helping the United Stated fight it greatest enemy, Iran.
And now, the newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian who campaigned on working toward better relations and ties with the United States of America, the West, and the world, was rewarded on Iran’s hopeful, bright Inauguration day with the horror of a missile attack in the heart, the capital, Tehran, an assassination of his invited guest, Ismail Haniyeh, the chief negotiator of peace talks with Palestine. This just days after our leaders met privately with Netanyahu. On top of this, Israel/US then swiftly warn and threaten Tehran not to respond militarily. We are at this moment pointing our gun barrels directly at them, and Israel is launching more strikes “on Iran backed terrorists”.
VP Harris, now a Presidential Nominee, has not voiced any deviation from our offensive posture presently nor in the past 4 years. The just released DNC platform reinforces all the dangerous stereotypes of Iran and ensuing threats to them. The Republican platform rhetoric is not better, just less specific.
Nuclear weapons? The US has been in clear violation of its obligations to the international law, the NPT (the Nuclear (Weapon) Non-proliferation Treaty) which President Johnson introduced at the United Nations in 1968. US Congress ratified it 54 years ago in 1970. The treaty’s Article Six allows other nations to pursue nuclear energy, as Iran has legally, openly done, with the promise that the US would “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament…”
Instead the U.S., without public or citizen discussion, is leading another fast-paced, extremely costly and dangerous nuclear weapon arms race, supported by both party’s platforms, spelled out most clearly in the DNC’s.
If we claim the absurd notion that these omnicidal nuclear weapons systems, capable of human error, malfunction and cyberattack, “ensure the safety and security of our nation”, why wouldn’t Iran and other nations deserve the same ensuring? It is we who need to follow the law and stop this madness of mutually assured destruction.
Israel’s leadership openly voiced last year a willingness to use their nuclear weapons to level Iran. This severely unhinged statement could lead in moments to the end of human life on earth as we know it.
Pope Francis who has an Iranian delegation and Ambassador within the Vatican, repeated while in Nagasaki the call for nuclear abolition, and that the “threat of the use” of nuclear weapons is immoral. Ayatollah Khamenei in 2003 issued a fatwa (official legal ruling) now being severely challenged by Israel and the Wests incursions, constant threats, and assassinations.
Those who witnessed the deliberations over months at the UN to bring into being the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW, 2017), also listened to the constructive arguments Iran’s diplomats added to stop the madness and irresponsibility of the nuclear arms race. Indeed Iran’s considerations represented the American public’s concerns much better than our own irresponsible statements and policies.
The Iranian youth, similar to our own progressive college students, are leading by example.
As Iran yearns for increasing cooperation, our Administrations recent foreign policy stance may be encapsulated in one small interaction I had during a recess at the UN with the US United Nation Alternate Representative Robert Wood.
I pointed to the Iranian diplomats less than 10 yards away sitting behind him and asked “Have you ever considered sitting down and speaking with the Iranian delegation?” With a condescending stare, he quipped, “Why would I ever do that!?” He turned and quickly walked away as I called out, “It might be a good idea.”