Iran and its Elections

About fifteen years ago - maybe longer - I was commuting between Northern California and Southern California every week. It was during this commute that I was first reminded of the dilemma of Iran. Today the current protests over the election there brought this memory back to me.

I was taking a shuttle to a rental car company, and I got into a conversation with the driver, who was from Tehran. He had left Iran during the Iranian Revolution. He wasn't a supporter of the Shah, but found himself under suspicion. He had been a professor in Iran, teaching Physics. Now, here in the U.S., he was driving a rental car shuttle. "They are thugs," he said to me then. "They took power using the pretense of religion, but they are thugs."

What do I know about Iran today? Little or nothing! The revolution happened so long ago. What one reads in the paper about Iran has little to do with the people of that country. Over the years those Iranian friends and colleagues that I have met have said little about their homeland. It seems impolite to ask, which makes the fate of Iran seem as distant as the fate of another planet, in a separate galaxy. And yet that distance didn't always seem so large to me.

When my oldest son, Dagan, was born we were living in Washington, DC. Iran was still under the dictatorship of the Shah, but there was a lively exchange of commerce between our countries. Not just oil, but all sorts of goods. The stores of Washington were inundated with the beautiful arts and crafts that were arriving from Tehran. I bought Judith a beautifully hand embroidered coat in celebration of our first child's birth. She still wears it on special occasions, though after so many years it's starting to show its age.

So many terrible things have happened to Iran since I bought that coat: The U.S. Embargo; The 8 year Iran-Iraq war that killed thousands; the 1990 Manjil-Rudbar earthquake in which 40 thousand died; the 2003 Bam earthquake in which 23 thousand died.

During all these events and tragedies, the U.S. has been disengaged, and has treated Iran as an enemy. And likewise, Iran has treated the U.S. as one too.
Now the election in Iran has caused us to hope, and then -- as the drama continues -- to remain silent in expectation and fear.

I for one would like to see Judith wear her brilliantly embroidered coat once again. I would like our two countries freely exchanging thoughts and views, without this veil of threats. I would like to see that country surface from its sadness.

But maybe it's going to take another 30 years. I sincerely hope not.

I don't think Judith's beautiful coat will last that long.