Letter from the Heart

This letter published in Letter's section of Iranian.com in response to a rabid Islamist's article with a law degree from an American University, an IRI' apologist, living in the US. The author of the letter is a veteran of 8 year Iran-Iraq war. This letter is long but provides a wealth of knowledge about Iran, Iranian society, and the so-called Iranian revolution. It is rare in its kind and I was personally moved by it for many reasons. Perhaps someday, I will share them with you. Dear Mr Ershaghi

First let me thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts in writing for the rest of us to read. However I find it so ironic that those who suppress the voice of masses and prevent free media and free debate whenever their power allows them, have no problem to express their own suppressive thoughts on such free and open to all firms.

Before any thing else I would like to confirm that you have touched on some very important issues about the state of our country and the mentality of people inside and out of Iran and although I might not agree with all of your assessments but the importance of the points you have raised could not be debated.

Let me start my assessment by giving my total agreement with one important point that you made in your assessment.

The opposition groups outside Iran are not united. They are mostly are a bunch of incompetent self-centred cronies who have mostly got their own interest in mind and are not at all in touch with the realities of life inside Iran, or what is happening to its people. This is their biggest weakness and as you have rightly put it yourself many of them have lend themselves to other third parties and foreign governments who do not have the interest of Iranian people in mind.
I guess every body has his price, as yours was a seat on the Tehran University's board of lecturers.

Another very important point that I find my self in agreement with you is the fact that the West and specially US have not yet understood the nature of mullahs and the extent on their duplicity. For the past 28m years the West kept undermining them and refused to admit to their strengths or look for their real weak points and as a result they kept undermining the West and its efforts to deal with them efficiently. But that is another story for another day and definitely out of the scope of this discussion.

However as for the rest of your article, I found it to be extremely naïve twisted and so out of touch with the realities on the ground that kept me wondering if your brain have been frozen since 1979 and you have just come out of the state of hibernation.

It is so ironic that every mass murderer, suppressor, dictator and fascist always hides behind the masses and claims to be supported by the poor people in their victim society. This was the same about Hitler Stalin Mao and the 13 th Imam. When on the other hand it has always been the case about the true popular leaders that they have always stood in front of their nation and led them.

Especially when you claim that all the poor people of country are behind these mass murderer and the apposition is only confined to the wealthy people of northern Tehran. I personally find it as adding insult to injury, as you seem to believe just because we do not have a lot of money we must also lack brain and capability to think or evaluate and analyse these events for ourselves, or we do capable of being moderate and wanting to live a free life.

Just to put your mind in ease first let me to clear a few things about myself. I have been in Tehran less than 10 times in the past ten years and I have never even seen Niavaran.
The last time my family and I went to Caspian coast (Shomaal) was around 25 years ago when it was still affordable for the average Iranian to do so. And I have even been born in the very religious city of Mashhad.

The next time you come to Mashhad just come to Tabarsi Street and ask for the Javadyye Alley way as that is were my family roots are and my relatives still live. We live a simple but honest life and we do not have a lot of money to splash around.

Another important point that I want you to remember is the fact that at the time when you were doing your university education in US of A and living a life of convenience it was me and people like me who went to war and fought Saddam's army. I personally served in 21st Brigade.
However I did it out of love for my motherland and not to spread Khomeini's version of Islam or going to Karbala. As it was the case for me and many of my comrades, we saw it as our duty to defend their motherland.

We fought for 4 years and brought Saddam's army into its knees. Until 1984 when Saddam agreed to a UN peace accord and even Saudi Arabia agreed to pay compensation to Iran for all the damages of the war. But because of the selfishness of one stubborn man who wanted to go spread his power in the region we were made to fight a pointless war for another 6 years, which killed a generation and devastated our country socially and economically.

Now to see someone like you trying to take advantage of our sacrifices and twisting the truth in order to further their own personal ambition really sickens me to the stomach.

For the facts that I explained above, it makes me very qualified to be one of the masses and in case you have been hiding your head in your back side for the past 20 years I should inform you that I am not the only one in my social class who thinks like this.

I was born in a traditional Muslim family and my parents tried their best to raise me as a "good Muslim" but after 25 years of observing the Muslim hypocrisy and the crimes, which happened in my country under the banner of Islam, I became sick and tired of it and so I converted to Zartosht. Ironically I see my self more lucky than my friends and other people of my generation who are still left in the limbo of carrying the title of Muslim but not truly believing in its doctoring or even resenting it.

In your article you made several claims about the fruits of revolution, where it stands and the faith of its enemies. As to an untrained eye or a person who has not actually lived it Iran and is not in touch with the reality of life here you might be able to get away with these claims But to a person like me it is noting but a house of cards and as soon as you pool one card out the whole thing will collapse.

But first things first.

Before any thing let me to remind you about a few fruits of 28 years suppression that you forgot to mention. Because I believe as a grass root member of this society who deals with its social problems day in day out, that makes me more than qualified to remind you of a few of those out comes:
1- More than 10 million unemployed.
2- Double digit inflation
3- Incapability to refine our own oil and having to buy petrol from abroad
4- Record level of drug addicts
5- Record number of young girls who resort to prostitution because of poverty
6- An economy in ruin
7- A grim international reputation, as every body regards us as terrorists
8- Record number of young people fleeing the country to become homeless refugees around the world
9- Child poverty at its highest level. Even worst that the time of Ghaajaar dynasty
10- Ten years of pointless war which left our economy industry and human resources it ruin

And this is only the tip of the iceberg as the list goes on and on and on.
However may be the most naïve statement that I encountered in your article was the following
"The fact that the majority of the country is young is more of an economic issue than anything else, but somehow this is always transformed into a political issue. "

In this argument you seem to try to distinguish between the political and economical affair of the country. Which leaves one wondering about the authenticity of your education or the extent that you are willing to twist the fact and close your eyes the facts of life just to serve your own personal interests and ambitions.

To any body who have ever opened a book on economy sociology and politic it should be obvious the political and economical events of a country are so inter related that they could only be regarded as one and the same.

In fact it is the first and foremost duty of the government, the politicians and leader of any country to make sure that the economy is in a viable and healthy status as everything else is driven from that.

Just read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. What people want from their leaders is good managed economy, which creates jobs and wealth for those who are willing to work for it. They want such economy to first exist and be sustained and then its fruits ( i.e. tax revenue) to be used as basis for building other social institutions and infrastructures such as health education, welfare and a police which serves the people and provides them with security instead of suppressing and beating them up.

We do not want our leader to prepare us for the dooms day as we already have got Nostradamus for that. We do not want our leaders to preach religion as we already have the clerics and religious institutions for that. We do not want or leaders and security services to interfere in the utmost private aspects of our lives as we feel we are mature enough to decide for our selves. At the time when we have record poverty in the country we definitely do not want our leaders to waist our money on every shadowy terrorist group around the glob just to buy themselves some useless publicity.

As for your assessment of the faith of the enemies of revolution let me clear a few points for you.
First of all, MKO was the group who started the revolution and they were the ones who rallied around Khomeini and introduced him to Iranian people. I was there heard all their slogans and saw them in action during the revolution. Now can you claim the same thing?

They though that they can use Khomeini to get into power and then push him aside, but Khomeini was more dubious than they have taken him for and in the end he turned the table on them. Just like every other revolution this one's first victims became its own children. However I must admit that I believe that MKO got what they deserve and they deserve what they got, for betraying their people and country and I loos no sleep over their misery and misfortune.
As for Saddam Hussein he was noting but a poppet of the West who came to power by his coup against Ahmed Hassan Al-Baker in 1977 (with the support of The West).

His time came to an end when he started to bit the hand of his masters and his doom was when he started to deal Oil in Euro instead of American Dollar. An action, which would have inevitably resulted in the breaking of the Petro-dollar-Arms cycle (Now, I leave it to you do more investigation on that).

As for the Taliban, their end came when they started to pose a treat to The West by siding with Al -Quade and even more importantly when they were seen as an obstacle to the Caspian Sea oil pipeline to transfer Russian oil to the Persian Gulf.

Their end had noting do with the incompetent mullahs. It is simply ridicules and arrogant to try and claim credit for these events (as it is not even attempted by the people in the establishment).

Finally, on your remarks about the export of your disaster of revolution and its shadowy allies around the world. These are bunch of opportunist terrorists who are noting but "Magase Dore Shirini". They only coexist with the mullahs because Mullahs pay them well. As we all saw, after the Lebanon's war Hezbollah was paying $1000 per person to the people in South Lebanon.

This was the money given to them by the mullahs. The money, which should have been spent to develop our own country's infrastructure, health service and economy instead. The money, which could have tackled child poverty in Iran and help young families to get back on their feet. But instead it was paid to bribe Hezbollah in order to get their support. The support that could neither be useful nor even be relied on. Now it is needless to repeat the same story with Hamas.

These are the people who have no problem to betray their own, as they have done it several times before. If you doubt, me just have another look at the faith of Arafat and Rafigh Hariri. Now what chance do you think you have when some one else like Syria Saudi Arabia or even U.S come along and through them a bigger bone, are you really naïve enough to believe that they would still remain loyal to you or are you ready to admit that they would be the first ones to betray you.

Khomeini was a selfish greedy Indian bustard who had no regard or feeling for this country and its people. That was why he did not feel any thing when he was coming to devastate this land. In fact right to the end, after his policies killed more than one million of our people and destroyed our economy and country's infrastructure still he had no felling of remorse or otherwise and kept being the biter stubborn monster that he was, right to the end.
Areyo Barzan

P.S. Mr. Ershaghi write for "Iraniantruth".com