Justice for Iran

In solidarity with the beautiful and courageous people of Iran.

You can find me at Kateoplis.
Iran, the United States & a Nuclear Seesaw | NYT infographic Far from a monolithic relationship, Iran and the United States have spent as many decades as friends as they have as enemies. And for most of the history, whatever the polarity, nuclear issues have played a role. April 11, 1962: On State Visit, Shah Warns of Communism On an official state visit to the United States, the shah tells Congress that he will not surrender to communism, but that the United States must continue its foreign aid. “I recognize that it is a burden, and I sympathize with the desire to lay down,” he said. “But the need for it is not yet finished. The threat has not ended.” President John F. Kennedy praises the shah: “Occupying as you do in Iran a most important strategic area, surrounded as you are by vital and powerful people, your country has been able to maintain its national independence century after century, until we come to the present date where, under great challenges you, Your Majesty, lead that historic fight.”

Iran, the United States & a Nuclear Seesaw | NYT infographic


Far from a monolithic relationship, Iran and the United States have spent as many decades as friends as they have as enemies. And for most of the history, whatever the polarity, nuclear issues have played a role.

April 11, 1962: On State Visit, Shah Warns of Communism

On an official state visit to the United States, the shah tells Congress that he will not surrender to communism, but that the United States must continue its foreign aid. “I recognize that it is a burden, and I sympathize with the desire to lay down,” he said. “But the need for it is not yet finished. The threat has not ended.” President John F. Kennedy praises the shah: “Occupying as you do in Iran a most important strategic area, surrounded as you are by vital and powerful people, your country has been able to maintain its national independence century after century, until we come to the present date where, under great challenges you, Your Majesty, lead that historic fight.”

1. Firuzabad: An arched hall leading to an inner domed chamber in the palace of Ardashir I, built after A.D. 224.

2. Naqsh-e Rostam: Cross-shaped tombs cut into cliffs a few miles from Persepolis hold the bodies of Darius and his immediate successors.

By one of my favorite photographers, Simon Norfolk.

John McAleese, who died on August 26 aged 61, led the SAS team that ended the Iranian embassy siege in central London in 1980, an event watched live on television by millions of spellbound viewers.

The embassy, at 16 Princes Gate, Knightsbridge, had been taken over on April 30 1980 by six separatists from the oil-rich region in west Iran known as Arabistan. For six days, armed with machine guns, pistols and grenades, they held 26 people hostage as they demanded international recognition for their demands for independence.

For the first time, an SAS operation was shown live on television as both ITV and the BBC (which interrupted its coverage of the final of the world snooker championships) broadcast footage of black-clad troops in balaclavas — among them McAleese — abseiling down ropes on to the balconies on the first floor of the embassy, where it was thought that most of the hostages were being held.

(Source: pbs.org)

A Lifetime Quest to Finish a Monumental Encyclopedia of Iran

Ralph Ellison wrote for 40 years without finishing his novel “Juneteenth.” Antoni Gaudí labored 43 years on the Sagrada Família basilica in Barcelona, but construction continues today. And in the annals of grand quixotica, Ehsan Yarshater [director of the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University] also deserves a prominent chapter.

At 53, he embarked on his magnum opus, a definitive encyclopedia of Iranian history and culture. At 75, he started looking for a successor. He didn’t find one so he kept going himself. Now he’s 91. He’s up to “K.” […]

Unlike a conventional encyclopedia, which briefly summarizes existing knowledge, Mr. Yarshater’s work, Encyclopedia Iranica, is producing original scholarship. “Most of the articles require research,” said Mr. Banuazizi, because they are topics no one has studied in much depth. Mr. Yarshater has raised the bar further. “Our aim is that for each subject,” he said, “we should find the best person in the entire world.” […]

In 1961 Mr. Yarshater was appointed to teach Iranian studies at Columbia, the first full-time professor of Persian at an American university since World War II. He is known for a series of immense undertakings: He was the general editor of a 40-volume translation of al-Tabari’s 10th-century history of the world; editor of some of the Cambridge History of Iran; and the founding editor of a classic multivolume series on Persian history and language. In the mid-1990s he was troubled that Persian poetry — in his view, his people’s greatest cultural contribution — was being ignored. Most English speakers are familiar with Omar Khayyam, but they do not know about the 13th-century Rumi or the 10th-century Ferdowsi, who wrote “Shahnameh,” a national epic of 50,000 couplets.



So he embarked on a new 20-volume collection of Persian literature. “That was when I realized I was suffering from a kind of disease,” he said with a smile. “If something is to be done, I have a feeling that I should start doing it.”

Iranium in its entirety (trailer)

From Wikipedia:

Iranium is a 2011 documentary that explores the Iranian nuclear program as it pertains to strategic threats against the West, and Islamic fundamentalism in Iran. Featuring footage with Iranian leaders and interviews with 25 leading politicians, dissidents, and researchers, the film discusses Iranian foreign policy and Iran – United States relations, including the Iran hostage crisis and the 1979 Iranian Revolution and takeover by Ayatollah Khomeini to what it refers to as “the brutal nature of the Iranian regime to its own citizens, and the Iranian people’s desire to rejoin the international community.”

CRITICISM

The film has been widely criticized for accuracy by independent news source Tehran Bureau, on the PBS Frontline website. The claim is that “most of the analysts interviewed in the film are drawn from two neoconservative Washington think tanks…”, the Center for Security Policy and Foundation for Defense of Democracies.  

You can read the full Tehran Bureau critique here, but I still think it’s worthy of your time. Watch it.

February 11 is the day that the Shah’s regime fell in 1979 and Nelson Mandela walked free in 1990.

—

(Source: twitter.com)

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.