Why am I – an American – saying anything nice about the Iranian people?
Well-known American travel writer Rick Steves – who normally focuses on Europe – visited Iran to find out what the people are really like.
As Steves says in a 10-minute C-span video, it is common to demonize the enemy to try to justify war, but we should “get to know people before we decide to bomb them”.
While the hard-liners in Iran are problematic, I – like Steves – am simply trying to show other sides of Iran than normally shown in the war-loving American media (and disruptive forces on the web), especially given that:
Security experts – including both hawks and doves – agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
The U.S. has been claiming for more than 30 years that Iran was on the verge of nuclear capability
Top American and Israeli military and intelligence officials say that – even if Iran did build a nuclear bomb – it would not be that dangerous, because Israel and America have so many more nukes. And see this
According to Stanley Weiss, Iranian diplomats in Europe saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust and Iran served as an escape route for Iraqi Jews fleeing to Israel after the 1948 war for Israeli independence. Weiss also says that Iran was one of the first Muslim countries to establish diplomatic and trade relations with the state of Israel
The CIA admits that the U.S. overthrew the moderate, suit-and-tie-wearing, Democratically-elected prime minister of Iran in 1953. He was overthrown because he had nationalized Iran’s oil, which had previously been controlled by BP and other Western oil companies. As part of that action, the CIA admits that it hired Iranians to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its prime minister
If the U.S. hadn’t overthrown the moderate Iranian government, the fundamentalist Mullahs would have never taken over. (Moreover, the U.S. has had a large hand in strengthening radical Islam in the Middle East by supporting radicals to fight the Soviets and others)
The U.S. armed and supported Iraq after it invaded Iran and engaged in a long, bloody war which included the use of chemical weapons. Here is former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam Hussein in the 1980′s, several months after Saddam had used chemical weapons in a massacre:
The U.S. helped fund Iran’s nuclear program
The U.S. has been actively planning regime change in Iran – and throughout the oil-rich Middle East and North Africa – for 20 years
The decision to threaten to bomb Iran was madebefore 9/11