Why Iranians are Visiting Persopolis These Days

By Farhad Saba

The written history of Iran traces her origin as a nation to 2550 years ago. During this time, Iranians have faced a deep sense of identity crisis only twice. The first time was when the army of Islam attacked Iran from the west and overthrew the Sassanid Dynasty over 1350 years ago. The second time was when Islamic-Marxists attacked the essence of her culture from within over 35 years ago. The first attack was devastating for Iranians the majority of whom were Zoroastrians. It took several decades before people assimilated Islam into their way of life, detached themselves from its orthodoxy (Sunnism) and gave rise to Shiism, a form that was in peace with some of their ancient beliefs. In short, Islam was bestowed on them by sheer force under the threat of sword. To this date, many consider Islam as an alien religion and the source of their backwardness. Eventually, Iranians were able to rise again as a nation and contribute to the world culture. Omar Khayam who was born in North Eastern Iran devised algebra; Bu Ali Sina (Avicenna) excelled in medicine, others made major contributions to architecture, astronomy, and chemistry.

The first Islamic attack on Iran was external. An alien army overpowered the forces of the last Shah of the Sassanid dynasty and occupied the country for some time. The second Islamic attack on Iran was more sinister. It was from within. No foreign army attacked Iran, although the Islamists received help from Yasir Arafat's terrorist organization to burn Iranian businesses and kill innocent people in Tehran and other cities. The incident that initiated the internal assault happened in a movie theatre in Abadan, the most prominent oil city in Iran, terrorists chained the exit doors of Cinema Pars from outside and set the theatre on fire. Hundreds of innocent people who were watching a movie perished. Other incidents followed and contributed to the uprising of 1978 in which Islamists took over the reign of the government.

Because it is more difficult to identify the enemy within it is taking well over a quarter of a century for Iranians to understand who attacked them, how they were attacked and what have been the consequences of the body politics turning against itself, and destroying its immune system; its ancient culture. All of this, of course, was more confusing to them because as they were trying to sort things out, Saddam Hussein offered an external attack as well. It was not until after the Iran-Iraq war that Iranians had the time to think about the internal enemy of their culture and its long history.

These days, an increasing number of Iranians, young and old, male and female, are visiting the ruins of Persopolis near the city of Shiraz in south central Iran. For a people who never were particularly interested in domestic tourism this is a new experience. In the past 30 years, the behavior of most of their leaders has been unfamiliar to them both in domestic and foreign affairs. The idea of nuclear research is abstract to most Iranians. They support the government in preserving the right for Iran to pursue such research as a matter of course, but when asked how billions of dollars of expenditure in establishing a nuclear infrastructure is touching their daily lives, they cannot find too many answers if any at all. They come to Persopolis to listen to echoes of the voices of ancient kings and queens bouncing from columns that have stood there for 2550 years in search of an answer.

The answers are not easy to come by. The citizens in Tehran, a city that represents the country not only as the seat of the state but as the most populated and developed, have to contend with unprecedented air pollution. The government has not been able to replace the buses, owned by a state-run company in Tehran, with new ones in recent years. Old buses spew out great amounts of pollutants. Especially in winter-time the demand for city buses increase since more people rely on them for their basic transportation. Tehran is roughly the same elevation as Denver, CO. It has cold and snowy winters. Students and workers, who would normally walk a kilometer or two in other seasons to reach their destination, choose to take the bus during winter. When the union president representing the bus drivers complained about the situation a few weeks ago, he was simply arrested and put in jail.

Ordinary bakers have also been arrested and put in jail for not observing a price ceiling set by the government. The government imports basic staples from abroad, using her oil income, leaving little or no incentive for domestic growers and producers to grow, or produce. These subsidies bring prices higher and increase the rate of inflation. But rice and flour are not the only commodities that the government subsidizes. The second oil producing country in the Middle East has to import gasoline for ordinary domestic consumption. Her oil refinery, the largest in the world, was damaged in war with Iraq almost two decades ago and has not been repaired since.

The government owns and manages refineries, factories, mines and other industrial units. To improve production and living conditions of their workers, there has been lip service paid to return some of these units to their owners who built them before 1978. But no action has been taken so far. The result is not only inefficiency and inability to compete in the world market, but workers in these units have become a source of constant irritation for the government. Workers on a routine basis are denied payment for their work for months. Demonstration in front of offices of provincial governors for lack of pay has become a daily event in different parts of the country. The government's solution is simple and swift. Workers are usually arrested in such demonstrations, given long prison sentences, and are sent to jail.

Bus drivers, workers, and bakers are not the only guests of the jail keepers throughout the country. Jailers are doing brisk business holding journalists and students too. Journalists are frequent guests in prisons. They enjoy no freedom of expression even on mundane issues of the day. They are easily identified and jailed.

University students, who have not been nice, receive one, two or three yellow stars to place on their lapels. The three-starred students simply cannot enter any university grounds, whereas the one and two-starred individuals are on probation for a set amount of time. When jails overflow, some detainees are hanged in public using construction cranes. Iranians wandering about in Persopolis are asking the walls that have withstood centuries of thunderstorms and earthquakes to explain these oddities to them and justify billions of dollars in expenditure on nuclear research while bus drivers, bakers, students, and journalists are jailed for asking simple questions. For whom are these nuclear facilities built?

Visitors to Persopolis might change their focus from their domestic plight to how their country is perceived abroad. This is particularly important to them since Cyrus the Great who ruled the Iranian Empire from the halls of Persopolis became a world figure when he freed the Jews and for his action received a rare and unique mention for a king in the Old Testament. They go to his tomb to ask him how did a country which issued the first declaration of human rights in the name of Cyrus find herself keeping half of her population with virtually no rights? Women since 1978 have become persona non grata in family, civic and business affairs. They are referred to as "pearls in shells;" meaning that they must stay home and attend to household chores.

On their way back from Persopolis, Iranian wanderers visit, in Shiraz, the tomb of Saadi the poet who lived in the 13th century. One of his poems is inscribed at the entrance to the United Nations' building in New York:

Of one Essence is the human race,

Thus has Creation put the Base;

One Limb impacted is sufficient,

For all Others to feel the Mace.

As they meditate in Saadi's presence, they ask him to help them understand why their country is seeking the eradication of another country from the face of the planet. Until the 1978 uprising, Iran had enjoyed a cordial relationship with her Arab neighbors as well as with Israel, since the inception of the Jewish state. Iran and Israel never fought a war. Over the years, they cooperated on many fronts ranging from military intelligence to reviving desert lands for agricultural purposes. The call to take the Jewish nation off the map of the earth is bizarre to a people, who have lived in peace with Jews for thousands of years.

In the past 35 years, during the second Islamic attack to their land, Iranians have become strangers in their own country and hostage to a regime that does not hold their interest in mind. They are reaching to the past, as they have always done at a time of crisis, to regain the meaning of the roots of their civilization, culture and language. These roots are deep and old and trace back to 5000 years ago. They remind them that their role on earth is to help Ahuramazda the sun-god overpower Ahriman the force of darkness. They are reminded they must accomplish this by thinking good thoughts, acting in kindness, and speaking well of others. That is what was inscribed in Sanskrit on ancient tablets some 2550 years ago in and around Persopolis.

Throughout her history, Iran has seen many dark days, but by relying on her deep and solid roots she has always stood up and made her due contribution to human civilization. The current setback is particularly confusing to Iranians (and perhaps others in the world) because the enemy is domestic this time. Never before has Iranian civilization been assaulted with such severity by a few of its own people. Iranians are going through a state of confusion. They do not recognize and relate to the rhetoric that is presented in their name in the international arena, nor do they see why the nuclear project should consume most of their national resources, even if it is harnessing the power of the atom.

Their confusion is doubled, because this time no foreign entity imposed the current conditions on them. They grew tired of the government led by Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and replaced it with a theocracy. They grew tired of the Shah's government not because they detested rights women enjoyed, or the freedom to engage in ordinary commerce, or the ability to become educated at the government expense, or simply enjoy a walk with a friend of the opposite sex in a public park. They thought that the last Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty could offer more of such rights, freedoms, and social services not less. They wanted to expand their freedoms, but inadvertently imposed a regime on themselves that had a totally different agenda.

The goal of the current regime is not Iran and the prosperity, health and wellness of her people. The only objective of the current regime in Iran is imposing an Islamic hegemony throughout the world. Iran is a rich base for this objective. For the ruling ayatollahs, it would not matter if they could project their international aims from a base in Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan. Under slightly different circumstances Shiia ayatollahs, instead of operating from Tehran, could have set their base in Najaf, Iraq. For them, Iran as a nation, a distinct culture, an old civilization, and the birth-place of Cyrus, Saadi and Avicenna is irrelevant. In the past 35 years, they have done their best to eradicate any sign of Iranian identity and replace it with the foreign Arabesque culture of Islam.

Today, Iranians are very reluctant to change the current regime, because they know now that change is not a good objective in and of itself. They know that if they engage in a radical change they have to define what their future could possibly hold. They know defining a viable and desirable political future is not an easy task and not one that can be achieved overnight. They know that they have a long journey ahead of them to become respectable contributing members of the international community without demanding the annihilation of others or imposing a theocracy over the world. They have, however, started this journey by visiting Cyrus and Saadi and reminding themselves who they really are.

Afraid of a resurgent Iran, ayatollahs are making cosmetic concessions. In recent days, the lower house of the Iranian Parliament considered restoring the Imperial Lion and Sun emblem to the entrance of the Parliament's ground. Restoring this ancient secular symbol will not rationalize Iran's domestic or foreign policy. But, it indicates that the ayatollahs have understood that they have gone much too far in making Iran a colony of Islamic imperialism and are making cosmetic changes to appease angry Iranians.

These symbolic changes, however, must be followed with substantial ones. Young Iranians, in order to find the courage and acquire the wisdom in charting a new course for their country, must find a domestic model; one that is in tune with their historic past and their desire to become economically self-sufficient contributors to international peace and stability. They can find this model in the 1906 constitutional revolution when Iran's body politic was transformed from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, establishing an independent representative legislative body and an executive body to enforce the laws as defined by peoples' delegates.

The primary difference between the 1906 revolution and the 1978 uprising is that the former had a positive objective and desired a new form of government that was superior to what existed before, while the latter had no objective other than ousting the Shah. In the 1960s and the 1970s in discussion after discussion, proponents of a regime change ranging from the educated elite and graduates of outstanding universities in Paris, London, and Moscow, not to mention Berkeley, CA or Cambridge, MA, to rich and influential merchants in Tehran's famous Bazaar, to the middle class government workers, and vocal young Islamic-Marxist revolutionaries argued that any regime would be better than the regime of the Shah. The uprising had no positive objective or ideology, nor did it cultivate the concept of a desirable form of government for the future. The conventional wisdom was that the major task was to replace the regime. Whatever would ensue could be as bad as the Shah's government, many argued and believed.

Everyone, including the ayatollahs was surprised at how fast the Shah's government crumbled, since he did not put up a significant resistance to curb further bloodshed. What was more astonishing to the ayatollahs was that because the uprising had no clear organization, positive objective, or political ideology they could easily walk in, fill the vacuum, and take over the reins of power. The educated elite were flabbergasted when the ayatollahs, who were more surprised by their success than perhaps anyone else, stayed in Tehran instead of moving to the holy city of Qum in which they would normally reside, consolidated their power and expanded it as time went by. Gradually, the professional class was eliminated in the government and sensitive positions were given to clerics to use the resources of Iran for expansion of Islamic imperialism by means of terrorism.

Having experienced this course of events, young Iranians, with considerable justification, are reluctant to make major changes in the government until they are certain of what a future system should look like. Their task is not easy. They are cut off from normal sources of political discourse and discussion. They are told on a daily basis that the only valid form of government is the theocracy imposed by the ayatollahs, which by definition is dogmatic, dictatorial and has non-negotiable principles. One simply cannot doubt the word of God as interpreted by the grand ayatollahs. The universities have been "purified" by expelling any faculty member who has any desire for independent thinking. For the first time in its history, a cleric has been appointed as the Chancellor of the University of Tehran, a symbolic act by the government removing any doubt that the Islamic regime believes that the university is not a place for independent thinking. Under such dire circumstances, young Iranians have developed a wait-and-see attitude.

What greatly assisted the 1906 revolution, in which – by the way – some patriotic Shiia clerics played a positive role, was a stream of pamphlets, novels, newspapers and other literature written by Iranians in Europe. These were smuggled to Iran in a steady stream. Today, young Iranians, more than anything, need multiple sources of information to provide them with an opportunity to exercise their independent thinking in an atmosphere in which such an act is strictly prohibited and punished by prison and death. They need to learn about different forms of governance, and various economic systems. They need to know about globalization, and how their country is isolated and is deprived of participating in normal commerce. They need to be reassured that their ancient belief in individual freedom is true, that freedom is their inalienable right and that they can achieve domestic peace and economic prosperity by desiring and achieving freedom. They also need to learn about the machination of democracy; skills that American students acquire in high school, such as running a meeting according to the Robert's rules of order, higher level skills of running elections, establishing parliamentary rules, etc.

Reaching out to Iranian youths by