SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE
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This item is available on the Benador Associates website, at http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/4984
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
June 7, 2004June 7, 2004 -- 'I WANT you to meet America's best hope," my friend Ardeshir Zahedi said in 1977 while introducing Ronald Reagan.
That meeting was in Washington, at Zahedi's official residence as Iran's ambassador to America. Later, he added with undisguised sadness that there was little chance that Reagan would win the Republican Party's presidential nomination, let alone flush President Jimmy Carter out of the White House.
Carter then stood at the peak of his popularity and there was nothing in the mood in the United States to indicate any support for the type of policies that Reagan was to symbolize a couple of years later.
I began to see what Zahedi meant a few months later, when Reagan came to Tehran on a private visit. Reagan gave a brief speech at a banquet arranged in his honor — and described Iran as "one of the frontiers of freedom today," adding, to the surprise of those present, that those frontiers would be extended in the future.
For Iranians obsessed with the threat from their Soviet neighbors, this was provocative talk. The best that most of us could think of was to contain the Soviet monster in its lair; to even dream of forcing it into any retreat was pure fantasy.
What made Reagan's words effective was that he spoke in a tone of sincerity seldom associated with politicians. Something in the way he exposed his vision of the world meant that the first word that came to mind was "conviction."
I had gone to the banquet with some reluctance, as a gesture towards my friend Zahedi. But I was captivated by Reagan's vision. He appeared to be swimming entirely against the tide. So I asked to accompany the Reagans on a trip to Isfahan the following day. The man in charge of the trip was Shapour Dolatshahi, scion of an old aristocratic family and a punctilious protocol officer.
His five-star program had been designed in such a way as to minimize Ronald and Nancy Reagan's contacts with the ordinary folk in the historic city. But Reagan would have none of that.
He and Nancy were happy about the super-luxurious Shah Abbas Hotel suite they were assigned. But "Ronny" also insisted on pressing some flesh in the bazaar, at the mosques and at a local steel mill. Despite the language barrier, he showed that he was a genuine man of the people, capable of communicating with individuals from all backgrounds.
Over lunch and at tea-time he asked numerous questions about Iran. I in turn asked him questions about the United States.
A few weeks earlier, the shah had told me that he believed the United States had "entered an historic period of decline." Without revealing its source, I asked Reagan what he thought of that analysis. "These are big words for me," he quipped. "But I can tell you that those who write us off make a big mistake."
One theme that came up frequently was Reagan's belief that a nation would achieve power and prosperity if only governments allowed people "to do their thing."
He loved a story about Shah Abbas, the medieval Persian ruler, who had been presented with a falcon.
"This is the toughest falcon ever," reported the palace eunuch. "The problem is that we have to feed him two big lambs a day."
"OK," said the Shah "But how has he been fed so far?"
"Well, he has been finding his food in the wilderness," the eunuch replied.
"So why not let him continue to do just that," the Shah had said, closing the discussion.
Reagan joked that the Safavid Shah must be regarded as the true father of free-enterprise economics.
He was so different from the little I knew of the United States. I had been disturbed by much of what I had seen and heard during brief visits there.
From meeting the Washington political elite, (including House Speaker Tip O'Neil and half a dozen senators, including Edward Kennedy) and the usual touring of newspaper editorial boards, I had concluded that the Americans were tired and bored.
All they wanted was to be left alone. They had already swallowed a massive expansion of Soviet influence in Africa and made no noise when the Communists seized power in Afghanistan. They were not even interested in the Communist-sponsored war raging in the Arabian Peninsula, although the region contained the world's largest known oil reserves.
Fear of another Vietnam had paralyzed the U.S. political and intellectual elite, turning them into appeasers. And public obsession with Watergate seemed to preclude the revival of the Republican Party's fortunes anytime soon.
At one editorial lunch in Washington, I had uttered a few good words about Richard Nixon. The table suddenly fell silent, and stares turned my way — was I an alien from outer space?
Iran's foreign minister spoke for many when told me that "our ambassador over there" was causing unnecessary "complications" in our relations with the Carter administration by "cuddling that radical extremist Ronald Reagan."
So meeting Ronald Reagan in Tehran was like running into a prehistoric man, a long-defunct species that existed only in imagination.
And this was precisely why Reagan was interesting.
At a teashop in the bazaar, Reagan stopped to watch two men playing backgammon, a game every Iranian knows and plays.
"Sounds like international politics," Reagan joked. "Maybe I should practice it."
The hint was enough for his guide, Dolatshahi, to present Reagan with a luxury backgammon set the following day, plus a 20-minute course in how to play.
I don't know whether or not Reagan learned the game. But his subsequent career showed that he used many of its rules in confronting and ultimately helping destroy the "Evil Empire."
Back in Tehran a few days later, the foreign minister asked what I though of the strange American visitor.
"He is great," I said. "The exact opposite of Jimmy Carter, he is the other America, the America of Gary Cooper."
"But does he have any chance?" the minister asked.
"None at all," I said.
E-mail: amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com
This item is available on the Benador Associates website, at http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/4984
