Letter from Iran
POLICANO, JOSEPH D.
office very seriously. Even before her swearing-in, she was already at work. She took a flying trip to Europe to attend a special meeting of U.S. envoys before coming back to the briefings...
...But, just as our own Supreme Court takes note of election returns, in today's climate the ruling mullahs presumably know that they would risk a bloody uprising if they dared to bring down the elected government...
...My wife and I live in the house Hale and Lindy occupied...
...we don't have any of the social problems that are destroying your society...
...Joseph D. Policano has worked and traveled extensively in the developing world...
...Speaking in flawless English (and giving an answer I suspect he has used many times), he said, "We are rigid in our beliefs and practices and many people criticize us for this, especially those in the West and certainly you Americans...
...While I have no doubt that Iran is slowly moving toward the West and certainly will find total acceptance by Europe within a few years (and perhaps by America after that), its deep strain of religious fundamentalism and spiritualism can never be ignored...
...the hotel staff seemed embarrassed by it...
...Constitutionally, true power rests with the Vali-e Faqih, or Supreme Leader, now Ayatollah Ali Khameini...
...we don't have shelters for battered women because we don't have battered women...
...we don't have an AIDS epidemic...
...I met a dozen or more college graduates who had taken jobs as stock boys in markets, or as clerks, waiters, and bus boys--and were happy to have them...
...But over the entrance to the government-owned hotel where I stayed in Shiraz was a sign with three-foot-high letters proclaiming, "Down with U.S.A...
...We know how earnestly the Holy Father seeks answers day-by-day, weekby-week, month-by-month...
...Incongruously, twenty feet from the sign Iranian Airlines proudly displayed a huge model of one of its sleek jumbo jets--a Boeing 747...
...It would do a lot to combat the pervasive culture of cynicism--cynicism that runs deep in the mind of the general public and is fed by the concentration of the media on scandals and the public's appetite for them...
...Under Iranian law, Khatami could become a puppet, since the entire elected government can be dismissed by the ruling council of mullahs, a self-perpetuating body of men charged with insuring that Iranian laws conform to Islam...
...We don't have a drug problem [not quite true, according to others in Iran...
...The pressure to change is coming from within, generated by an economy that in 1996 saw prices rise as much as 50 percent (1997's has been a more manageable 10 percent), while job opportunities shrank...
...To me, politician is not a dirty world and public service is a noble calling...
...Officially classed by Washington as a rogue nation that supports terrorism, Iran is taking steps to move back into the community of nations...
...Public office is not the refuge of scoundrels...
...we don't have tens of thousands of unmarried teen-age mothers...
...One said to his friend, "Can you imagine this...
...This shadow community gives Washington a small-town feel and is supportive to its emissaries...
...Traffic is congested, the air is polluted, and the police are everywhere...
...In this police state, it surprised me that I was able to travel freely and that many Iranians approached me to chat...
...It will be instructive to observe and cooperate with this process and to watch the preparations for what he calls the 'Great Jubilee Year--the year 2000.'" In all the celebrations before Ambassador Boggs took off for Rome, there was an interesting subtext--the acknowledgment of the strengthening factor of a seldom-recognized community in Washington--the skein of interconnections and relationships of the many families who have come here for public service of one kind or another...
...When they learned that I was an American (they expected a European), it was their turn to be surprised...
...or any Western country, but all, perhaps by rote, supported Hezbollah's struggle against Israel's control of southern Lebanon...
...At her swearing-in by Vice-President Albert Gore, Jr., Lindy Boggs alluded humorously to a picture of herself holding him--she hoped lovingly-when he was only four...
...They would know more about the sacrifices and rewards of political life...
...On Israeli-Palestinian affairs, he repeated what I came to recognize as the party line: American policy is 101 percent in favor of Israel and is dictated by rich American Jews...
...Even in a brief visit, it was evident that Iran is changing...
...we don't have abused children or unsafe schools...
...they may stage parties at home featuring Western music, co-ed dancing, perhaps some liquor or (more common now) some drugs, by slipping a bribe to the police...
...And the model was only a few feet from a sign giving the rates for the hotel--in U.S...
...Of these, all but one (of whom more below) deplored the state of the economy and blamed the mullahs for mismanagement and corruption...
...envoys before coming back to the briefings and language preparation at the State Department...
...They spoke favorably of the United States...
...They are allowing Americans here...
...Unfortunately, the whole idea of public service has been devalued and diminished in this country by what a friend of mine calls the 'cynicism industry,' and something precious has been lost...
...I had substantive conversations with about thirty Iranian men (a foreigner approaches an Iranian woman at his peril...
...Commonweal | 0 January 16,1998...
...It is from such a community of public service that Ambassador Boggs came and a surety that she will continue to serve and find in service her reward...
...His father had served with her husband in the House and the families were close...
...If that neighbor/enemy suspects that a private home is being used for romantic liaisons, the cops will surely come calling...
...The election of Seyed Mohammed Khatami to the presidency last year certified the yearning for change...
...But more important are the global goals and the global issues that are of equal concern to us and to the Holy See lasting peace, science used for the betterment of mankind, solutions to the critical issues posed by refugee problems, global warming, the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, human rights, the illegal drug trade...
...Think about that, please, and tell me if your right to dance and drink alcohol or look at women half-naked or read political commentary in a press that is as self-censored and self-limiting as any in the world compensates for the sicknesses that are killing your country...
...But we don't murder a million babies a year through abortions...
...Muslims had been shocked by the excesses of the Shah's "Americanization" program, which introduced prostitution and other vices on a grand scale into the country...
...Some of the older men who had worked for American companies in the Shah's time missed the money they had earned but did not regret the Islamic revolution...
...As president he has continued to curry favor by getting out in the street and "pressing the flesh," something no previous president had done, while making unannounced visits (though the media are always there) to schools, hospitals, and public works...
...If a wife is ever hit by her husband it is her family who punishes him and then if there is anything left of him we throw him in jail...
...we don't have homosexual marriages...
...The phone sometimes still rings with calls from people seeking help, the help they were sure they would get from their representatives...
...She has this to say about the purpose of the office she now holds: "Of course the Vatican is still a great listening post...
...Often, however, affluent young Iranians can skirt these regulations...
...dollars...
...Though himself a mullah, as minister of culture Khatami had gained a reputation as an open-minded intellectual...
...Every Tuesday as few as 1,000 or as many as 50,000 believers come to the Jamkaran mosque near Qum to await the return of their Imam Sahib-e-Zahum, who they know is traveling throughout the world and whose return to the mosque will signal a renewed life for all those present...
...The Iranians I met were bristling under the oppression that the mullahs have imposed on them for the past twenty years...
...None of the men I spoke with believed that Iran sponsors terrorist acts against the U.S...
...Israel has the right to exist but is an imperialist nation that seeks to dominate first Palestine, then Jordan, and soon the entire Middle East...
...Lindy Boggs's son-in-law, journalist Steven Roberts, husband of ABC anchor Cokie (Boggs) Roberts, says, "I wish every member of the media had the kind of relationship to a political family that I enjoy...
...In a toast at another event, Linda Johnson Robb, daughter of the president, who has known Boggs since she herself was a little girl, and whose husband now serves in the Senate, called the ambassador her "other mother...
...I didn't meet anyone else like Mojtaba...
...An exception to this seeming consensus was Mojtaba (his first name), a fortyish lawyer in Shiraz (a graduate of Atlanta's Emory University), introduced to me by my guide when I asked him to find someone who would support the mullahs...
...much of that margin could be attributed to his popuCommonweal 9 January 16, 1998 larity with women...
...ifteen days in Iran showed me that Iranians obey a new commandment: "Fear thy neighbor'--and with reason...
...He left more than 1,000 years ago...
...Most politicians seek office to serve--as Hale and Lindy did--not to satisfy their egos or to fatten their wallets...
...We know that the widespread work of the church in almost every part of the world gives the Vatican a unique perspective on these things...
...His most recent article for Commonweal was a report from Cuba (September 8,1995...
...A jealous or vengeful neighbor can have them thrown in jail if they drink alcohol, host a party mingling men and women, own a TV dish, possess anticlerical literature, or hold hands with a fianc6e in public...
...An American here by himself...
...Once a cosmopolitan city--too cosmopolitan, perhaps, since its vices contributed substantially to the Shah's overthrow-Tehran is now a boring place, with virtually no cultural life, and certainly no "night life...
...He got nearly 75 percent of the vote, swamping four conservative opponents...
...There are many countries accredited to the Holy See, and not all of them have relations with the United States...
...I asked him whether Iran as a theocratic state is not a throwback to a different era...
Vol. 125 • January 1998 • No. 1
