Another World is Possible
Parvin says she still reflects often about the incident in Isfahan. "We were saved by the humanity of this young man who was our guard. I tell everyone I owe my life to Muktari." Notably, the same circumstances a year later would almost certainly have found them dead, she says. In time idealistic people like Muktari would be purged from the security ranks. As the Islamic Republic consolidated its power, it would become far less likely that an individual would act on his own conscience in such circumstances. Parvin adds that she never saw Muktari again.
As a young activist, Parvin believes she made many mistakes, most of which involved underestimating how difficult a path would confront anyone advocating feminist and socialist ideas in post-shah Iran. But she wants people to remember the 1979 revolution was about more than the rise of Khomeini or the taking of U.S. hostages by his supporters.
"The rule of Ayatollah Khomeini, the birth of the Islamic Republic, was not a foregone conclusion," she says. "When the shah fell, there were many different political groups vying for influence. There was a great spontaneous democracy that erupted in which everybody had a shot at trying to win popular support. In the first few elections, there were socialists and other progressives on the ballot. Left-wing opponents of Khomeini advertised and were reported on in the major newspapers. But none of the left groups were elected to parliament. In reality, they were mostly on the fringe, with few roots in the country. As the fervor of the early days after the shah's overthrow began to wane, the ayatollahs realized they didn't have to put up with these people. They could dispense with them. That was their thought. But at the beginning, they were-n't sure whether they could move against the secular left and progressives. They weren't sure of their power."
As in 1979, Iran today remains a country oppressed by contradictions. Poverty and class inequality re-main. Women are still subject to blatant legal discrimination. Democratic liberties are violated with regu-larity. Evin prison remains. But what also stands unchanged is a U.S. foreign policy that for decades has considered whether democrats or dictators govern Iran as secondary to whether Iran functions as a friendly client state of American foreign policy.
In a sense, the rise of the Islamic Republic represents the historical blowback of decades of U.S. support to a "westernizing" tyrant who systematically crushed all expressions of secular and progressive dissent. Consider as well that Saddam Hussein's military assault on Iran in 1980 was not opposed by the Carter ad-ministration and was later actively supported by the Reagan administration. The consequent war climate only further enabled Iran's clerics in their campaign to crush independent politics and democratic dissent.
Now in 2007 the American public is expected not to think about the long-term impact of U.S. foreign policy on Iran. Instead, we're supposed to live in the here and now of duplicitous White House saber rat-tling about the "Iran threat." In the world of Fox News, it is as if the ayatollahs did indeed just parachute down from outer space. It is a political framework in which not only historical illusion, but irony abounds. Thus, the U.S. Senate sees fit to deem Iran's Revolutionary Guard organization a "terrorist" group guilty of interfering in Iraq, while this same Senate continues to fund the overwhelming interference of 160,000 U.S. troops in the affairs of Iraq.
Meanwhile, talk media hawks such as CNN's Glen Beck and Fox News host Sean Hannity issue nightly bombast about how Ahmadinejad must be stopped before he attacks Israel or develops nuclear weapons. Never mind that any serious Iran analyst knows Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel rhetoric is just regurgitated Khomeini rhetoric from the 1980s. Anti-Zionist, yes. A call for war, no. But what if it turns out Iran is se-cretly developing uranium enrichment for weapons purposes? Would this be the action of "crazy" people, or a strategic defense undertaken by a country situated between two nations recently invaded by the United States, and which itself is branded by the invader nation as a member of a global "Axis of Evil?" With Is-rael widely believed to be nuclear armed, would it be incomprehensible if Iran's leaders did choose to de-velop such weapons? Such is the inexorable, maddening logic of modern global conflict. Is it any wonder now that so many thinking people are left weary with cynicism and hopelessness at the violent state of world affairs?
Myself, I'll take some heart from the story of Parvin and Muktari. In the drama of their meeting, they remind us of a world beyond corrupt shahs and reactionary ayatollahs, neo-con lunatics and war-mongering talk show hosts. This is the more humble world of ordinary people who define their lives not for opportun-istic political reasons or love of power or because they have a lucrative media contract, but because they believe in basic justice.
This is the world of the ordinary Iranians who six years ago held a moment of silence for the victims of September 11. It is the world of Americans who marched on October 27 to bring American troops home from Iraq. It is the world of both Sunni and Shi'a Iraqis who want both foreign troops out of their country and an end to sectarian violence. And it is the world now of people who have the power to stop a new war with Iran.
This is not a world a man like Dick Cheney understands. But as Parvin did on a long-ago summer night, it is a world we catch glimpses of now and then. It remains a world worth believing in.
" Parvin Najafi is a pseudonym.
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