Persia

It is less than 2 weeks ago when the late night news announced that James Earl Carter has been admitted to a palliative care unit in the US at age 98. This meant little to my life partner sitting on the couch with me but for me the juxtaposition of this news against my impending trip to Iran was a remarkable coincidence.

Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer and governer of Georgia became the 39th President of the United States in 1976. He was a decent human being but a weak president who became one of the few single term presidents of the US and his presidency was largely ended by the Iranian Revolution of 1978-1979. As a young adult these events unfolded right at the beginning of my political consciousness and remain a very vivid memory of that time.

The west knew Iran as Persia before 1979 and to me this is always a more mellifluous name than Iran. Prior to the revolution Iran was ruled by Shah Pahlavi. By all accounts he was a corrupt dictator, a descendant of royal lineage whol sold out the oil assets of Persia to the west. The oil crisis of 1973 resulted in massive price rises for oil none of which trickled down to the Persian masses. The resulting civil unrest toppled the Shah and into the power vacuum flew the Shiite leader in exile Ayatollah Khomieni.

Khomeini rapidally established a theocratic state under the strictest interpretation of Sharia law. What followed was a breathtaking repression of western norms, harsh punsihments for the most minor transgressions. The images of men hanged in public hanging off large cranes by the roadside was an eye opener to me then. Forty years on and having seen the atrocities of Al Qaeda and ISIS these pale by comparison but it was a precursor to these events.

Television brought images to our screens, bodies decomposing on cranes, the daily demonstrations and burning of American flags in the streets of Tehran as the US was seen to be a supporter of the deposed shah. The final nail in Carter’s presidency was the storming of the US embassy the capture and imprisonment and subsequent torture of 66 Americans for 444 days. An ill fated resue mission left crashed helicopters in the Iranian desert and Carter lost the next presidential election. 

In the forty years since Iran has remained a repressed state. The people regret the new regime as evidenced by the recent mass demonstrations following the death of Mahsa Amini for not wearing her head scarf correctly. Iran sponsers terrorism around the world ranging from AlQaeda to Hezbollah to separatists in the civil war in Yemen. The intellectually challenged president George W Bush actually got it right when he put Iran into the 3 states as the Axis of Evil!

Tonight I am in Tehran. Tomorrow I will walk the streets for independent sight seeing. The next day as part of a tour I will set foot into the former US embassy now a training centre for revolutionary guards. Now I am in transit in Dubai in the Emirates lounge sipping fine French Champagne which, in Iran, would be an offence punishable with imprisonment. The whimsical in me would say that that is a sobering thought!