April 28, 2008 Journal Entry

Susan preparing for Iran

My bags are packed-well, my carry-on suitcase and my Betterback purse. We're taking only carry-on to prevent missing-luggage hassles and because we need to be able to carry all we take. I could only get six peace lamps in, to my disappointment, but I'm not sure I'll be able to carry the suitcase very far at all!

Three things I feel the need to emphasize as I leave:

• Unlike Christian Peacemaker Team delegations I've taken and you've likely read about, this is a diplomatic journey. We travel to Iran to see the faces of our enemies, but not to confront them about our differences in politics or worldview. (That may happen in some discussions, but it is not a primary goal.) I do not agree with many things the Iranian government has done internationally, with their human rights record, with the laws that say a woman is worth half a man. However, we have no actions planned that place us in opposition to the government.
• Yes, I'm scared. It would be silly of me not to be unnerved by a trip 1/3 of the way around the world to a culture I know very little about and a language I can't speak. But I'm much more scared that if the good people of this world do not take risks for peace, we shan't any of us enjoy it.
• The United States and Iran have been rattling swords and dropping bombing words for many years and will continue to do so while we're away. Expect it. Please DO continue to contact your legislators, asking for diplomatic relations rather than incendiary language. (http://peace.mennolink.org/resources/susaniniran/iranrelate.html)

• Iran's borders are ancient, based on the Persian Empire, not created by European colonialism. The people have centuries-old national pride. Sometimes this comes across as hubris when Iranians demand respect from the global community, when they point out their regional importance, when they refuse to be told what to do.
• The United States CIA overthrew the hugely popular, democratically elected President of Iran in 1953 and installed a Shah who haughtily threw gala parties for U.S. diplomats while the people of Iran suffered deprivation. Published 50 years later, the chronology and implications of this overthrow are documented in All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer (http://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/0471678783) I listened to the book on tape while knitting and traveling and could hardly keep my mouth from falling open at times, at the sheer audacity of actions by the United States.

"With breezy storytelling and diligent research, Kinzer has reconstructed the CIA's 1953 overthrow of the elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, who was wildly popular at home for having nationalized his country's oil industry. The coup ushered in the long and brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah, widely seen as a U.S. puppet and himself overthrown by the Islamic revolution of 1979. At its best this work reads like a spy novel, with code names and informants, midnight meetings with the monarch and a last-minute plot twist when the CIA's plan, called Operation Ajax, nearly goes awry. A veteran New York Times foreign correspondent and the author of books on Nicaragua (Blood of Brothers) and Turkey (Crescent and Star), Kinzer has combed memoirs, academic works, government documents and news stories to produce this blow-by-blow account. He shows that until early in 1953, Great Britain and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company were the imperialist baddies of this tale. Intransigent in the face of Iran's demands for a fairer share of oil profits and better conditions for workers, British Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison exacerbated tension with his attitude that the challenge from Iran was, in Kinzer's words, "a simple matter of ignorant natives rebelling against the forces of civilization." Before the crisis peaked, a high-ranking employee of Anglo-Iranian wrote to a superior that the company's alliance with the "corrupt ruling classes" and "leech-like bureaucracies" were "disastrous, outdated and impractical." This stands as a textbook lesson in how not to conduct foreign policy."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When I first read the title, I assumed the author was WAY overreaching to claim that the United States' overthrow of Iran led to the horrors and problems of the current Middle East. However, Kinzer's main point is that the successful overthrow of one government led the United States to believe this was a viable foreign policy. You can fill in the rest of history-Vietnam, Panama, Iraq….

• The Iran-Iraq war was horrendous for Iran. I've read estimates of 200-300,000 people killed and up to a million injured and displaced. Most everyone lost a brother/uncle/grandfather in the war and these martyrs are revered. That the United States provided Iraq with weapons, including biological, drove a deeper wedge between Iran and the United States.
• After 9/11, the Iranians mourned for the United States. They do not consider themselves Arabs and thus separated themselves from the culprits. In fact, since they hated both the Afghan and Iraqi governments, they were delighted the United States overthrew them. The Iranians see themselves as vital to the overthrow of Afghanistan. They recently helped broker a deal between some of the Shi'i factions in Iraq. Both of these facts point to the importance of Iran in the region and the benefit to the globe if the United States and Iran re-establish diplomatic relationships.
• I haven't studied Iran's relationships to Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Israel nearly enough, and haven't touched on the USSR or Nazi Germany.

April 14, 2008 BBC News reported Ebadi claimed she is receiving death threats-again and more. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7347047.stm  However, she is quoted as saying, "When you believe in the correctness of your work, there is no reason to be afraid of anything."

May Ebadi inspire us to do the bit of good we can.

Blessings-I'll write when I can!