A side of Iran you don’t really hear about these days…
As part of my summer plans I have a load of reading to get through (I’ll probably post the list later after my friend did the same - it’ll be a long list). But I also have a good few old magazines to read and while I was reading ‘BBC History magazine’ (August 2006 edition) I came across an ‘events in context: Iran’ article which sought to explain why Iran has been behaving the way it has. Its interesting stuff and gives you a fairly good idea why Iran is so distrustful of the west; In summary its the following - repeated interventions over a century and it has a genuine history as a nation (rather than many other countries of the Middle East which are either ‘made up’ or have changed so much over centuries that there is no sense of continuity).
A line that caught my eye began
Persia/Iran has therefore been an independent, sovereign ‘nation state’ for the past 500 years. There is no other country in the Middle East with a sovereign identity of similar length. The nearest rivals for such status would be France, Britain and Spain far to the west, Russia to the north, China to the east and Abyssinia/Ethiopia to the south. Even Turkey would not really qualify becuase its political predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, was a huge multi-national empire of which Turkey was a relatively small part. In the Moslem Middle East, pride in the eternal territorial, political and cultural concept of Iran (Iranzamin) is unique.
It then goes on to point out that Iran has a different language, religion and culture (Farsi/Azeri, Shia and Persian) which tends to lead to the sense of being ‘different’.
The thing that caught my eye most on the first time reading though was the following lines
… another difference between Iran and most of the rest of the region and indeed the world, for Iran is a heady mix of democracy and theocracy. It is arguably more democratic than other major Middle Eastern Islamic countries apart from Turkey. Even its theocratic assembly which appoints the country’s supreme leader is elected by popular suffrage - a fact which gives it some popular legitimacy.
The article then points to how the interventions in Iran meant that the only method of organising resistance to the Shah was through the Mosques meant that the growth of political power for the clergy was inevitable in a way, using the example of how many farmers were dispossessed of their lands in the 1960’s - resulting in them having to move to the cities where the only aid came from the clerics and not the state.
But in general, and especially for those who simply wish to see Iran as ‘evil’ I would imagine that this sort of thing is what they should be reading - this article manages to make the Iranians demands seem less unreasonable and shows why they might feel the way they do.