Mike0812
05-09-2004, 11:03 PM
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Those Friendly Iranians
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
TEHRAN, Iran
Finally, I've found a pro-American country.
Everywhere I've gone in Iran, with one exception, people have been exceptionally friendly and fulsome in their praise for the United States, and often for President Bush as well. Even when I was detained a couple of days ago in the city of Isfahan for asking a group of young people whether they thought the Islamic revolution had been a mistake (they did), the police were courteous and let me go after an apology.
They apologized; I didn't.
On my first day in Tehran, I dropped by the "Den of Spies," as the old U.S. Embassy is now called. It's covered with ferocious murals denouncing America as the "Great Satan" and the "archvillain of nations" and showing the Statue of Liberty as a skull (tour the "Den of Spies" here).
Then I stopped to chat with one of the Revolutionary Guards now based in the complex. He was a young man who quickly confessed that his favorite movie is "Titanic." "If I could manage it, I'd go to America tomorrow," he said wistfully.
He paused and added, "To hell with the mullahs."
In the 1960's and 1970's, the U.S. spent millions backing a pro-Western modernizing shah — and the result was an outpouring of venom that led to our diplomats' being held hostage. Since then, Iran has been ruled by mullahs who despise everything we stand for — and now people stop me in the bazaar to offer paeans to America as well as George Bush.
Partly because being pro-American is a way to take a swipe at the Iranian regime, anything American, from blue jeans to "Baywatch," is revered. At the bookshops, Hillary Clinton gazes out from three different pirated editions of her autobiography.
`It's a best seller, though it's not selling as well as Harry Potter," said Heidar Danesh, a bookseller in Tehran. "The other best-selling authors are John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steel."
Young Iranians keep popping the question, "So how can I get to the U.S.?" I ask why they want to go to a nation denounced for its "disgustingly sick promiscuous behavior," but that turns out to be a main attraction. And many people don't believe a word of the Iranian propaganda.
"We've learned to interpret just the opposite of things on TV because it's all lies," said Odan Seyyid Ashrafi, a 20-year-old university student. "So if it says America is awful, maybe that means it's a great place to live."
Indeed, many Iranians seem convinced that the U.S. military ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq are going great, and they say this with more conviction than your average White House spokesman.
One opinion poll showed that 74 percent of Iranians want a dialogue with the U.S. — and the finding so irritated the authorities that they arrested the pollster. Iran is also the only Muslim country I know where citizens responded to the 9/11 attacks with a spontaneous candlelight vigil as a show of sympathy.
Iran-U.S. relations are now headed for a crisis over Tehran's nuclear program, which appears to be so advanced that Iran could produce its first bomb by the end of next year. The Bush administration is right to address this issue, but it needs to step very carefully to keep from inflaming Iranian nationalism and uniting the population behind the regime. We need to lay out the evidence on satellite television programs that are broadcast into Iran, emphasizing that the regime is squandering money on a nuclear weapons program that will further isolate Iranians and damage their economy.
Left to its own devices, the Islamic revolution is headed for collapse, and there is a better chance of a strongly pro-American democratic government in Tehran in a decade than in Baghdad. The ayatollahs' best hope is that hard-liners in Washington will continue their inept diplomacy, creating a wave of Iranian nationalism that bolsters the regime — as happened to a lesser degree after President Bush put Iran in the axis of evil.
Oh, that one instance when I was treated inhospitably? That was in a teahouse near the Isfahan bazaar, where I was interviewing religious conservatives. They were warm and friendly, but a group of people two tables away went out of their way to be rude, yelling at me for being an American propagandist. So I finally encountered hostility in Iran — from a table full of young Europeans.
link (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/opinion/05KRIS.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20O p%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fNicholas%20D%20Kri stof)
AND
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Those Sexy Iranians
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 8, 2004
HIRAZ, Iran — If, as the poet Philip Larkin observed, sex began in 1963, it has finally reached Iran over the last year.
True, girls and women can still be imprisoned for going out without proper Islamic dress. But young people are completely redefining such dress so it heightens sex appeal instead of smothering it.
Women are required to cover their hair and to wear either a chador cloak or an overcoat, called a manteau, every time they go out, and these are meant to be black and shapeless. But the latest fashion here in Shiraz, in central Iran, is light, tight and sensual.
"There are some manteaus with slits on the sides up to the armpits," said Mahmoud Salehi, a 25-year-old manteau salesman. "And then there are the `commando manteaus,' with ties on the legs to show off the hips and an elastic under the breasts to accentuate the bust."
Worse, from the point of view of hard-line mullahs, young women in such clothing aren't getting 74 lashes any more — they're getting dates.
"Parents can't defeat children," Mr. Salehi mused. "Children always defeat their parents."
And that's what Iran's baby boomers, a wave of 18 million people 15 to 25 years old, are doing. They will transform their country, just as baby boomers in the West changed America and Europe. I don't think Iran's theocracy can survive them, for I've never been to a country where young people seem more frustrated.
The regime's problem is that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini exhorted Iranians to have more children, and they responded — today, 60 percent of the country's population was born after his Iranian revolution. And these young people are determining social mores and carving out a small zone of freedom for themselves.
In one sense, the relaxation in clothing requirements is superficial, and some Iranian women have scolded me for asking them about head scarves when they are more angry about discrimination in divorce, child custody and inheritance rules. But the clothing rules affect every woman every day and raise the central question in Iran's future: should a few aging male mullahs still determine the most basic and intimate elements of every Iranian's life?
From that vantage point, it looks to me as if the revolution is sputtering. The mullahs are refusing to accept real democracy, but they are giving in to popular pressure in some areas. The draft is immensely unpopular among young men, for example, so this year the hard-liners shortened the service requirement. More important, individual Iranians are reclaiming their individuality and their autonomy — and how they dress is the best measure of that.
The morals police no longer order women to cover up stray hairs. These days, the fashion is for brightly colored, glittery see-through scarves, worn halfway back on the head.
"It's possible head scarves will be gone in another year or two, the way things are going," said Amir Suleimani, a scarf salesman in the Tehran Bazaar. "God willing."
No wonder conservative newspapers in Tehran denounce Iranian women for strolling around "nude."
The baby boomers include Saghar Tayebi, a 17-year-old in Isfahan who wore a tight manteau with high slits, embroidered jeans and a red headband. Her mascara was hefty and her lipstick bold, and her sleeves were rolled up to reveal lots of bracelets. Lots of hair escaped her scarf. But when I asked her whether she dreamed of wearing Western-style skimpy clothing, she looked aghast.
"We totally reject that," she said indignantly. "We don't want that freedom."
Conversations with young people like Saghar suggest that youths want to remain good Muslims, and that some are happy enough in an Islamic republic — but that, above all, they want to laugh and love. Many are not overtly political, nor sure exactly what kind of government they want, but they do know that this isn't it.
"We want fun," declared Tannaz Haj Hosseini, a 20-year-old university student who was out with her boyfriend in Tehran. "There's no joy here."
I protested that her nail polish and see-through scarf — not to mention the boyfriend — underscored the progress in Iran. A few years ago, she would have been lashed.
"I don't compare myself with 10 years ago," she said. "I compare myself to what I could have and don't."
Ayatollahs, look out.
link (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/opinion/08KRIS.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20O p%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fNicholas%20D%20Kri stof)
Those Friendly Iranians
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
TEHRAN, Iran
Finally, I've found a pro-American country.
Everywhere I've gone in Iran, with one exception, people have been exceptionally friendly and fulsome in their praise for the United States, and often for President Bush as well. Even when I was detained a couple of days ago in the city of Isfahan for asking a group of young people whether they thought the Islamic revolution had been a mistake (they did), the police were courteous and let me go after an apology.
They apologized; I didn't.
On my first day in Tehran, I dropped by the "Den of Spies," as the old U.S. Embassy is now called. It's covered with ferocious murals denouncing America as the "Great Satan" and the "archvillain of nations" and showing the Statue of Liberty as a skull (tour the "Den of Spies" here).
Then I stopped to chat with one of the Revolutionary Guards now based in the complex. He was a young man who quickly confessed that his favorite movie is "Titanic." "If I could manage it, I'd go to America tomorrow," he said wistfully.
He paused and added, "To hell with the mullahs."
In the 1960's and 1970's, the U.S. spent millions backing a pro-Western modernizing shah — and the result was an outpouring of venom that led to our diplomats' being held hostage. Since then, Iran has been ruled by mullahs who despise everything we stand for — and now people stop me in the bazaar to offer paeans to America as well as George Bush.
Partly because being pro-American is a way to take a swipe at the Iranian regime, anything American, from blue jeans to "Baywatch," is revered. At the bookshops, Hillary Clinton gazes out from three different pirated editions of her autobiography.
`It's a best seller, though it's not selling as well as Harry Potter," said Heidar Danesh, a bookseller in Tehran. "The other best-selling authors are John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steel."
Young Iranians keep popping the question, "So how can I get to the U.S.?" I ask why they want to go to a nation denounced for its "disgustingly sick promiscuous behavior," but that turns out to be a main attraction. And many people don't believe a word of the Iranian propaganda.
"We've learned to interpret just the opposite of things on TV because it's all lies," said Odan Seyyid Ashrafi, a 20-year-old university student. "So if it says America is awful, maybe that means it's a great place to live."
Indeed, many Iranians seem convinced that the U.S. military ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq are going great, and they say this with more conviction than your average White House spokesman.
One opinion poll showed that 74 percent of Iranians want a dialogue with the U.S. — and the finding so irritated the authorities that they arrested the pollster. Iran is also the only Muslim country I know where citizens responded to the 9/11 attacks with a spontaneous candlelight vigil as a show of sympathy.
Iran-U.S. relations are now headed for a crisis over Tehran's nuclear program, which appears to be so advanced that Iran could produce its first bomb by the end of next year. The Bush administration is right to address this issue, but it needs to step very carefully to keep from inflaming Iranian nationalism and uniting the population behind the regime. We need to lay out the evidence on satellite television programs that are broadcast into Iran, emphasizing that the regime is squandering money on a nuclear weapons program that will further isolate Iranians and damage their economy.
Left to its own devices, the Islamic revolution is headed for collapse, and there is a better chance of a strongly pro-American democratic government in Tehran in a decade than in Baghdad. The ayatollahs' best hope is that hard-liners in Washington will continue their inept diplomacy, creating a wave of Iranian nationalism that bolsters the regime — as happened to a lesser degree after President Bush put Iran in the axis of evil.
Oh, that one instance when I was treated inhospitably? That was in a teahouse near the Isfahan bazaar, where I was interviewing religious conservatives. They were warm and friendly, but a group of people two tables away went out of their way to be rude, yelling at me for being an American propagandist. So I finally encountered hostility in Iran — from a table full of young Europeans.
link (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/opinion/05KRIS.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20O p%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fNicholas%20D%20Kri stof)
AND
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Those Sexy Iranians
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 8, 2004
HIRAZ, Iran — If, as the poet Philip Larkin observed, sex began in 1963, it has finally reached Iran over the last year.
True, girls and women can still be imprisoned for going out without proper Islamic dress. But young people are completely redefining such dress so it heightens sex appeal instead of smothering it.
Women are required to cover their hair and to wear either a chador cloak or an overcoat, called a manteau, every time they go out, and these are meant to be black and shapeless. But the latest fashion here in Shiraz, in central Iran, is light, tight and sensual.
"There are some manteaus with slits on the sides up to the armpits," said Mahmoud Salehi, a 25-year-old manteau salesman. "And then there are the `commando manteaus,' with ties on the legs to show off the hips and an elastic under the breasts to accentuate the bust."
Worse, from the point of view of hard-line mullahs, young women in such clothing aren't getting 74 lashes any more — they're getting dates.
"Parents can't defeat children," Mr. Salehi mused. "Children always defeat their parents."
And that's what Iran's baby boomers, a wave of 18 million people 15 to 25 years old, are doing. They will transform their country, just as baby boomers in the West changed America and Europe. I don't think Iran's theocracy can survive them, for I've never been to a country where young people seem more frustrated.
The regime's problem is that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini exhorted Iranians to have more children, and they responded — today, 60 percent of the country's population was born after his Iranian revolution. And these young people are determining social mores and carving out a small zone of freedom for themselves.
In one sense, the relaxation in clothing requirements is superficial, and some Iranian women have scolded me for asking them about head scarves when they are more angry about discrimination in divorce, child custody and inheritance rules. But the clothing rules affect every woman every day and raise the central question in Iran's future: should a few aging male mullahs still determine the most basic and intimate elements of every Iranian's life?
From that vantage point, it looks to me as if the revolution is sputtering. The mullahs are refusing to accept real democracy, but they are giving in to popular pressure in some areas. The draft is immensely unpopular among young men, for example, so this year the hard-liners shortened the service requirement. More important, individual Iranians are reclaiming their individuality and their autonomy — and how they dress is the best measure of that.
The morals police no longer order women to cover up stray hairs. These days, the fashion is for brightly colored, glittery see-through scarves, worn halfway back on the head.
"It's possible head scarves will be gone in another year or two, the way things are going," said Amir Suleimani, a scarf salesman in the Tehran Bazaar. "God willing."
No wonder conservative newspapers in Tehran denounce Iranian women for strolling around "nude."
The baby boomers include Saghar Tayebi, a 17-year-old in Isfahan who wore a tight manteau with high slits, embroidered jeans and a red headband. Her mascara was hefty and her lipstick bold, and her sleeves were rolled up to reveal lots of bracelets. Lots of hair escaped her scarf. But when I asked her whether she dreamed of wearing Western-style skimpy clothing, she looked aghast.
"We totally reject that," she said indignantly. "We don't want that freedom."
Conversations with young people like Saghar suggest that youths want to remain good Muslims, and that some are happy enough in an Islamic republic — but that, above all, they want to laugh and love. Many are not overtly political, nor sure exactly what kind of government they want, but they do know that this isn't it.
"We want fun," declared Tannaz Haj Hosseini, a 20-year-old university student who was out with her boyfriend in Tehran. "There's no joy here."
I protested that her nail polish and see-through scarf — not to mention the boyfriend — underscored the progress in Iran. A few years ago, she would have been lashed.
"I don't compare myself with 10 years ago," she said. "I compare myself to what I could have and don't."
Ayatollahs, look out.
link (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/opinion/08KRIS.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20O p%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fNicholas%20D%20Kri stof)