Close to Home: A local’s view from inside Iran

For decades, Iran scholars have been describing Iran as a country in transition, albeit slowed by deep internal contradictions.

But in truth, it is a nation of contrasts. On one hand, the country is modern, sophisticated and forward-looking. I?ts people - including women - are the best ?educated in the Middle East (Israel aside), and they are the most America-friendly. On the other, Iran is, by Western standards, regressive, authoritarian,and reactionary. It is also a country that is widely misrepresented in the West.

Frequent media portrayals of Iranians chanting “Death to America” at the end of Friday prayers, for example, ignore the rest of the story: More than 70 percent of the population does not attend Friday prayers; and the “Death to” idiom is not an uncommon expression used to express frustration, such as “Death to traffic congestion.”

On a recent trip organized by San Francisco’s Global Exchange, I had an opportunity - along with five other Americans -to experience some of the enigma of Iran firsthand. What hits the American tourist immediately is the virtual absence of anti-Americanism among the population.

In all the cities we visited (Tehran, Yasd, Shiraz, Isfahan), people from all walks of life approached us and, surmising that we were Americans, began to engage us - in English. “Hi, how are you?” they typically began. “Where are you from?”

When we answered “America,” it evoked smiles and the invariable announcement: “The Iranian people love Americans; it is our government that prevent us from having peace.”

In one instance, two young men, both petroleum engineers, remarked: “We have a lot more in common with you guys (Americans) than anyone else around here” (a reference to surrounding Arab countries, with which Iran has a long history of antipathy).

There were bazaar merchants who were not shy about openly debating American policy with those of us who engaged them: “The reason why Iran doesn’t want to help the Americans with ISIS,” said one, “is because ISIS emerged from the mess the United States created in Iraq. Why should we help them clean up the mess that they created?”

His partner disagreed: “It doesn’t matter who started it; Iran and the United States need each other; we have to join together to put down ISIS. ISIS is a threat to everybody.”

In Isfahan, I expressed dismay to a bell hop that the famous Zayandeh river, which has coursed through the city since the 17th century, had completely disappeared. “Climate change is Iran’s biggest problem” he said.

He echoed the view of one of Iran’s agriculture ministers who described the country’s water problem as being more dangerous “than Israel, America, or political fighting. If this situation is not reformed in 30 years Iran will be a ghost town.”

In a portent of things to come worldwide, it was just last week that water engineers diverted water from the nearby Zagros mountains to replenish the Zayandeh river, for one month only, in an attempt to irrigate agricultural areas starved of water.

It was in Shiraz where a chador-wearing woman who followed me some distance to practice her English, asked: “What do your people think of us?” In a momentary reflection on the volume of friends and family members who feared for my safety before my trip, I hesitated. Intuiting the cause of my silence, she said, with kind eyes: “Some people in your country and mine are stuck in the past; this is today. We need to be friends, not enemies.”

Iran’s parallel reality came to the forefront in this exchange, because at that very moment, someone I personally knew had been languishing in Iran’s Evin Prison for 90 days without charge. Jason Rezaian, a young journalist who was working in his Iranian father’s carpet store in Petaluma just a few years ago, was recently arrested in Iran along with his wife and two photojournalists. The others have since been released, but Rezaian remains in custody, a pawn in the power struggles among disputing political factions: those with deep distrust of any kind of rapprochement with the United States and the West, and those seeking constructive engagement.

The United States has similar tensions. Distrustful hardliners here are bent on impeding any progress in the upcoming negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. To date, Iran has complied with American and western technical demands over its enrichment program, and Iran has won a degree of much-needed sanctions relief.

A recent rumor from Iran that Jason Rezaian may be released “within a month” may indicate that the negotiations have a chance of succeeding, at least from the Iranian perspective.

Donna Brasset-Shearer of Petaluma is a cultural anthropologist with a background in international relations. She has taught courses on Iran at Sonoma State?University and is one of two community members on The Press Democrat Editorial Board.