Read Online Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran by Elaine Sciolino - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elaine Sciolino
Tags: Political History
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of demons and dreams, of unlimited power and unlimited promise.
Officially, America is Iran’s worst enemy. Among its “crimes”: fomenting a military coup in 1953 that restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the throne; bolstering him with billions of dollars in arms sales over the next quarter-century; tilting toward Iraq in the war against Iran; failing to resolve financial disputes dating from the hostage crisis; weakening the Islamic Republic with economic sanctions.
In February 1982 I toured the war-ravaged Iranian city of Dezful with Iranian officials eager to show how they had recaptured the city from Iraq a few months before. My Iranian guide pointed out a vast yard where a pregnant Iranian woman had been killed by a Soviet-made missile. After she was killed the neighbors came out and chanted, “Death to America,” the guide said.
“If she was killed by a Soviet missile, why didn’t they shout ‘Death to Moscow’?” I asked.
“Because it is America who benefits by the war,” he replied.
In other words, if you’re America, you never win.
At the same time, the United States remains a fantasy Promised Land for many Iranians, the land of Baywatch and billionaires and an easy life in Los Angeles, where hundreds of thousands of Iranians have settled. Many Iranians, even those on very limited incomes, own illegal satellite dishes that give them instant access to American television. Even without satellite dishes, I have picked up CNN in Bushehr on the Persian Gulf because Dubai is so close. I once asked an eighteen-year-old middle-class high school student who had never traveled outside Iran how he came to speak such colloquial English and he replied, “CNN.”
American CDs, videos, and computer programs are pirated and sold on the streets for a fraction of their price in the United States. E-mail is more widely available in Iran than in many other Middle Eastern countries. A friend once bought software on the black market for $10 that would have cost $1,500 in the United States.
Even after Bill Clinton imposed an economic embargo on Iran in May 1995, American goods did not disappear. They just got more expensive. Under Iranian customs regulations, Iranians entering the country are allowed to bring in one appliance, which has led to a lively importation of refrigerators, washing machines, and dishwashers. During a visit to the holy city of Qom I found a shop selling knockoffs of Wrangler blue jeans just down the street from the main shrine, one of Iran’s holiest sites.
Almost every Iranian I have ever met has a relative living in the United States. And even those Iranians who rail most about American policy seem to genuinely like Americans. At the height of the American embassy seizure in 1979 and 1980, the same Iranian demonstrators who chanted angry slogans about the “den of spies” in the mornings followed me down Ferdowsi Avenue in the afternoons asking me to help them get visas or contact their relatives in Los Angeles or Dallas.
I saw that love-hate attitude again years later on a slow-moving German-made ferry on a 110 degree day in the middle of the Persian Gulf. In Iranian eyes, one of the worst American “crimes” was committed in July 1988, a month before the end of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq. An American naval cruiser, the USS Vincennes, had mistaken an Iran Air civilian airliner for a hostile military aircraft and shot it down as it flew over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people on board. Every year since, the Iranians have ferried families of the victims and journalists to a ceremony at the point twenty-five miles into the Persian Gulf where the plane hit the water.
I went along one year, and a group of young women in chadors, whose relatives died in the crash, discovered that I was an American. But instead of venting anger, they shyly touched me and wanted to have their pictures taken with me. I was the first American they had ever met, and they were endlessly curious.
Officially, America is Iran’s worst enemy. Among its “crimes”: fomenting a military coup in 1953 that restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the throne; bolstering him with billions of dollars in arms sales over the next quarter-century; tilting toward Iraq in the war against Iran; failing to resolve financial disputes dating from the hostage crisis; weakening the Islamic Republic with economic sanctions.
In February 1982 I toured the war-ravaged Iranian city of Dezful with Iranian officials eager to show how they had recaptured the city from Iraq a few months before. My Iranian guide pointed out a vast yard where a pregnant Iranian woman had been killed by a Soviet-made missile. After she was killed the neighbors came out and chanted, “Death to America,” the guide said.
“If she was killed by a Soviet missile, why didn’t they shout ‘Death to Moscow’?” I asked.
“Because it is America who benefits by the war,” he replied.
In other words, if you’re America, you never win.
At the same time, the United States remains a fantasy Promised Land for many Iranians, the land of Baywatch and billionaires and an easy life in Los Angeles, where hundreds of thousands of Iranians have settled. Many Iranians, even those on very limited incomes, own illegal satellite dishes that give them instant access to American television. Even without satellite dishes, I have picked up CNN in Bushehr on the Persian Gulf because Dubai is so close. I once asked an eighteen-year-old middle-class high school student who had never traveled outside Iran how he came to speak such colloquial English and he replied, “CNN.”
American CDs, videos, and computer programs are pirated and sold on the streets for a fraction of their price in the United States. E-mail is more widely available in Iran than in many other Middle Eastern countries. A friend once bought software on the black market for $10 that would have cost $1,500 in the United States.
Even after Bill Clinton imposed an economic embargo on Iran in May 1995, American goods did not disappear. They just got more expensive. Under Iranian customs regulations, Iranians entering the country are allowed to bring in one appliance, which has led to a lively importation of refrigerators, washing machines, and dishwashers. During a visit to the holy city of Qom I found a shop selling knockoffs of Wrangler blue jeans just down the street from the main shrine, one of Iran’s holiest sites.
Almost every Iranian I have ever met has a relative living in the United States. And even those Iranians who rail most about American policy seem to genuinely like Americans. At the height of the American embassy seizure in 1979 and 1980, the same Iranian demonstrators who chanted angry slogans about the “den of spies” in the mornings followed me down Ferdowsi Avenue in the afternoons asking me to help them get visas or contact their relatives in Los Angeles or Dallas.
I saw that love-hate attitude again years later on a slow-moving German-made ferry on a 110 degree day in the middle of the Persian Gulf. In Iranian eyes, one of the worst American “crimes” was committed in July 1988, a month before the end of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq. An American naval cruiser, the USS Vincennes, had mistaken an Iran Air civilian airliner for a hostile military aircraft and shot it down as it flew over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people on board. Every year since, the Iranians have ferried families of the victims and journalists to a ceremony at the point twenty-five miles into the Persian Gulf where the plane hit the water.
I went along one year, and a group of young women in chadors, whose relatives died in the crash, discovered that I was an American. But instead of venting anger, they shyly touched me and wanted to have their pictures taken with me. I was the first American they had ever met, and they were endlessly curious.
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