It will not have been the mere burden of logistics or geographical movement and certainly not the educating challenges of a civilization's heritage and contemporary cultural exposure that will have made my father to opt for the latter. Rather, he will have wanted to avoid us being "caught" in the then still unforeseeable impact of the regime change about 5 years later, when the Shah fled and Khomeini commenced implementing his revolution as supreme leader.
Today, I can only guess what my father would have to say on the situation in the Middle East, a region he held close to mind and heart, for so many reasons.
It will be impossible to grasp his library of thoughts and insights accumulated over several decades in a mere blog's post, but I suspect he will have been busy today with - like most people - closely analising what causes countries to have or not to have their unique individual version of what history is somehow erroneously recording as Arab Spring, given that the first wave of widespread popular protests were induced by young predominantly Persians through the Green Movement in 2009 (and thus not Arabs).
In an inevatable integrating world, my father always had strong pragmatic (not ideologic) reservations on the 20th century western and Soviet pricetagged sponsering and interfering in populations' sovereignty that continues disturbing the region as a whole. Consequently he admired the most those populations and their rulers who slowly and wisely conquered progress from within, carefully - and not always successfully - balancing ethnic and religious diversity with national patriotism and economic evolution, something impatient Westerners tend to quickly try to categorize as reform or lack thereof.
Last week's not so surprising election of Hassan Rouhani would appear to have come at a welcome time for everyone (with the exception of the democratically defeated hardliners) but in first place for the driven young population confronted with wordly views restrained in a domestic context, followed by a multilaterally desired breakthrough of a nearly constant state of belligerence with neigbouring countries. It will be the political and real advancements in those two arenas that, only in third place, will come to secure diplomatic progress in Iran's position towards the rest of the world, whether NAM or western aligned countries.
Today, I think my father would advise western countries to pre-occupy themselves with a much needed focus on domestic agendas and to let Iran be itself. And guess what ... that is how we may very well move to a greater notion of peace and progress then the clumsy damaging poking politics so far.
In an inevatable integrating world, my father always had strong pragmatic (not ideologic) reservations on the 20th century western and Soviet pricetagged sponsering and interfering in populations' sovereignty that continues disturbing the region as a whole. Consequently he admired the most those populations and their rulers who slowly and wisely conquered progress from within, carefully - and not always successfully - balancing ethnic and religious diversity with national patriotism and economic evolution, something impatient Westerners tend to quickly try to categorize as reform or lack thereof.
Last week's not so surprising election of Hassan Rouhani would appear to have come at a welcome time for everyone (with the exception of the democratically defeated hardliners) but in first place for the driven young population confronted with wordly views restrained in a domestic context, followed by a multilaterally desired breakthrough of a nearly constant state of belligerence with neigbouring countries. It will be the political and real advancements in those two arenas that, only in third place, will come to secure diplomatic progress in Iran's position towards the rest of the world, whether NAM or western aligned countries.
Today, I think my father would advise western countries to pre-occupy themselves with a much needed focus on domestic agendas and to let Iran be itself. And guess what ... that is how we may very well move to a greater notion of peace and progress then the clumsy damaging poking politics so far.
السلام عليكم
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