Tuesday
(1)According to the New York Sun, most if not all of the Iranian exile organizations have come together at a Los Angeles meeting.
"After 20 years, this is the first time all Iranians are together," said Sirus Sharafshahi, the owner of a Farsi-language daily newspaper for Iranian expatriates, Sobh Iran (Iran Morning). "We want to tell the administration of the United States, all Iran is together. If you want to change the government, come to us."
Some of the delegates feel the current US diplomatic carrot and stick approach to Iran and its nuclear program are a mistake:
Several attendees at yesterday's meeting of Iranian dissidents said Mr. Bush's decision to back the European approach of offering concessions to Iran was a mistake. A leader of the Iranian Freedom Front, Dariush Hashempour, gave a PowerPoint presentation yesterday that highlighted Mr. Bush's pro-reform remarks in his State of the Union address last month. In an interview, Mr. Hashempour said he was startled by the president's new stance."All of a sudden he just flip-flopped and was willing to work with Iran," Mr. Hashempour said. Asked if it was a mistake to try the carrot-and-stick technique the Europeans have advocated, he answered, "Definitely, for any period, even for 10 seconds. ... Their approach not only didn't help, it was a disaster for the last 20 years."
This meeting and sense of co-operation is an important development for pro-freedom Iranians. The words of Benjamin Franklin, "We must indeed all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately", are as applicable to Iranian Patriots's today as they were to the signers of America's Declaration of Independence two and a quarter hundred years ago.
I'm confused as to why a small number of Iranians who have left their country should be more important than the large number who have not.
London is home to many ex-pat communities from around the world. Unsurprisingly they tend to whine about their home land and wish it could be more like Britain. This is hardly surprising given the self-selective nature of the group.
Ex-patriates are ex-patriots. Let them do their best for their adopted country, not lobby for self-interested change in the one they turned their backs on.
Posted by J at March 15, 2005 02:31 PM
J, not all of them turned their backs on their homeland because they were looking for better business opportunities. Surely, some of them had to run for their lives.
Posted by Alisa at March 15, 2005 02:47 PM
J,
Seems you are opposed to any activity toward regime change in Iran. Do you like so much the current regime ?
I don't know how much the ex-pats can help, but any help toward overthrowing the mad mullahs is welcome.
Posted by Jacob at March 15, 2005 03:14 PM
Just to provide a concrete example: when I studied in London I had two Persian friends who were forced to flee Iran. One was Bahai, and his grandparents were imprisoned and killed by the government for their faith. The other was the son of one of the publishers of Satanic Verses, and as such the target of a fatwa calling for his family's death.
Neither were terribly happy with their home country's clerical government, to say the least.
Posted by Tom at March 16, 2005 12:10 AM
