Letter to a (Potential) President

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You’re listening to Iran’s Weekly Wire; I’m Roland Elliott Brown.

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The United States is home to about 470, 000 people of Iranian descent. That’s the largest number of Iranians anywhere outside Iran.

But despite the size of the community, hostile relations between Iran and the US often make Iranian-Americans uneasy.

This is especially true during US presidential elections. Iran is always a major topic in foreign policy debates. And every candidate has to have an opinion about Iran, whether they know the country or not.

That’s why this year, in anticipation of 2016 elections, 37 prominent Iranian-Americans have signed an open letter to US presidential candidates.

The letter was organized by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian-Americans, or PAAIA. It’s been signed by some famous people. They include Firouz Naderi, a NASA director, and Jimmy Delshad, the former mayor of Beverly Hills.

In the politest terms, they’re asking candidates to avoid broad generalizations about Iranians. They’re also asking them recognize the contributions of Iranian-Americans, and the goodwill Iranians often express toward the US.

Here’s Leila Austin, one of the organizers of the letter. She expects Iran to be a big debating point in the run-up to 2016:

[Leila Austin] In light of the fact that the nuclear negotiations are becoming a central foreign policy issue for the 2016 presidential elections, we believe that regardless of the differences candidates may have with the government of Iran that they should refrain from making broad, prejudiced generalisations about the entire Iranian people. I think depending on which way the wind blows in terms of what's happening in Iran, you have candidates on either side of the political spectrum using the issues for political gain. We just want to make sure that the political goals are distinguished from the offensive remarks that can also be included in them.

She already has an example in mind.

Back in May,  Republican candidate Lindsey Graham addressed the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. He made an arcane comment about how his upbringing qualifies him to understand nuclear negotiations. He said,

“My family owned a restaurant, a pool room, and a liquor store. And everything I know about the Iranians I learned at the pool room. I ran the pool room when I was a kid, and I met a lot of liars, and I know the Iranians are lying.”

Now, anyone who can figure out what Graham was talking about probably deserves a prize. He could be referring to the Iranian government’s negotiating style, or he might be voicing a personal prejudice.

In any case, some Iranians felt he was insulting them.

One Iranian-American advocacy group, the National Iranian American Council, accused Graham of saying all Iranians are liars. They called his statement racist.

They posted a petition on their website, calling for Graham to apologize. So far, almost 4000 people have signed.

PAAIA’s letter was much milder. It also took its impetus from Graham’s statement, but allowed for the possibility that Graham had been misinterpreted.

One prominent Iranian-American who signed PAAIA’s letter was Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute. For him, Graham’s statement had a personal side.

[Alex Vatanka] The one that I obviously felt most strongly about was what we heard from Senator Graham from South Carolina, this idea that there is something in the Iranian DNA, and you simply cannot trust them as a people. I find that to be very troubling. As a father, I can assure you I don't raise my children, who are also Iranian-Americans and other ethnic heritage, I don't raise them to be liars. I know it's not in the DNA, and I resent it when someone puts that kind of an inaccurate description forward. I don't necessarily disagree with the political objections that Senator Graham has about what the White House has done on the nuclear issue, but I object when he goes out and sort of confuses the Iranian regime with everything the Iranian people stand for.

Alireza Nader, another prominent policy analyst, also signed the letter. I asked him what he thought of Graham’s statement:

[Alireza Nader] I don't take everything everybody says too seriously. I don't necessarily see that being insulting, it's just that it can be interpreted in that way. They probably mean the Iranian government, but because Iran is a non-democratic country, I think, you have to make those distinctions. I think Iranian-Americans should be more confident in educating the public about Iran as a country, and not just looking at it as a nuclear program.

But that is pretty much how candidates have talked about Iran during past elections.

Just think back to 2008.

John McCain made a remarkably lousy joke. He parodied a Beach Boys song, muttering, “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”.

Hillary Clinton told Good Morning America that the US had the power to “totally obliterate” Iran with nuclear weapons.

Most Americans might dismiss these comments as black humor or sabre rattling, but it’s much harder for Iranian-Americans to see it that way.

Here’s comedian Maz Jobrani. He signed PAAIA’s letter:

[Maz Jobrani] It's a bit of a letdown when you hear someone who has made it all the way to the point of running for the president speaking in terms like that. I would hope that a president or a presidential candidate would be educated, would be more diplomatic, would know not to say things that are inflammatory in a way, so when McCain sings the Beach Boys song, I understand he's trying to be funny, but hey, we're coming off the heels of bombing Iraq and Afghanistan, so for you to sing bomb bomb bomb Iran, it's a little, like I said, it's a little disappointing. You realize that either they have their own agendas, or they have their own base they want to please, or they really are just human beings and they say stupid stuff sometimes.

And here’s Fashad Farahat. He played one of the bad guys in the movie ARGO. He also signed the letter.

[Fashad Farahat] Some very dangerous comments you hear. These comments, honestly, if I take the emotional part of it of course I don't want to hear it as an Iranian. It makes me feel very sad, very dangerous, very scared for my family. I lived in Iran during the Iran Iraq war, and most of those bombs that fell on our heads in Tehran were made in the US, and guided by the US for Saddam Hussein, so these are not empty threats for us, these are real.

But just because people feel close to their country of origin, it doesn’t mean they sympathize with that country’s government.

For many Iranian-Americans, that is a distinction their leaders should make more often.

Maz Jobrani:

[Maz Jobrani] I know that Lindsey Graham when you see the statement, is trying to say that in the negotiations, he doesn't trust the Iranian government basically, but he says "the Iranians," and I think that the problem, the takeaway is that a lot of people don't separate the people from the government, and I think that's just an ongoing mistake that we've seen often from politicians in America, so I think it's smart to remind them that hey guys, if you're going to criticise the regime then criticise the regime, but make sure you carve that out.

And here is Alex Vatanka again:

[Alex Vatanka] As an Iranian-American, I wanted to separate the issue of US negotiations with the Iranian regime from the Iranian people. Iran being a country of almost 80 million people, rich in so many ways, but politically a very complicated case, I wanted to separate the nation of Iran from the Islamic Republic as the political system it is in that sense as a community we need to speak up. We're obviously American citizens. We're loyal to America first, and we don’t want to be unnecessarily labelled because of the actions of a regime 8000 miles away, and by the way, a regime whose behavior is often times the very reason why there is such a large Iranian-American community in this country, because they all fled from the Islamic Republic of Iran over the last 36 years.

One criticism US conservatives make of the Obama Administration’s nuclear dealings, is that they legitimize Iran’s rulers. Jeb Bush made this point in a recent Op-Ed called “Don’t Trust Iran”.

And it’s not hard to see his point. While Obama has never said anything to outrage Iranian-Americans, he has addressed the Iranian people and the Iranian government together in his yearly Nowruz messages.

While Obama would never conflate the Iranian government with Iranian-Americans, he does need the Islamic Republic to represent Iran for the sake of a deal.

Even so, many Iranian-Americans hope that this new era of dialogue with the Islamic Republic will bring a chance to change Iran. They hope it will make Iran a more open society.

And expressing hopes like that in the public sphere is relatively new for them. Ever since the 1979 revolution in Iran, Iranian-Americans have tended to shy away from politics.

The American public has traumatic memories of Iran taking Americans hostages, both at the US Embassy in 1979, and in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Sometimes, awareness of those crimes has caused Iranians in the US to keep a low profile.

Here’s Alex Vatanka:

[Alex Vatanka] Iranians tend to be very cautious. They are very cautious in terms of picking their fights. They'd rather not be on anyone's radars. That's partly cultural, but also partly an experience of your average Iranians in diaspora since 1979. Keep your head, hope you don't get noticed, and live your life. That's fine to an extent. At some point you've got to speak up for the sake of the next generation. I mean these labels are easily put on you, but it takes time for them to be removed again.

But big changes are happening in the Iranian-American community. Leila Austin has seen them:

[Leila Austin] I think that that switch actually happened with Iranian-Americans becoming interested in what's happening in their homeland more since the 2009 reform movement in Iran. So since then we've seen a gradual shift in Iranian Americans becoming more interested in both US Iran relations, and the fate of their country. Of course now the nuclear negotiations are the first big diplomatic event that might make that a possibility.

Whatever comes of nuclear negotiations, or of US-Iran relations more broadly, this letter marks an important moment in the story of the Iranian-American community.

It shows that by negotiating with Iran, the US government has helped Iranians inside the US find a political a bigger political voice.

So I asked Maz Jobrani how he thinks US presidential candidates will receive this letter ahead of 2016.

Well they realise that there is a strong Iranian immigrant community in America. I know that we have a lot of successful Iranian-Americans, I know that we have a lot of wealthy Iranian-Americans, and that's the beauty of America, is to be counted, for people to know that they can't just push you around or ignore you, and I think it's great that Iranian-Americans are organising, and I think it just takes time for any immigrant community to organise in America letters like this I think make a difference. It makes people think twice before they just go and pooh pooh on a whole country and a whole people. It's a good thing.

That’s all from Iran’s Weekly Wire. If you want to find out more about this story, join us on Twitter or Facebook, or visit IranWire.com.