What Iran Is Really Like - Without the Demonization [View all]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/28942-what-iran-is-really-like-without-the-demonization

In my travels, when the subject of America came up (which wasn’t often), Iranians expressed the view the few Americans bothered to come to Iran, and knew little about its culture (a Persian civilization more than 2500 years old), its religion (Shia Islam), its politics (nominally a republic, which is more than you can say for most countries in the Middle East), or its foreign policies (in which suspicions about the U.S. and Israel are far down the list of preoccupations).

Nor did I come away from Iran thinking that it has designs to become a regional hegemon. Not even in southern Iraq, with its Shiite majority, is Iran especially interested in annexing those lost provinces of Persia.

Yes, Iran is a patron of Hezbollah and occasionally Hamas and the Palestinians, and a shadow player in the civil wars of Lebanon and Syria. So too is Israel (which has invaded Lebanon and bombed Syria repeatedly) and the United States (which at last count has dropped bombs on or sent forces into seven countries around the Middle East).

Keep in mind, too, that neighboring powers with atomic weapons include Pakistan, Russia, China, Turkey (from NATO), India, and Israel, which, unlike Iran, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The irony of American and European economic sanctions against Iran is that they hurt everyone—the banks, merchants in the bazaar, local companies, tour operators, etc.—except those they were designed to influence, the mullahs, who cling to power on allusions to Great Satanism.

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My enduring images are of the hundreds of well-dressed, cheerful and well-mannered school children, with whom I was traveling on trains between sites of Persian glory. Invariably they spoke some English and were fascinated with the foreigner, often asking if they could have a picture taken with me.

Their proud parents, equally well-dressed, would meet them at the stations, usually with a single red rose. I could be wrong, but they looked like kids who will grow up to become accountants, dentists, and professors, not holy warriors.