Iranian state behavior has confounded every administration since the Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah in 1979. Every administration since Jimmy Carter’s has confronted hostage taking, terrorism, and a steady drumbeat of anti-American incitement. Every administration, however, up to the present one has taken pains to differentiate between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian people. The underlying implication was that the United States held the Iranian people in great esteem—indeed, the United States received tens of thousands if not a few hundred thousand Iranian emigrants during and after the revolution—but did not recognize the Islamic Republic as their sole representative.
Hence, President George W. Bush spoke only of Iran — and not the Islamic Republic — in his 2008 Nowruz greeting. Speaking on Voice of America, Bush continued:
…The people of the United States respects the people of Iran; that we respect the traditions of Iran, the great history of Iran. We have differences with the government, but we honor the people, and we want the people to live in a free society. We believe freedom is a right for all people and that the freer the world is, the more peaceful the world is. And so my message is, please don’t be discouraged by the slogans that say America doesn’t like you, because we do, and we respect you.
Contrast that with President Barack Obama’s first Nowruz address:
I would like to speak directly to the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran… For nearly three decades relations between our nations have been strained. But at this holiday we are reminded of the common humanity that binds us together. Indeed, you will be celebrating your New Year in much the same way that we Americans mark our holidays — by gathering with friends and family, exchanging gifts and stories, and looking to the future with a renewed sense of hope… So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran’s leaders. We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran, and the international community. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect. You, too, have a choice… So on the occasion of your New Year, I want you, the people and leaders of Iran, to understand the future that we seek….
Honest people can debate Obama’s diplomatic philosophy, but the difference in philosophy is clear: Both presidents spoke to the Iranian people, but Obama recognized the leadership of the Islamic Republic as the true representatives of the Iranian people. This is unfortunate, because while Iranian civilization is great, rich, and multilayers, the Islamic Republic is more an anomaly than a permanent fixture, just as the Soviet Union was not the permanent representative of the Russian people.
Iranians have every right to be proud. While the regime bends over backward to claim sole legitimacy as representative of the Iranian people and the broader Persian and Shi‘ite communities, most Iranians want little to do with the Islamic Republic. As Patrick Clawson and I discuss in our book Eternal Iran, ten percent of Iranians—an extraordinary proportion in the pre-internet, pre-cell phone-era—may have participated in the Islamic Revolution, but they were motivated more out of antipathy for the dictatorial Shah and unease at uneven economic growth rather than support for Khomeini himself. As one of my tutors while I was studying in Isfahan explained, “We were promised an Islamic democracy, but what we got was neither Islamic nor a democracy. But by then it was too late.”
That said Iranians inside Iran and out are fiercely proud of their heritage. Iran was central if not the home to myriad empires—the Achaemenids, the Seljuqs, Buyids, Safavids, and more, and Iranian leaders became patrons of art and culture. Iran is a remarkably cosmopolitan country, especially relative to all its neighbors. Walking around Pakistan, Iraq, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and Afghanistan, bookstores are rare. In Iran, they are ever present, and not simply filled with religious books or conspiratorial nonsense. More importantly, many Iranians have actually read them and are familiar with the classical literature about love, wine, sex, and the pre-Islamic era that the Islamic Republic’s leading officials look at with disdain.
Iran was also a diverse country, both in terms of ethnicity and religion. In many ways, the country was the original melting pot. Now, however, many contemporaries exaggerate tolerance toward religious minorities. The conservative clerical predecessors of the Islamic Republic incited hatred toward Jews and Baha’is, often leading to bloody pogroms in major Iranian cities like Tabriz and Mashhad. Many Iranians shrugged off such animosities and worked to extricate themselves from the grip of the clergy in their daily lives. While fiercely nationalistic and rightly proud, Iranians also sought good relations with a variety of countries. In the nineteenth century, Nasir al-Din Shah reached out to Austria to help him modernize education and his military. During the first decade of the twentieth century, there was an Iranian obsession with Japan, a rising power that Iranians saw as their equal. The shahs also turned to Belgium and the United States to help organize and modernize their finances. Smaller, more distant powers, the Iranian leadership believed would help Iran stay independent of Russian and British imperial ambitions.
During the Cold War, there was of course polarization. Iran was in the pro-Western camp, and distrustful of the Soviet Union that, after all, had tried to seize a vast portion of it after occupying much of northwestern Iran during World War II. There was also sectarian distrust, but that did not stop relations between Iran and the Arab states. Indeed, while sectarianism might have been one wedge, this was offset by the common distrust of the Shah and the Arab kingdoms versus the new revolutionaries that were sweeping away monarchies. Israel and Iran, too, shared cordial relations.
Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, however, long had an obsession with both Israel and, more broadly, the Jews. On the first page of his treatise, “Islamic Government,” which enshrined the theological arguments which underpinned Khomeini’s revolution, he declared:
From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda and engaged in various stratagems, and as you can see, this activity continues down to the present. Later, they were joined by other groups, who were in certain respects more satanic than they.
Not every Iranian harbored Khomeini’s distrust toward Israel and the Jews. Anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment peaks in the frontline states with Israel. Just as almost every Israeli had someone in their family or knew someone well who was killed in an Arab terrorist campaign or Arab-Israeli war, many residents of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan had similar experience. Their larger population might have diluted the rate of direct experience, but it is in the frontline states with Israel where the Israel obsession is highest. Almost every Iranian, in contrast, has someone in their family or knew someone well who was killed in the war with Iraq. Iranians may broadly sympathize with Palestinians in the conflict with Israel, but they do not on a broad-scale care deeply. (When I lived in Iran sporadically while studying language and doing dissertation research in the mid-1990s, I was asked once whether I was Jewish. I acknowledged I was. The University of Tehran student, who apologized profusely for asking what she knew was a ‘rude’ question, then explained that she had gone to Kindergarten with a Jew, and she could introduce me to her so that I might meet the community). Nor did I hide the fact that I had been to Israel: After all, I had Israel stamps in my passport just as I had Iranian stamps. Ordinary Iranians, or at least those whom asked, were far more curious than hostile. Many acknowledged having at one point or another listened to Voice of Israel Persian service for an alternate take from what their own leadership might preach.
Back to the United States. Many Iranians fled the Islamic Revolution for the shelter of Europe or the United States. Initially, they took pains to differentiate between their ‘Iran-ness’ and the Islamic Republic. These lines blurred somewhat among the next generation(s) as some younger members of the Diaspora, for better or worse, began to associate Iran and the Islamic Republic as synonymous. Many do not, though, and recognize that protecting their heritage and enhancing their influence need not mean associating themselves with the values, obsessions, and hatreds promoted on a daily basis by the Islamic Republic.
Herein lies the chief determinant, therefore, of those activists and lobbyists who promote Iranian pride versus those who actually advocate for the Islamic Republic. The Twitter feeds of Trita Parsi, Reza Marashi, and others associated with the National Iranian American Council betray an almost obsessive hatred toward AIPAC and Israel, and darkly suggest that American Jews with whom they disagree harbor dual loyalties. Their obsession strays well beyond those issues that have to do with disputes over Iran’s nuclear program and, indeed, Iran itself. With discussion of ‘warmongers’ and ‘dignity,’ they mirror much of the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic’s state-controlled media arms. Iran is not a natural and necessarily implacable enemy of Israel, but the ideological dictatorship that has governed Iran for the last 36 years is. How telling, it is, that some of those who claim to speak on behalf of Iranians so blatantly seek to conflate Iranian pride and empowerment with solidarity toward the Islamic Republic.
