Iran

Iran

It's Not the Bombing ...

An Iranian Christian considers U.S. threats to her country

[7-26-08]

Noushin Darya Framke, a Presbyterian from Iran, has been a member of the PC(USA) for 20 years. She is an elder in Newark Presbytery and a member of the Presbytery's Middle East Task Force.

She has been a member of the Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns of PC(USA) and has been its chair for the last year. In addition she is active with the Israel-Palestine Mission Network. She writes this, however, as an individual, to describe how she feels these days, hearing the constant calls for the U.S. to “bomb bomb Iran.”

This Fourth of July was the 20th anniversary of my U.S. citizenship. We could have had a great party, as we have a perfect view of our town’s fireworks from our patio. But with the drumbeat to war with Iran reaching a crescendo, and being an Iranian-American, I had little to celebrate.

Last week, I heard a quote that Condoleezza Rice had said Iran should stop its saber rattling. This took my breath away. The country of my birth, where most of my family still lives, has been morphed into the aggressor. Most Americans don’t realize that the constant call to “bomb bomb Iran” has been just what the conservatives pray for in Iran. All the various factions there, who are normally at each other’s throats, are united against a common enemy now. This anti-Iran fervor in the U.S. is what has kept the Islamic Revolution alive there. And not just alive; we are caught in a perfect Hegelian dialectic with one side keeping the other going in an escalating way. The result is today’s Iran, thirty years on, still acting like the revolution was yesterday. The frenzy of revolution is alive and well because we are feeding it everyday.

When I arrived in Washington, DC, as a college freshman in 1978, I had no idea that my first year here would be a year of revolution back home. When revolution broke out in the winter, my father told me to take a semester off and come home and witness history. My mother told me, “Don’t you dare! You stay put.” I stayed, finished school, got married and watched the Iran/Iraq war on television. It was five years before I saw any family and seventeen years before I went home with my American husband and children. My girls could not go with Iranian passports as citizenship is bestowed through the father, so we went with 3 blue passports and one red one. (Iran won’t recognize my US passport). Iranian immigration was kind and welcoming to my American family but not to me. And that set the tone for my first trip home after all those years. Seven weeks in Iran showed me that it was not the country I left; it finally sank in that I had lost my home. When we came back to America, I was finally able to call New Jersey home and say “I’m from New Jersey,” albeit with a lump in my throat.

In slow motion, I watched the Soviet Union shed its label of “evil empire” and eventually, sitting in my den watching the State of the Union Address – now as an American – heard my president put Iran in the “Axis of Evil.” It’s been downhill from there. Slowly but surely, Iran has become America’s biggest enemy and today is the only member left of “the axis.” I still remember the euphoria of stepping foot on American soil for the first time in August of 1978. In the cab ride on my way to my college dorm from National Airport, I marveled at the pristine neo-classical buildings and monuments in Washington. I had just spent a week in Rome and the juxtaposition was jarring – it felt like I had landed in a cleaner surreal version of Rome. “How odd,” I thought, as an eighteen-year-old, “Why would America want to emulate Rome?”

Flash forward thirty years. My eighty-year-old father visited from Iran this year. We were in Pier-1 looking for placemats and he was wandering the store in amazement, surprised that so many products were imported from Vietnam. With melancholy, he said, “Look! Even the Vietnamese are back in good graces.” In an odd way, that gives me hope. Maybe one day I will shop on Route 10 and find beautiful handblown Iranian glassware on the shelves. Until then though, I will have to keep telling my story of how hard it’s been to live here while torturously being turned into the enemy. My maternal family are Armenian-Iranians, and I am Christian. Even as a Christian, with a vast church support system, life has been hard and getting harder emotionally. My kids just roll their eyes when I get security checks at airports; I can only imagine what it’s like for Muslim Iranians these days. And men have it worse, of course, as they are perceived as more of a threat.

Knowing the Persian Spirit as I do, all this saber rattling by the hawks in Washington gives the Iranians more pride. They take it as an honor to be standing against a massive superpower's hegemony over Middle East oil. A naval blockade, if approved by our Democratic Congress, will only be seen as a declaration of war. In 1979, after a short Prague Spring in Iran, the Muslim clerics seized power and consolidated it quickly when Saddam Hussein attacked Iran. All Iranians, religious and secular, put their differences aside under Khomeini to protect the country. We now know that the U.S. helped Hussein thinking that would kill the revolution and eliminate Khomeini. Ironic; that eight-year war is what made Khomeini.

Iran is at a similar crossroads now but with a bigger attacker lurking. Iranians, no matter how ethnically diverse (Iran is a melting pot too), will be united against an outside attack, even if it’s not bombs but a naval blockade. Do we mean to help Iran’s hard-liners? Because that is what a naval blockade would do. Who will be “made” in Iran this go-around?

In 1980 my father said, “It will be fifty years before Iran can recover from this revolution.” Last week, there seems to have been the fluttering of some doves and a sign of hope that the U.S. might open an “Interests Section” office in Tehran. Dare I raise my hopes? Or do I keep living in limbo, alienated from both countries and waiting for an October surprise?

Do you have thoughts, comments to share?
Please send a note!

Urge Congress: Talk, Not War, with Iran

From the Witness in Washington Weekly, issued by the Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on July 8, 2008. [Posted here 7-10-08]

The dangerous climate created by the current tensions between the United States and Iran could lead to war. Both governments need to commit to diplomatic talks to ease the tensions and reduce the likelihood of armed conflict.

A majority of the U.S. public supports diplomacy with Iran, but members of Congress have introduced legislation that could lead to war. New legislation in the House (H.Con. Res. 362) calls for new sanctions on Iran and demands that the president initiate a partial land, sea, and air blockade of Iran. A blockade, even a partial one, is an act of war.

At last month’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) a resolution was adopted opposing preemptive war with Iran, either by the United States or any other nation. The Assembly supported peaceful, diplomatic means of resolving the tensions developing as a result of Iran’s pursuit of its nuclear program. And, it called for direct, unconditional negotiations between the United States and Iran with the goal of finding and implementing a peaceful resolution.

The threat of a war with Iran will continue to grow if the United States does not take steps now to open communication with the Iranian government.

Urge your representative to oppose more sanctions and any blockade against Iran.

Ask your representative to oppose a House vote on H. Con. Res. 362. If he or she is already a cosponsor, as her or him to take themselves off. If he or she is not a cosponsor, urge him or her not to become one.

Tell your representative that imposing more sanctions and blockades, when direct talks have not even been tried, risks propelling the United States into another unnecessary war that would have disastrous consequences.

For a list of cosponsors, click here >>

Message to Non-sponsors of the Resolution

I am relieved to see that you have not cosponsored H. Con. Res. 362. But I am very distressed to see that 169 members of the House have cosponsored this resolution, which demands that President Bush initiate an international blockade to cut off all refined petroleum product supplies to Iran and subject all cargo entering or leaving Iran to stringent inspections. Such action, by whatever name it is called, would be widely construed as an act of war.

I urge you to resist all calls to cosponsor H. Con. Res. 362. Please oppose a House vote on the resolution.

Threatening war with Iran has not resolved the current dispute over nuclear policy. Talking might. Five former secretaries of state have urged the United States to open a dialogue with Iran to find common ground and resolve differences. Business groups such as USA*Engage have argued that legislation calling for sanctions on Iran, rather than talks, is counterproductive.

Please do not agree to cosponsor H. Con. Res. 362, and do all that you can to see that this resolution does not come to the House floor for a vote.

Message to Co-sponsors of the Resolution

I am concerned to see that you are have cosponsored H. Con. Res. 362, which demands that the president initiate an international blockade to cut off all refined petroleum product supplies to Iran and subject all cargo entering or leaving Iran to stringent inspection requirements. Such action, by whatever name it is called, would be widely construed as an act of war.

I urge you to withdraw your co-sponsorship of H. Con. Res. 362 and oppose a House vote on the resolution.

Please remove yourself from H. Con. Res. 362 and act to see that this resolution does not come to the House floor for a vote.

General Assembly Guidance:

The 218th General Assembly (2008) directs the Stated Clerk to send the following resolution to the President of the United Stated of America and the United States Congress:

1. That the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) supports a peaceful, diplomatic means to resolve the tensions developing as a result of Iran’s pursuit of its nuclear program, between the United States and Iran.

2. That the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) calls for direct, unconditional negotiations between the United States and Iran with the goal of finding and implementing a peaceful resolution.

3. That the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is opposed to preemptive military action by any nation against Iran.

4. That the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) calls for a renewed effort at all levels — people-to-people, interfaith groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and government — to help the United States and Iran eliminate the tensions that have existed between our two nations and to unite the American and Iranian people in a common effort to solve the problems of poverty, illness, and climate change.

The official General Assembly record of this business may be found at http://www.pc-biz.org/Explorer.aspx?id=2133.

From your WebWeaver, on Oct. 8, 2007

We regret the necessity of opening a new web page to deal specifically with the growing danger of some kind of US military action against Iran, but that seems to be the way it is.

If you have thoughts or information of your own, or helpful resources on the subject, please send a note, and we'll add them here.

Iran invites Bush to speak at university [10-8-07]

After all the media excitement about the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to New York a couple weeks ago – and the unusual (is that an adequate description?) reception given to him as he spoke at Columbia University, there seems to be little media interest in what happened soon thereafter. Admadinejad told Iran’s state-run TV network that if President Bush ever visits Iran, "we will allow him to make a speech" at a university there.

Find the report in the Washington Post >>

Witherspooner Gordon Shull, of Wooster, Ohio, called this to our attention with this quick note:

Media coverage of Ahmadinejad’s visit surprisingly ignored two important items. First, in his talk at Columbia, he invited Columbia students to visit any of Iran’s (400?) academic institutions in Iran. Second, I saw a glancing item on CNN that he had invited Bush to speak at the university in Tehran. I haven’t seen this reported anywhere else. Did it happen? If it did, isn’t this hugely important? Would the media leaders just decide that it was a gimmick, not worth reporting?

Your Webweaver has not been able to find any further mention of this interesting side-light on Ahmadinejad’s visit. We are not aware of any eager response from the White House. Or any other response, for that matter.

Three Presbyterians join in dialogue with Iran’s Ahmadinejad [10-3-07]

Three Presbyterians were among a delegation of more than 100 religious leaders who met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sept. 26 during his visit to the U.S.

The two-hour dialogue, held at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York City, was the second in a series of conversations focused on establishing a dialogue between people of faith in the United States and the people and government of Iran.

The dialogue was organized by the Mennonite Central Committee and endorsed by American Friends Service Committee, Church of the Brethren General Board, Mennonite Central Committee, Pax Christi, Sojourners/Call to Renewal, the World Council of Churches' Commission of the Church on International Affairs and other groups.

The Rev. Victor Makari, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s coordinator for the Middle East and Asia Minor and Jinishian Memorial Program, said the denomination's primary purpose for participating in the dialogue is the PC(USA)'s ongoing commitment to our church partner in Iran.

Other Presbyterians taking part in the discussion were Joel Hanisek, the PC(USA)'s United Nations representative, and Catherine Gordon, associate for international issues in the PC(USA) Washington Office.

The full report from Presbyterian News Service >>

Iran: The Next Quagmire [9-5-07]

As the US escalates its threats against Iran and its assertions of hegemony over the Middle East, reporter Chris Hedges gives us a sharply moral perspective on what’s going on.

He begins:

The most effective diplomats, like the most effective intelligence officers and foreign correspondents, possess empathy. They have the intellectual, cultural and linguistic literacy to get inside the heads of those they must analyze or cover. They know the vast array of historical, religious, economic and cultural antecedents that go into making up decisions and reactions. And because of this—endowed with the ability to communicate and more able to find ways of resolving conflicts through diplomacy—they are less prone to blunders.

But we live in an age where dialogue is dismissed and empathy is suspect. We prefer the illusion that we can dictate events through force. It hasn’t worked well in Iraq. It hasn’t worked well in Afghanistan. And it won’t work in Iran. But those who once tried to reach out and understand, who developed expertise to explain the world to us and ourselves to the world, no longer have a voice in the new imperial project. We are instead governed and informed by moral and intellectual trolls.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. He spent seven years in the Middle East and reported frequently from Iran. His latest book is American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

The rest of the story >>