25,000 Jews Still Live in Iran

Iranian protestors burning the Israeli flag

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has often spoken publicly about his extreme dislike of the nation of Israel and of Zionists. Quotes such as “wiping Israel off the map” and holding Holocaust conventions such as the one last December is no doubt why much of the world believes that Iran and its President hate Jews.

But this is not entirely true. Ahmadinejad’s contentions lie with the Jewish state and not with Judaism itself. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that there are still 25,000 Iranian Jews living in the country they were born in with no fear of religious persecution. The number had been bigger but two thirds of the Jewish population left Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

However, Persian Jews are fully functional members of Iranian society. There is even a seat of parliament reserved for a Jewish member among its 290 seats. Some job opportunities are limited to Iranian Muslims but generally speaking, Jews are allowed to practice their religion and work in Iran.

So why is Ahmadinejad’s Iran painted as an anti-Semitic nation by the world’s media? The President has publicly burned the Israeli flag but never a Torah. Perhaps it is a comparison to Hitler that his opponents are trying to create in order to gain support for another invasion. One of the reasons for invading Iraq, after all, was Saddam’s treatment of the Kurds. But Ahmadinejad does not treat his country’s Jewish population badly.

During the 1979 revolution the Dr. Sapir Hospital, a Jewish charity hospital treated revolutionary combatants and refused to hand them over to Pahlavi’s security forces. The hospital has since been thanked publicly by Ayatollah Khomeini and has received a $27,000 donation from Ahmadinejad himself.

Perhaps the most convincing testimony of the current Jewish well being in Iran comes from Iranian Jews themselves. Mr. Moresadegh, Chairman of the Jewish Committee in Iran, says “Jews here have great Iranian roots – they love Iran. Personally, I would stay in Iran no matter what. I speak in English, I pray in Hebrew, but my thinking is Persian.”

Below are two videos that show that Ahmadinejad’s views on Israel and the Holocaust are not nearly as radical as the Western media portrays them to be.

However, it cannot be denied that the President has also said some pretty contraversial clear statements about the state of Israel, as this video shows.

Below is a story about an Iranian Olympian who entered the political arena when competing in Athens in 2004.

Olympic dreams vs. National allegiance

Pausing during a workout, Iran’s judo ace Arash Miresmaeli speaks of past broken dreams, and his future ones.
“All the hopes and wishes of an athlete are for an Olympic medal,” says the lithe double world champion. “Every athlete would withstand the hardest practice, to the point of death, for Olympic gold.”
Mr. Miresmaeli paid one price, training hard enough to put himself in medal contention at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. But one round required competing against an athlete from Israel – a sworn enemy of Iran.
So the Iranian felt he had no choice but to pay another heartbreaking and controversial price: He pulled out of the games, and reset his medal dreams to Beijing in 2008.
That decision cast a stark light on the standoff between Iran and Israel, and how it can color every aspect of potential contact. Even as it was officially lauded in Iran, the decision was decried in Israel and the West as an unsavory mixing of politics and sport.
“When I am sent to another country [to compete], I am a symbol of my people and my nation,” says Miresmaeli, his cauliflower ears testament to years in the sport. “When this decision is made, it should be for a nation, not a person … for the principles of my country.”
“Muslims of the world are all brothers. When one brother is oppressed, all Muslims unite to support that person,” says Miresmaeli. “This was a good move to show the world there is an oppressed people in Palestine being killed, innocently.”
The judo champion returned home a hero, feted by the regime as if he had won gold. Today, a banner over the mats of the national judo team heralds Miresmaeli as an “envoy of the revolution,” and shows him receiving an embrace from Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei.
It reads: “This kiss and hundreds of others we offer to you.”

The Christian Science Monitor
for full article click here

Iranian Banking suffers another blow

Two of Iran’s biggest banks are suffering after European Banks joined the US in freezing all trade with them. Banks Sepah and Saderat have now been blacklisted by the US and the United Nation’s Security Council.

In Resolution 1747, published by the Security Council in March, Sepah is identified as a financial backer to Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG) and Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group (SBIG), which are involved in Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programmes.

Saderat was blacklisted by the US back in September 2006 because it allegedly transfered money between terrorist organisations, including Hezbollah and Hamas, among others.

Under the current restrictions, backed by the UN, both banks are unable to transfer any money through US or European banks, at all. This has been crippling for the Iranian economy. However, only yesterday did Hakim Fahal of the Iranian Council for Banking Services admit this. Up until now they had been pretending that they had voluntarily withdrawn from the international market due to its high inflation rates.

Ever since European banks joined the US in boycotting the two Iranian banks their financial status has fallen dramatically. As they are the two biggest banks in Iran, we can expect the consequences to be felt shortly by the people of Iran. And that’s what it’s all really about, isn’t it. Not about financing terrorists or ballistic missile programmes but about turning Iran into an economically starved country and its people against its government, who they will no doubt blame. It’s the same tactic that has been used again and again by those in power.

EU calls for US-Iran talks

The EU’s Javier Solana urges Iran and the US to get in a room together and talk

Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, has publicly urged the US to speak directly with Iran in order to once and for all settle the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme.

The statement came after Solana had just finished two days of talks with Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator. The talks must have gone well because Solana now insists that Tehran is ready to reconvene talks with the US.

All diplomatic channels between the US and Iran have been severed since 1980. Since then, any communication between the two countries has gone through the Swiss Embassy in Tehran.

Daniel Fried, the US assistant secretary of state, admits that the US is ‘stuck’ as to what to do about the nuclear situation in Iran. Gordon Johndroe, Whitehouse National Security Council spokesman, said that the US “has offered to have talks with Iran for the first time in 27 years if they will suspend their enrichment and reprocessing activity.”

If Iran were to sign the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), they would be entitled to a full civil nuclear programme once it allayed suspicions about nuclear weapons building.

The jihab police

In Tehran, cars are pulled to the side of the road by police who inspect the women inside to ensure they are following the hijab protocols. If a woman is found not to be properly dressed she faces some serious punishment, as does any man in the car who hasn’t already sorted her out.

‘Hijab’, also spelt ‘hejab’ is the term for the Muslim dress code for women. It states that women must cover their arms and legs, their hair and face. In the past, veils were mandatory and would be worn just under the woman’s eye line, covering her from the nose down. This is no longer required in Iran but women are still required to hide their bodies when in public.

One way they do this is with a chador, a single clothe that is wrapped around the head and body and then held in place by the woman. The most common colour for chadors is black as Ayatolla Khomeini insists that this is the proper colour for a chador and shows greater respect for the religion. Colour chadors do exist but they have largely gone out of fashion in Iran.

However, Iranian law does not require women to wear chadors. In fact, chadors are generally only worn by open supporters of Khomeini and the working class, giving birth to the nickname ‘chador class’. Middle class women tend to abide by the hijab by wearing a headscarf and a manteau, the French for coat, which is an overall that covers the arms and legs.

Currently in Iran, the Mullahs are cracking down on those who don’t strictly obey the hijab. Here is the testimony of an Iranian taxi driver who was pulled over by Iranian police.

Riding with dogs in taxis

“I was taking a young woman and she had her small dog with her. The religious police pulled us over. They said, we are impounding your car, arresting the girl, and letting the dog loose on the streets where it will be killed. I said, Hajh Agah, (Mister Hajh: a term of respect given to a man who has made pilgrimage to Mecca) you can’t do that. How can you take my car from me? How will I earn a living? And this young woman, what is wrong with her hejab? She is properly covered. There is no law against having a dog. And you have to consider that maybe the dog was sick, and we just came from the veterinarian.”

View from Iran for full article

The most interesting thing about the hijab policy in Iran is how it seems to operate on a social class basis. The working class, as I mentioned already, regularly sport a chador instead of the less restrictive headscarf and manteau. Do working class women feel more sophisticated or more pious if they go the extra mile in covering themselves? On the other end of the social ladder, it seems that women in Tehran, who have found their voice, are not overly enthusiastic about loosing their shape. Most Tehranian women adopt the minimalist approach of a scarf and overalls, which is why they are the ones who are frequently stopped by the police. The scarves cover less and less, more and more hair slips from under them, and the idea of a Tehranian woman holding up the edge of her scarf to hide her face is practically unheard of. In fact, it is often implied that it is the middle class woman who is responsible for the current crackdown.

Here’s a video I found on Youtube. It has quite a strong and obvious message. Not that I agree with any of it.

Missile capabilities

General Hossein Salami, Commander of the air force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) , has said that Iran enjoys such a high missile capability that it can target enemy positions with an unlimited number of home-made missiles.

“That is why the US President describes Iran as the most dangerous threat to his country,” said Salami.

The home-made technology was on display for the cameras, when numerous missiles were successfully launched in the desert.

All this seems like a very obvious message to the West and the US in particular. Don’t mess with us. IRGC Commander General Yahya Safavi, went into great detail on Iranian TV as to just how effective their missiles are. He also stated that they were purely for defensive purposes.

However, Brigadier General Abdolrahim Mousavi seems to have a different message. He implies in a TV interview that a war with the US is coming and that when it does Iran will emerge victorious. His commentary on the US Army’s capabilities would appear to come straight from the Iranian government’s PR department.

The more military men trotted out in front of the cameras to talk about their weapons capabilities the more you begin to doubt if they are any real threat to the surrounding regions, such as Israel. In my mind, if they were anywhere as sophisticated as they suggest they wouldn’t be publicising the fact on national television.