Kamangir (Archer)

Ahmadinejad Under Attack

Kamangir | February 3, 2007 | Category Iran

In July 1999, the conservative parliament started working on a new media regulation which would impose more limitations on newspapers. To counteract the plan, Salam, a reformist newspaper, unveiled a letter written by Saeed Emami, which showed him to be an advocate for or even the mastermind behind the idea. That was enough for the conservatives to close up Salam, an event which lead to the Iranian students’ riots. Emami later committed suicide, under suspicious conditions.

Saeed Emami is the “He Who Must Not Be Named” of Iran. He was the insider found responsible for the chain murders of intellectuals. His name is a reminder of series of events which became an embarrassment for the Islamic Republic. To some extent, the regime sacrificed him to clear up its own name. Now, Baztab, links Ahmadinejad to Emami. Publishing a sound track, Baztab writes “Emami is the first high-ranking official who asked for revising the Holocaust”. In the sound track, Emami mentions “my Nazi and Neo-Nazi friends brought me many trustworthy books which showed…less than 250,000 Jews have been killed in WWII”.

p.s. I have the suspicion that Kamangir is filtered in Iran. Are you reading this in Iran?

p.s.2. Baztab has the piece also in English.

The Day After Iran is Bombed

Kamangir | February 3, 2007 | Category Iran

April 2nd, 11am. It is the thirteenth day of the newly started Persian year, 1386. To get rid of the curse of 13, Iranians always spend this day in the nature. That’s why it is called “sizdah be dar“, getting rid of thirteen, and also why the US picks this day for the operation “vulture’s nest”.

Men are preparing the delicious chiken-kebab and kids are enjoying the last day of the New Year’s holidays, when two B-2 Stealth Bombers drop four 5,000 pound GBU-28 bunker buster bombs on Kalaye Electric Company, south of Tehran. Millions of Tehranis rush to leave the capital city. That’s when they hear a second explosion. Azadi Bridge, which connects Tehran to the west, through Karaj Autobahn, is blown up by a never-heard-of-before dissident group. Cars get locked in the Old Route and Tehran gets to it knees. Massive unrest is reported and curfew is imposed in Tehran and other major cities. MKO has announced that they have defeated the army in Kermanshah.

As the nuclear crisis escalates, more people remember how America has always been involved in wars and how ridiculous their justifications have always been. People keep trying to prove how illogical the American administration is, as if they, or any other administration, cares at all for such pitiful things as “reason” and “truth”.

Let’s look at another era. While most kings are remembered bitterly in the contemporary Iran, there is still one king whose grave is saved and whose name is mentioned with relative respect in the school history books. Nader Shah stepped in the political/military scene of Iran, in the eighteenth century, when Afaghans had literally defeated the Iranian central government. His life is a long list of military campaigns and he is known as the Napoleon of Persia. However, among other brutalities, he is also remembered for ordering to blind his elder son, because of suspicion of a conspiracy.

I suggest, as a group of non-romantic people, we forget the talk about truth and reason. America is the superpower and superpowers don’t care for morality. At least my ancestors didn’t, when Iran was a superpower. Let’s think of the unthinkable; the day after Iran is attacked.

I understand that many Iranians, and also other peace-lovers, like to tell the story like this,

Once upon a time there was a country called Iran. Iranians were peaceful warm people who were suffering from a bad government whose only bad action was bugging its own people. The Iranian regime did threat other countries, but they never attempted to turn words into real actions. There was also a blood-thirsty group of people who called themselves neo-con. Neo-cons loved the scent of dynamite and did their best to attack other countries, in order to sell weapons and steal oil. Neo-cons managed to swallow Iraq and are now planning to swallow Iran.

If you think this story is too simplistic to have been presented in a serious article, see this. Let’s be frank. Go to any street in Tehran and you can see a sign reading “Death to America/Israel/UK/etc”. Go to any government office and you can see a banner ridiculing the Zionists or the Imperialists. Open any theology school book and you can find offensive remarks about minority groups. Folks, we did act in a silly way.

To my opinion, rather than wasting our energy on “proving” how bad the neo-cons are, we need to think how naive and short-minded the Iranian administration, in particular, and the Iranian people, in general, have been. To my understading, there are obvious flaws in the Iranian political system, mainstream religion, social structure, etc that demand serious deliberation, especially after the country absorbs the shock of an illegitimate, yet real, offensive.