By Pastor Reza Safa
Sep. 27, 2007
The Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has in a very short time succeeded in becoming one of the world’s most spoken about presidents of our time. This is not because of some feats of greatness, but rather because he is a controversial person touching a few very sensitive nerves of the Western societies. He has become an enigma to the intellectuals and the politicians of our modern time. People do not know whether they should hug him or slap him, so to speak. The treatment he received by Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, is a great example of the confusion surrounding Ahmadinejad’s phenomenon in this country. Mr. Bollinger must have been under a lot of pressure to open up his “welcome speech” to Ahmadinejad with such words as: “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated." Then again this gesture of unfriendliness and unprofessionalism expresses the frustration that many people feel towards the Iranian President.
The question is how should the United States and its allies treat Iran? Should they hug it or slap it?
Let’s first of all understand the socio-political condition of Iran before Ahmadinejad’s era, because that is the key to understanding what we are facing. Right after the 1979 Islamic revolution of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic government of Iran faced the test which threatened its very existence, the 8-year war with Iraq (1980 -1988). The United States at that time was very concerned about the spread of the Islamic revolutionary ideology of the Iranian government. They saw Saddam as a force that could stop Khomeini, so they supported him against Khomeini's regime, not realizing the consequences.
In reality the war and the knowledge of US involvement with Iraq* strengthened the Islamic ideology in the hearts of millions of Iranians and prolonged the reign of the Islamic regime.
Most people do not realize that the Iranian revolution was not religious in nature in the beginning. The majority of the people who caused the fall of the Shah were the intellectuals of the Iranian society. There was no leadership, and Khomeini seized the last moment of the revolution and became its sole creator and its leader. If you were to walk in the streets of Iran right after the revolution of 1979, you could see hundreds of groups had set up shops in the streets, selling their version of the new found Iran -- communists, Marxists, Leninists, liberals, etc. Saddam’s attack on Iranian soil became the catalyst that brought forth the Islamic zeal and ideology of Khomeini. The promotion of Islamic zeal was the only way Khomeini could win against Saddam’s well armed forces since the Iranian military had been almost disintegrated after the revolution. Khomeini announced on national TV that he needed young volunteers to run into the mine fields. Tens of thousands of young Iranians became martyrs sacrificing their lives. It is said that nearly one million Iranians died in that conflict. And Khomeini’s regime portrayed the United States as the sole aggressor and sponsor of that war. Thus a seed of hatred was planted in the hearts of millions of Iranians against the “great satan.”
After the war, Khomeini’s regime had to deal with the internal crisis of a very frustrated population. Khomeini began a reign of terror, executing and cleansing Iran from everything that was un-Islamic. Khomeini enacted the tales of Islamic warfare and bloodshed that used to only be read during the Islamic mourning weeks. Death and destruction were no longer in the Islamic history books, but now it had become a reality for millions of people in Iran. Iran became a police state with the ideology of a 7th century Arabian culture -- something that the Iranian people abhor greatly.
And that was the beginning of the death of Islam in Iran. The economy was in shambles with 400 percent inflation and a high rate of unemployment. Almost everyone in the country had become poor with the exception of the families of the regime’s elites. With a young population of almost 70% under thirty years old, Iran became a pot of boiling frustration and anger, a condition ripe for another revolution. In this environment Mr. Ahmadinejad was brought forth with his ideas of reformation of the Islamic ideology and bringing Iran to the forefront of the world’s super powers.
Ahmadinejad was to be a gap between the new Iranian faces and the old Mullahs of the 7th century culture. He lived a humble lifestyle, attracting the poor and the needy and giving them the promise of a better life by partaking of the Iranian oil revenues. The question is will he deliver his promises of a better Iran? And what will he do to deliver that promise?
TO BE CONTINUED….
* Sources:
http://www.iranchamber.com/