View from Iran

Amsterdam, June 12, 2003
This morning, The New York Times reported that ”Riot police and hard-line vigilantes clashed with teenage demonstrators who denounced supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Wednesday, as protests mushroomed into Iran's biggest in months.” Other news providers like BBC and AP gave details of the last two days of student action. The Iranian intelligence minister is saying that these demonstrations are the work of American suporters in Iran, Something that they always use for cracking down on any pro-democracy activities in Iran.

We are getting ready to leave Amsterdam for Tehran next week. I should be very worried to go with my American wife to Iran at this point. But I am not. I know that there are a lot of risks involvedd with this trip, but we don’t have any other options. We planned this trip 6 months ago. If anything happens, I want to be part of it. I am very exicted to go to Tehran and see demonstrations. I asked myself this morning: “how can I help to free Iran from this regime?” I know this is what a lot of Iranians like me are thinking in Europe and America and other parts of the world. I read somewhere that every 25 years something big happens in Iran. I know this also means that Iranians are lazy and only every 25 years take a big action, but I am going to look at this differently for a couple of minutes. If there is any truth to this, I am very glad, because 25 years is around the corner, and we should get ready for a lot of changes. I want to see with my eyes if Iran can handle these coming changes. If things change I will go on street and kiss one thousans people on their lips. I want to make a world record of this. The only problem with this is that I dont know if I should do this in Iran or outside Iran. I have visited Iran only once in the last 20 years, and the last time I went there was January 2003 for a short and emergency trip to see my very sick mother. That time I only saw my Mother and my birth place. This time I want to look for my past. I was not ready to leave Iran the way I did and know I need to know more about myself and the country that I love somtimes.