Article originally published in the Washington Post here

The “axis of evil” has no relevance for me when I think of Iran, a country I’ve found to have a human, loving, hospitable face throughout 40 years of encounters. I lived in Iran between 1968 and 1978, and started returning again, this time with peace delegations, in 2005. It is one of the great joys of my life to see the layers of misunderstanding and fear gradually fall away from those who visit Iran today for the first time.

One delegate recently said, “I met a mullah on the street and he was so sweet! Who would think of a mullah being sweet?” Another delegate, well-traveled in the Middle East, said, “Iranians are the most hospitable people I have ever met.”

A Jewish delegate said he had been told to be careful: “They might shoot you if they find out you’re Jewish.” He was amazed to see Jews worshiping openly and walking down a street in Tehran wearing their yarmulkes. He wasn’t shot, but was mobbed by the worshipers at a synagogue who were delighted to find a Jew among us.

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Article originally published in the LA Times here

The possibility of a United States or Israeli war to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been an obsession among foreign policy wonks, diplomats and journalists for some time.

Many Iran experts believe such a war would be a disaster that would fail to halt Iran’s nuclear program. Michael Axworthy (pictured) is one of them.

During the 1970s, the British author and former diplomat traveled to Iran many times while his parents lived and worked there. He joined the British foreign service in 1986, serving as a head of the Iran desk from 1998 to 2000.

Over the last eight years he’s been writing books and teaching about Iran in the United Kingdom. His latest book, “A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind,” was released last month. It traces the country’s history from its earliest days,
emphasizing its religious, intellectual and cultural traditions.

Axworthy graciously agreed to an e-mail interview about Iran and its current confrontation with the West. “The crisis is a result of the hostility that has persisted between the U.S. and Iran since the revolution of 1979 and the hostage crisis.

“But it has its roots in the U.S.-Iran relationship earlier than that, notably in U.S. support for the regime of the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s, and the coup attempted by the British and the CIA against Prime Minister Mossadeq in 1953. The prime reason the clerical regime in Iran might want a nuclear weapon is as a deterrent to the U.S. regime-change policy.”

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Dunham/Associated Press
Reprinted from Original Article from New York Times here

LONDON — After a seven-year legal battle, Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled
Wednesday that the British government was wrong to include an Iranian
resistance group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, on its list of banned
terrorist groups. Lord Corbett, left front, urged celebrating People’s Mujahedeen backers to
sit down Wednesday.

Spokesmen for the group, whose name means People’s Holy Warriors, said the
ruling appeared to leave Britain’s interior minister, Home Secretary Jacqui
Smith, with no further legal recourse but to order Parliament to strike the
group from a list of more than 20 proscribed terrorist organizations under
Britain’s Terrorism Act.

The court’s ruling denied the government’s bid to carry the appeal further,
seemingly closing off recourse to Britain’s supreme appellate body, the
so-called Law Lords. But the British government did not say what it planned
to do.

The People’s Mujahedeen has roots that go back to the Iranian resistance to
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s rule in the mid-1960s. After the 1979
revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini turned against the group, executing
many of its members and driving others into exile. It regrouped in Iraq in
the 1980s and was listed as a terrorist group by the United States in 1997
and the European Union in 2002.
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