Mirfendereski: "Iranian expatriate community's continuing ties with the IRI contributes handsomely to the legitimization and perpetuation of the IRI."

Guive Mirfendereski: Many years ago, in the early 1990s, the perennial flaring up of the hemorrhoids in Iran-UAE relations provided me with an opportunity to visit Iran after decades of being away. As proposed by the Iranian Mission at United Nations, I should have gone to Iran and participated in a conference about the status of the Tonbs and Abu Musa islands, a subject about which I knew a thing or two. As one watermelon too many were being placed under my arm, to puff me up and make me feel important, I came very close to accepting the IRI’s invitation to return to post-revolutionary Iran. I did not for the simple reason that this lot who rule the country cannot be trusted with one’s personal circumstance.

I asked from the person who was trying to get me to go if the IRI would respect my choice of having renounced the Iranian citizenship in favor of the United States? He replied that as an Iranian I had to travel there with my Iranian passport. I said, I would not. He inquired if I thought my reason for traveling with a US passport was to invoke the diplomatic protection of the United States if something untoward happened to me while in Iran? I replied in the negative. He asked why then should I insist on traveling with a US passport.I replied that renouncing the citizenship of my birthland had been the most difficult choice I had ever made in my life and I expected that the IRI would respect that choice by giving me the benefit of that election. He excused himself. Case closed.

In recent times, a few prominent Iranians living abroad have gone to Iran, and some after multiple trips eventually have found themselves in shackles. One in particular had her brains bashed in. I personally did what I could for the release of a few such mis-adventurous types, but no more. Nor would I get outraged on behalf of idiots who travel to Iran, expecting respect and a safe return.

This is especially true of people with high profile jobs in the US or outspoken opinions, who are "smart" enough to know better than to trust their personal safety to the IRI. In my thinking, if you work for an establishment in a country like the US promoting "dialogue" with Iran but your organization and leadership are not very much liked by the IRI people, then set your fucking ass down and do not travel to Iran. I do not give a flying fuck about what you think your universal rights of travel might be – hey, dickweed, in IRI, what matters is what the IRI thinks of you and your activity in this country that is trying to overthrow the regime there. Why do you think that IRI would not touch you? Because you are so fucking innocent? Important? Or are you so fucking full of yourself that you think you are beyond reach? Or you think if you went there once before you can get to go there over and over again and come back unmolested?

If you think so, then you are pretty stupid.

Before you go to Iran, ask yourself, why are you not there to begin with. Unless you are deliberately there to get arrested and provide a pretense for “war,” then, hajji, stupid is what stupid does and the stupid should pay for it! I personally believe the Iranian expatriate community's continuing ties with the IRI contributes handsomely to the legitimization and perpetuation of the IRI. If one cared about the multitudes trapped in Iran, one would stop traveling there and dealing with the IRI and instead encourage greater migration out of Iran for the persons trapped there. The problem with you fence-sitters (two-passport types) is that you want the khar and khorma. The truth is that as you bend down to pick up the khorma, yes, the khar will have its way with you. Please leave me alone, and bail your own sorry ass out of IRI!


Guive Mirfendereski is a professorial lecturer in international relations and law. He is the principal artisan workins as Guy vanDeresk (trapworks.com).

Born in Tehran in 1952, he is a graduate of Georgetown University's College of Arts and Sciences (BA), Tufts University's Fletcher School (PhD, MALD, MA) and Boston College Law School (JD).

In 1987-1991 he served as a corporate lawyer in the High Technology and Venture Capital Group of Gaston, Snow, Ely & Bartlett (Boston). In 1992-1994 he was General Counsel at Zarc International, Inc., a less-than-lethal weapons manufacturer based in Bethesda, Maryland, and also served as legal consultant to The World Bank's private sector development projects. In 1995-1999 he taught as adjunct professor of international law at The Fletcher School and Brandeis University's Graduate School of International Economics and Finance while serving as sole in-house counsel at the biotech company Vicam Limited Partnership from 1997 through 2003.

He is the author of A Diplomatic History of the Caspian Sea (2001) and numerous articles. His recent publications include entry articles in Oxford Encyclopaedia of Maritime History (forthcoming 2006) and Encyclopaedia Iranica.