Skip to footer

Readers Write: An education on the real Iran

Letters to the Editor for the Feb. 10, 2014 weekly magazine: His wife handed out oranges from her basket and told us, 'In Iran, everything is good except the government. But governments come and go; the people stay.' We need to remember the people.

| Tacoma, Wash. and McHenry, Ill.

An education on the real Iran

Thank you for the Dec. 23 cover story, "7 days in Iran." I visited Iran with a small group of Americans in 2010, led by an Iranian American. I enjoyed coming home to tell people that Iran was the friendliest country I have ever been in. Day after day, all day, people would pause on the street or stop by our table in a restaurant and greet us with smiles, saying, "Thank you for coming. Please tell more Americans to come!"

Americans have not forgotten the shock of having our embassy and diplomats taken hostage; Iranians also have some memories. They remember (not all Americans do) that our Central Intelligence Agency staged a coup in 1953 that ousted their legally elected prime minister and returned to power an increasingly despotic shah.

They remember that the United States supported Iraq in its brutal war against Iran. Israelis remember the more recent rantings of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but they should also remember that some 50 years ago Israel was assuring the US that it would never build a nuclear bomb and wanted the technology only to desalinate seawater. Israelis must also remember that Israel engaged in some lucrative sales of arms and materiel to Iran even after the 1979 revolution.

One day our group paused our van at the side of the road and met a family picnicking by a mountain stream. The man told us that, prior to the revolution, he had worked with Americans and missed them. His wife handed out oranges from her basket and told us, "In Iran, everything is good except the government. But governments come and go; the people stay." We need to remember the people.

Bernice L. Youtz

Tacoma, Wash.

I have subscribed to the Monitor for many years. This piece is one of the best articles you have ever published. Too many stories in other publications fail by trying to say too much. This piece was clearly written to educate (without preaching to) readers in a straightforward and uncomplicated way.

Dividing the story into seven concise substories, each focused on one subject, separate but clearly related in the context of the whole country, made it even more readable.

Stephen M. Arnold

McHenry, Ill.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Readers Write: An education on the real Iran
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Readers-Respond/2014/0217/Readers-Write-An-education-on-the-real-Iran
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe