Convoluted Iranian Politics

I chose an article by my co-workers father, Kambiz Zarabi, who is a geologist and intellectual, Mr. Zarabi from 1969-1979 was the Iranian Chief of the Bureau of Mines as well as CEO of Doreen IMCO Inc., the leading mining company in Iran (working side-by-side with Haliburton, yes that Haliburton), and was forced to leave his homeland of Iran during the 1979 Cultural Revolution. Since then Mr. Zarabi has focused his attention on philosophy and the politics of his onetime homeland of Iran and how it relates to his new homeland of the United States.

“Iran: Who’s Country is it, Anyway?” is largely critical of the way the Western media has manipulated the current situation which is going on in Iran, as clearly stated “it is only in the international arena where the results of Iran’s presidential elections does truly make a difference. This difference has absolutely nothing to do with Iran’s actual attitude or policy shifts, but everything to do with the portrayal of Iran by the international propaganda media.” What he means by this is that the country is very set in its ways and needs lot of time to change, even a new more moderate president would not be able to take on these changes without the clerical structure going along with and helping it into action.
Despite what seems like the majority of people demonstrating in the streets this is far from the actual situation, most of these people are city-dwelling, middle-class and professionals (a distinct minority of the population). The majority of the people are, poor urbanites and those who still live a rural existence, still happy with their government enough to “[pay] with their sweat and blood to protect the homeland” during the Iran-Iraq War (which the West sponsored under Saddam Hussein); these people are “the ones you’d seldom see in these massive protest demonstrations.”

Iran is one of the most important countries in the Middle East, and before 1979 America had a very large hand in their development for the previous three decades, since we have become the arch-enemy, the social significance should not be hard to recognize here. Although the U.S. gets a very filtered interpretation of events around the world, especially in the Middle East, Mr. Zarabi gives us several good reasons why this is important to us which may not seem completely apparent to the average U.S. citizen.
The first reason is that Iran cannot be seen as soft, which is why the election was rigged to keep the hardliner Ahmadinejad in power, to Israel or America, because it could cause Israel to “[attack] Iran’s nuclear power plant or some other strategic target to draw Iran into some retaliatory response.” What we would do in America is to justify Israel’s pre-emptive action with some sort of twisted propaganda which would make Iran look like the instigators.
The second reason, even if there was an over throw of the government, like in 1979, what government would come out of it, “should we have a dictatorship of the proletariat, or should we just let the masses plough the field so that the pretend-Trotskyite could then direct their destinies as he or she sees fit? How different would that be from a conservative theocracy or a totalitarian monarchy?” Mr. Zarabi shows his contempt for those who may not be as realistic as himself (or Machiavellian as he admits), who may think that somehow all of a sudden in the Islamic-dominated Middle East there can be true “freedom and democracy.”
Despite this he maintains that without his help they have done “rather well”, pointing out that the town he grew up in now has a technical university and a tourist resort built since the time he left in 1979, again showing his worth as an unbiased observer, as unbiased as is possible anyways.