I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church.
For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

- Kahlil Gibran
 

"Welcome to Iran," the woman said and kissed me.  I was in the market in Tehran on the first day of taking photographs in Iran.  Nothing like this had ever happened to me in 15 years as a working photographer.  Yet this kiss from a stranger would become the norm throughout my visit to what I had assumed would be a hostile country.

People shared their food, invited me into their homes, led me up to their rooftops and asked me to dance at their wedding receptions.  The "Death to America" graffiti that I saw in plain view along a few streets and buildings was dismissed by these new friends.  "Oh, that's just politics."  The travel guides hadn't prepared me for this, or for the smog that covers Tehran, and even smaller cities such as Isfahan and Yazd.  This is Yazd seen from atop a mosque.  The haze isn't just smog.  A dust storm was passing over the city when I reached the top of the minaret.

Stairs up to the Tower of Silence

Source: washingtonpost.com photo credit Nancy Andrews

The Student Movement Coodination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI)

To the Free People of the World

[excerpt]

Once again, the theocracy and the Mullahs in Iran are making killing fields of our universities.  Once again, the courageous and besieged students and people of Iran are face to face with the brutality of a regime that has had its terrorist grip on Iran for the last 24 years.  What the Regime has been doing in secret and dark is now brazenly repeating in open sight and light.  Within the last few days, once more, thousands of our young have disappeared, imprisoned, maimed and killed.  Their houses are being raided and everyone in sight raped.  The Regime is again using one of its most preferred means of torture for women: their breasts slashed and bodies thrown from the balcony of their dormitory in plain view of the horrified eyes of thousands of their fellow-students!

Torture and terror are Regime’s proven methods of control; that is how they have sustained their power for the last two decades.  To carry on their inhumane acts, as usual, they have at their beck and call their pillars of support: the alien terrorists of Hezbollah and other foreign mercenaries; for no decent Iranian could be as barbaric as they are.  These conniving and treasonous Mullahs are shedding the blood of our beloved students by the hands of those foreign terrorists whom the Regime has bought with the wealth of our nation and what rightfully belongs to the very students whose blood they spill!

In 1979, through deception and ignorance of the populace, intrigues and plots of Western powers, inept foreign policies of the United States and the support of hungry, backward and atrocious terrorists groups such as Hezbollah, and other Palestinian groups our blessed land was handed on a silver platter to a gang of corrupt and Godless Mullahs.  They hijacked a nation and took its population hostage under the sham of religion and their perverted brand of Islam.  At the expense of Iran and Iranians they pulled the biggest hoax in this ancient land and thus stained its history and civilisation.  They have forever shamed and disgraced an entire nation.

In the span of 24 years they have totally destroyed the socio-economic fabric of the country and have taken it to the abyss.  The economy is sick and dying; they have completely bankrupted the nation.  In 1977, per capita income of Iran was the same as Spain, today it rivals Gaza: inflation is at 20%; unemployment at 30%; debt in the billions; the currency is so devalued that it is not worth the paper printed on; unpaid teachers and workers; complete deterioration of the standard of living; petroleum industry in ruins; brain drain; pervasive corruption; and total pollution of the environment.  In short, they have decimated everything they have touched.  These are just a few of the accomplishment of this Regime!

In a nation rich with petroleum and natural gas, 57% of the population lives under the line of poverty.  This is the shameful legacy of this corrupt theocracy and, West’s favorite “reformer,” Mr Khatami!  Crime and drug abuse are soaring; prostitution rings abound; executions; torture; public hangings, stoning, flogging; abuse of children; child marriages; polygamy; domestic abuse; abuse of women; diseases; hunger; and 700,000 imprisoned in secret prisons.  These are some of the social triumphs of this inept government!

In a land blessed with abundance of natural resources, and one of the richest in the region, in the Capital City alone, 200,000 children are homeless wandering the streets, and, tragically, people are reduced to selling their body parts, for organ transplantation, to feed their families.  Yet, the theocratic regime is spending billions on armaments.  During the Khatami years, the Islamic Republic has invested enormous amounts in Iran’s conventional and non-conventional weapons programs.  Indeed, while the masses are hungry, workers strike for unpaid wages and the average Iranian family cannot afford food, Iran is packed with every sophisticated weapon, many of which find their way to every terrorist group in the region.  While Khatami is portrayed as a champion of the people by the Western powers and the media, he has done immense harm to Iran’s economy and subsequently the living conditions of millions of Iranian families have depreciated steadily.

For the last 24 years while the Iranian lives have deteriorated the riches of Iran are being emptied into the pockets of the Mullahs and the coffers of Hezbollah and other terrorists.  While Iranian children are going hungry the petroleum money buys arms and sustains those alien murderers in Lebanon and Palestine.  The blood of Iranian youth is sucked by these Mullahs and fed to those leeches!  A gang of illiterate Mullah and their insatiable brood have latched onto the treasury of the country and hang to power through the brutality of the two million mercenaries they have bought.  These traitors have hijacked an entire nation.  Every sensitive organ of the country is in the control of these foreign terrorists.  In the land of Cyrus and Darius the head of the judiciary is an alien, and the country is run through layers and layers of terrorists.

On behalf of SMCCDI,

Aryo B Pirouznia
5015 Addison Circle #244
Addison, TX 75001 (USA)
Phone: +1 (972) 504-6864 email: smccdi@daneshjoo.org

Source: daneshjoo.org iranstudents.org

These two articles seem to have diametrically opposite messages.  Which is more correct?  If you have personal knowledge and proof, please let me know...

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