Again, I really don’t mean to come out in defense of anyone. I’m just trying to tell you of what I’ve experienced as an Iranian student living in Iran the past few years.

To me, this seems like a battle that has raged on for quite some time, that can’t really be summed up in one line or two, that is really two different worldviews and two different visions. And I really want to stay away from making sweeping generalizations that “the people of Iran” want this or that. I wish I knew, but I’m not so sure. Adding to that quandary is that people can often let others dictate what they want , so that’s not a totally transparent analysis to begin with.

The clerical establishment’s primary concern is religious – so of course they are not going to contribute to music, art, literature, so of course they can’t claim to have had any contributions there and any claims otherwise on their part is pure delusion (I’ve looked at K.’s “poetry”). But what about the forces behind the constitutional revolution? Before the laws were written? How about vocally opposing the Shah at a time when few dared to? I think one of their contributions (or, in better words, not contribution to humanity or even Iran, but “advances on their own part”) has been that now, for better or worse, and I think worse, Shi’a Islam is a force to be reckoned with. I think religious reform is very necessary for Iran and the clerics are the ones who can lead that reform.

A lot has changed in the past thirty years, and I think we need a reconciliation of some sort. Everyone has changed, everyone has has a right to realize they’ve fucked up big time, and the establishment itself is no exception.

Jalaiepour is not an outstanding academic in any way, but he breathed new life into the Iranian newspaper business and for that I’ll always appreciate him. That was when taxi drivers in Tehran started carrying daily newspapers other than the sports dailies. Maybe he’s not smart enough or strong enough to rise above his own environment, but in that very environment, I think he has tried to do what he can. And in terms of his shahid brother, that is the only language these thugs may understand, so I can’t condemn him for using it.

In the end, I realize that they will try to glorify themselves, and it’s up to the outsiders to remind them of their incompetence. While they say they’ve realized their mistakes, they glorify some of those mistakes and beh roo khodeshoon nemiyaran that that’s a logical, philosophical and moral contradiction.

I appreciate his calling Ahmadinejad a lying bastard, anyways.

You see, more and more of these “protest letters to supreme leader” are emerging; and in all of them, from mohtashami pour to fazel; a significant number of paragraphs are dedicated to a)how they are khodi; b)how they used to play with khamenei/khomeini failies; c)how they are relative of someone who has been a top official in the IRI … this line of defense somehow lumps together a whole bunch of these greens to me; and reminds me of how THEY were the oppressors in a past. That, I have not yet forgotten.

I am willing to forgive them; if they change and repent for things like keeping my “rotbeh 1″ cousin out of university because he came from a communist family; or keeping my top-of-the-class friend from residency of her choice because she wore makeup … these memories make me not give a damn shit about Jalayee poor, or a whole bunch of other ones who sell their authenticity to me in the clothes of “look we are the grandchild of a mullahs and we have an “shahid” uncle!”

Speaking of Shahid, I think all families of the Mojahedin-e khalgh, or peykar, have to be considered family of shahid; didn’t their children also die for “armed” resistance to transmogrification of their “version” of Iran?

I just think it will be unfair to suddenly glorify these killers of yesterday, without contextualizing the corpse they have once walked on. Everyone needs a properly contextualized place in history. It is abhoring to me to hear the greenos call “Rahnavard” the champion of women rights!! And yes, people have to be given credit for undergoing “estehale”. So, I am grateful to Sanei for using his podium. But, I still find something peculiar that the mullahs whose speeches and statements are tolerated are those who have been subjects of much of our jokes in the past.

Here’s something an Iranian writer, with a solid and politically independent brain, sent to me recently: (he somehow wrote it in response to you and I, when were were criticizing the kinds of people who were participating in these protest)

“Like all Johny-come-latelies, these Joojeh-akhoond’s drums are louder than anybody else’s. The “guillotine” did not appear yesterday. It was the exile-community that suffered the Shi’ite guillotine first, both inside and outside Iran, while all these bullshitter-reformists were silent, if not complicit. Now, some of them are exiled themselves but they’ve the temerity to tell us, Be careful, don’t touch the system, don’t say anything against velayat, WE will mange the protest, you be quiet!

And the Joojeh-Akhoond says, It’s too soon for saying “secularism and republic!” Excuse me, where were you Shi’ite mullahs, when Darolfonoon was founded? Who wrote Mashrootyat’s constitution and other laws? Who created the modern journalism, modern poetry, music, and arts in contemporary Iran? Do you want to take credit for Nima, Shamloo, radio music of Golha, Marzieh, Delkash, and Shajarian? New pop music of Viguen and Googoosh? Our historians Kassravi and Adamyat, and Yarshater? What was YOUR fucking contribution to the Iranian culture in the past 200 years? And you have face to tell the secular intellectuals, the heirs to all this, that YOU the mullahs are the true champions of freedom and democracy?! Get out of the way and let the breeze come in!”

Lots of breathless talk on other sites about Sanei calling Ahmadinejad a “bastard” but it would seem to me that the much more shocking accusation here is kufr—actively deceiving people and pulling them away from the truth—a theme to which he continually returns, and which your translation points out.

I think it has been in the embryonic stage for a while … that’s why I’m very curios to know what the end result is going to look like!

All of the players in this destructive and inhuman political drama have come up through questionable ranks and are front and center at this most pivotal time in Iran’s history. Each is being peeled away by either their conscience (if they have one) or pressure from the Greens. The daily chiseling away is revealing, and leaves one trying to understand how superstition, social (and political) blindness, sober reasoning, perverse murderous intent and skewed perceptions of divinity exist simultaneously within individuals charged with the leadership of 70 million souls.

My bet is on selected and outstanding leaders from within the movement itself. I suspect their development is in the embryonic stage, but it too is as much ongoing as the chiseling away.

Nevertheless, at this stage, public demonstrations of sober reasoning from any source is both unexpected and laudable…especially when the threat of rape with a baton, flogging, public disgrace, or murder would have you do otherwise.

Yours

German

completely d’accord – it’s really great, what you are saying! You are definitely right! I understand your (convincing!) point of view! I agree with you!

Thank you very much for your [incredible] patience [with some of your correspondents - like me] !

I wish you all the best

German

And so my main worry is, given that these men are noble in helping us weather the storm – what is going to come after? Are we going to reach a compromise that won’t see us in the same quandary over and over again? They can keep their feelings about the so called saints to themselves, but through that, I just want to have an assessment of sorts about their vision of Iran post-trauma.