The Folly of Attacking Iran: Lessons from History

The Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi talks to David Batty about the regime’s abuse of its population - and how the west needs to abandon the threat of war if it wants to win over Iran’s people and bring change

David Batty
guardian.co.uk, Friday June 13 2008

Shirin Ebadi at a media forum in Germany this month. Photograph: Felix Heyder/EPA

The Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi is not a woman easily stopped in her tracks - she has been held in jail and faced repeated death threats, but continues to speak out against the abuses of the theocratic regime. On the doorstep of the BBC’s Bush House in central London, though, an American tourist waves the Nobel peace laureate and her entourage aside, complaining loudly: “Do you mind? We’re trying to take a picture!”

It serves, perhaps, as a reminder for Ebadi - who has spent the day being treated like a VIP by the BBC World Service - of the challenge she faces in attracting western interest to her cause.

With the international community fixated on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Ebadi says there is dwindling scrutiny of human rights in her homeland, and the hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has taken advantage of this to increase repression.

“Since the world started focusing on the nuclear programme, the human rights situation in Iran has worsened every day,” says Ebadi, who won the Nobel prize in 2003.

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By JOSHUA BARTON

June 14, 2008 | 6:12 p.m. CST

COLUMBIA — Lily Tinker-Fortel clenched the passenger door armrest as her Iranian taxi weaved in and out through the congestion of cars, motorbikes and pedestrians on Valiasr Street, the longest street in the Middle East and the busiest 12 miles for Tehran’s 13 million residents.

“Imagine a busy street lined on both sides with beautiful, towering sycamores. Miles of sycamores,” Tinker-Fortel wrote in her blog on June 9, 2008, recounting her first afternoon in Tehran.

It was day one of a 12-day, 21-person civilian diplomacy trip that took the 24-year-old peace activist from Columbia to numerous Iranian historical and cultural centers of the villages Qom, Esfahan, and Abyaneh, and the city of Shiraz. Tinker-Fortel, community outreach coordinator for Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, was part of an interfaith delegation that went to Iran in May on a mission of fellowship.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the oldest and largest interfaith organization in the United States, organized the delegation and began their Iranian program in December 2005. According to Leila Zand, director of the organization’s Iran program, the delegation sends civilian diplomats into Iran to meet Iranian civilians, government officials and religious leaders from Iran’s Muslim majority and those in the minority Armenian-Christian, Iranian-Jewish and Zoroastrain communities.

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Attention PeaceWithIran.com users,

Sister Ellen Francis from the Episcopal Order of St. Helena’s Convent in Augusta, Georgia has officially begun a weekly “fast for peace” in regards to Iran and the United States and Israel. Sister Ellen Francis is an American who has traveled the world for peace and human rights activism for many years. She had the privilege of living in Iran for ten years and since then has made many more trips there for civilian diplomatic reasons. I had the honor of going on one such trip with Sister Ellen Francis in March of this year. As one can read from my own personal blogs about the trip, it was a once in a lifetime experience that I will not soon forget. Not only did I gain tremendously as a person from the trip culturally, I believe we made amazing progress as a group in our collected goal of fostering more peace and harmony between the people of the United States and Iran.

As one can clearly see from this website and so many others, there are hundreds of thousands of people all over the world who are taking pro-active steps of action to not only assure that a few ignorant people who happen to currently work for us (think “government employees”) don’t needlessly attack the people of Iran militarily, but are also working to actually create and foster more peace and harmony between our two countries - which is at the end of the day what everyone says they want. Right?

Even the worst of them, the absolute most treacherous, murderous, and caniving monsters in the world today - (think Bush Jr. and Sr., Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Limbaugh, Rove, the Clintons, many of the current “Ayatollahs” serving in the government of Iran, et al. - for more detailed information on the history of some of these heinous names, start your research by studying the Project for a New American Century here), claim that they are “working towards peace.” The problem is that it is hard sometimes to see the logic of a few people’s methods - such as bombing other countries as just one example or sponsoring terrorist acts as another. But at the very least we can agree that “peace and harmony between our countries” is what everyone “claims” to want.

Sometimes it is more obvious when someone’s actions are more aligned with “working towards peace.” The work of groups such as The ANSWER Coalition or UFPJ or Amnesty International or Star’s Edge are all good examples of this. They actually walk the talk. Many more organizations exist and can be found on the TuneInTurnOnHelpOut.org website. Many examples can be found in groups that are even smaller all over the world… sometimes just the actions of ONE.

One such example comes in the form of a beautiful person by the name of Sister Ellen Francis who has begun a weekly “fast for peace with Iran campaign.” I am inspired, moved, and challenged by Sister Ellen Francis’ bold commitment. More information can be found on her own personal blog and in the letter she sent in this week re-printed below. If you want to join her please feel free to visit her blog and email her. And let us know here at PeaceWithIran.com if you also plan on participating.

As always, keep those articles, blog posts, lecture and event notices, activism updates, and other interesting items pouring in - and most importantly keep up the real world actions for peace. Everyday. Do something.

Sincerely,
The Raconteur

Dear Ed,
I’ve started the fast, and am feeling really good. I’ve posted a notice on my blog (ellenfrancis.blogspot.com), and also some advice about fasting. I think that the prayer is the most important part, and that people could join in just doing that, or fasting from one type of food, or partial fasting for part of the time. Maybe on another day, too — Wednesday is the best day for me since it’s our “day off” here in this convent.

Just think of all the people in the world for whom fasting isn’t an option but a WAY OF LIFE.

Isn’t it great that The Call Iran Project in Washington went so well? Carah Ong posted a notice about it on the Fellowship Of Reconciliation Iran listserve.

So let me know if you’d like to join in some way, and I’d be really happy for the publicity through the PeaceWithIran website. The more the merrier, and the more powerful we will be! I’m going to write an article for the Episcopal Peace Fellowship newsletter and maybe for our newsletter too. A few people have left comments on my blog.

Yours in Peace,
Sister Ellen Francis

Tuesday, June 10—Call-in to Congress for Diplomacy with Iran

This is a national action organized by the Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran (www.newiranpolicy.org). Communicating with our representatives is an essential component of our representative democracy! Remember: of the people, by the people, for the people!

*When you call, ask for the aide who handles international affairs or foreign policy. Tell them you’re calling to encourage the Senator or Representative to: (1) Work for direct, unconditional, and comprehensive talks between the U.S. and Iran; (2) Remind them that the U.S. and Iran share common interests in a stable Iraq, Middle East and Afghanistan. (3) And emphasize that just as the U.S. pursued negotiations with North Korea and Libya it’s now time to talk with Iran.

Capitol Switchboard at (202)224-3121 (Also, this toll free number is mentioned in publicity for the event: 800- 788-9372).

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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An important briefing we’re hosting this Thursday in Albuquerque on relations with Iran. If you are in the Albuquerque area (or have friends who do) I hope you’ll join us:

Former Congressman Tom Andrews, National Director of Win Without War
Brigadier General John Johns (ret.),
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan

Thursday, June 5
7:00 PM
Unitarian Church of Albuquerque
Carlisle Boulevard, NE
Albuquerque, NM 87110
(505) 884-1801

Tom Andrews & General John Johns will discuss the harm our current policy toward Iran does to stability in the Middle East and our national security. Without a reversal in the policy of making non-negotiable demands, there can be no progress in resolving outstanding issues with Iran or enlisting its cooperation to achieve stability in Iraq. As it now stands, The Bush Administration’s policy of antagonism toward Iran gives that country’s leaders the maximum incentive to develop weapons of mass destruction and continue to keep the US military tied down in Iraq.
I hope we’ll see you there!

Ryan Anderson
Win Without War

Check out this tasty nugget from Google Video created by former FOR peace delegate and civilian diplomat and filmmaker Margot Smith, Videomaker www.offcentervideo.com. OffCenterVideo@aol.com

An excellent idea of what the trip is like and what the mission is all about.

it is called Listen to Iran’s People: A Call for Peace

Dear friends,
Below you will find a recording of Alicia, Lily and Lynn on KCLU Crosstalk. We had two call in listeners, one of whom just returned from Iran, and another who had been part of civilian diplomacy to the USSR. It was great.
KCLU “Crosstalk” Link
Here is a recording of our interview: http://www.aliciacattoni.com/kclu.mp3

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb