Average Iranians actually quite pro-American

An article from the Washington Post from two days ago. It comes as no surprise to anyone who knows how popular the government is with young people in Iran, but probably as a surprise to most others. Luckily there should be new presidents in both Iran and the US by next year that might be interested in dialogue instead of the stalemate we have now at present. Here are some of the more interesting parts:

It might startle some Americans to realize that Iran has one of the most pro-American populations in the Middle East. Iranians have adored America for nearly three decades, a sentiment rooted in nostalgia for Iran's golden days, before the worst of the shah's repression and the 1979 Islamic revolution. But today's affection is new, in a sense, or at least different.

and:

I used to hear similarly pro-American sentiments frequently back in 2001, when Iranians' romance with the United States was at its most ardent. A poll conducted that same year found that 74 percent of Iranians supported restoring ties with the United States (whereupon the pollster was tossed into prison). You couldn't attend a dinner party without hearing someone, envious of the recently liberated Afghans, ask, "When will the Americans come save us?"

The most interesting aspect of the revival of such warm feelings today is that the United States has done so little to earn them. Instead, Iranians' renewed pro-American sentiments reflect the depth of their alienation from their own rulers. As a family friend put it: "It's a matter of being drawn to the opposite of what you can't stand."

I lived in Iran until last summer and experienced all the reasons why Ahmadinejad has replaced the United States as Iranians' top object of vexation. Under his leadership, inflation has spiked at least 20 percent, according to nongovernment analysts -- thanks to Ahmadinejad's expansionary fiscal policies, which inject vast amounts of cash into the economy. My old babysitter, for example, says she can no longer afford to feed her family red meat once a week. When I recently picked up some groceries -- a sack of potatoes, some green plums, two cantaloupes and a few tomatoes -- the bill came to the equivalent of $40.

and:

Beyond the new penury, Ahmadinejad has also resurrected unpopular invasions into Iranians' private lives. On the second day of my trip, newspapers announced that police would begin raiding office buildings and businesses to ensure that women were wearing proper Islamic dress. One of my girlfriends, an executive secretary, told me that as a precaution, her office had set up a coded warning message to be broadcast over the intercom. On the third day, police swept our street to confiscate illegal satellite dishes. I climbed to the roof to remove the coding device from my parents-in-law's dish. Such gadgets are costly to replace, unlike the dish itself, and the raids of recent months have made Iranians expert in such matters. "I'm going to miss 'American Idol,' " a neighbor sighed, fiddling with her satellite dish.

Yet another issue helping restore Iranians' regard for the United States is the withering relevance of Iran's suspected nuclear program. At the height of his popularity, Ahmadinejad successfully rallied public support around the program with catchy slogans (at least in Farsi) such as, "Nuclear energy is our absolute right." But that defiance failed to win Iran much more than the disagreeable whiff of global-pariah status, moving many Iranians to reconsider the costs of nuclear enrichment. Today, a scrawl of graffiti on my old street mocks the slogan: "Danish pastry is our absolute right." (Authorities ordered the city's Danish pastry shops to rebrand themselves after a Danish newspaper ran cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in 2005 that were deemed offensive.)

Here is the author's website.

As a student of Persian this is nice to see. I'm curious exactly what "Nuclear energy is our absolute right" (and Danish pastry is our absolute right) comes out to in Persian. I think I'll ask her.