Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews Amir Taheri, author of The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomenist Revolution. Taheri is an Iranian-born journalist. Lopez offers a substantial, informative interview with this very astute observer of Iran and Middle East turmoil. Excerpt:
All that Iranians want the U.S. to do is to be true to its own
principles, not to kowtow to the Khomeinist regime, and not to help it
restore its shattered legitimacy. We want Obama to condemn the shooting
of demonstrators in Iranian streets and the rigging of the election,
and to make it clear that he would not shake Ahmadinejad’s bloodstained
hand. We want Obama not to organize a strategic retreat from the Middle
East, which would create a vacuum that the Khomeinists would fill. We
want him not to leave the region’s new and fragile democracies alone
and defenseless against the Islamofascists.
We also want him not to flatter the Islamists by pretending that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were bred in an Islamic theological college. Don’t claim that Islam invented the pen and the printing press along with poetry and architecture — as if the Hellenic, Byzantine, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations could be scripted out of history. Today, the U.S. has a choice: It can side with the Iranian people and invest in a future democratic Iran, or it can beg for a dialogue with the Islamofacists gathered around Ali Khamenei. [more . . . ]
We also want him not to flatter the Islamists by pretending that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were bred in an Islamic theological college. Don’t claim that Islam invented the pen and the printing press along with poetry and architecture — as if the Hellenic, Byzantine, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations could be scripted out of history. Today, the U.S. has a choice: It can side with the Iranian people and invest in a future democratic Iran, or it can beg for a dialogue with the Islamofacists gathered around Ali Khamenei. [more . . . ]