It has been a long time since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when the US and Iran broke off diplomatic relations. A lot has happened around the globe during these two decades and the dramatic challenges that both governments have had to face have delayed any warming of relations between these two rich and powerful countries. With the election of Iranian president Mohammed Khatami, many Iranophiles have had hopes that relations between the two countries, distanced with extreme distrust, would somehow be resumed and the damage fixed. This does not seem to be happening, and, if it is, it is an extremely slow process, as perhaps, it must. But there needs to be some added initiative.
On February 11th, Iran will celebrate its national day, when much attention will be focused on the founding of the republic. For me, it is a chance to remember the wonderful years I spent living and working in Iran, a country rich in just about anything you can think of. This is the twentieth year of the revolutionary regime, and it seems to be there to stay. It was two decades ago when the Americans were kicked out of Iran, and it has been almost twenty years since the American embassy there was seized and hostages taken. It seems that the time is ripe to make a new effort to normalize relations.
For the western expatriate living in Iran during the late seventies, there were signs of the impending revolution but these could easily be ignored. The western communities were caught off guard by the revolution, even though there were occasionally some rather nasty things happening there from time to time. But generally, we, who were living and working there, were isolated from the real facts of life.
One evening, while waiting in an Iranian friend's car, a group of enthusiastic young men ran out of a mosque into the night shouting "God is great!" It struck me as odd that they would be this energized so late in the evening. I noticed nothing peculiar until I began moonlighting at the Keyhan Times around the time of a cinema fire in a southern city in Iran. I first heard of the tragedy on the radio, but when a reporter who attended the funeral returned with photographs of the bodies of the victims, I knew somehow things would never be the same again. The emotional outpouring of grief at the funeral was reached an apex and suddenly the country changed its usually charismatic face. It was then that I began to observe other signs of things to come.
What really struck me one day late in the summer of '78, as I was walking along a street, passing a wall that had been erected to cover an excavation site, was graffiti written in both Farsi and some English. What focused my eye in one corner of the wall, nearly half a city block long, was the clear, cool inscription, "Yankee, Go home!" I was sobered. Actually, I had to remind myself that I, even though I had never truly thought of myself as one, too, was a Yankee. And in fact this message was for me. I kept pondering the question, wondering if the writer and his ilk could actually mean me! Well, it did not take a very long time for me to be absolutely sure because those same words, that sentence rose in prominence and eventually covered many entire city walls as well as hung from building on cloth that was several floors wide. The rest, as is often said, is history.
In '79, the shah, the final ruler of Iran, left; Imam Khomeini returned, and the long, very bloody war with Iraq began, endured and finally ended. New hope has appeared on the horizon with some overtures by the Clinton White House and Iranian President Khatami, but the potential relationship has not been even partially realized yet. There is a lot to be resolved, and it is time for both sides in this argument to sit down and come to terms with each other. The US is the remaining superpower, and Iran is a very potent regional power. Both countries would definitely benefit from a fresh start. It is time for the current state of affairs to end.