Silence Shattered

by Leila Zand, FOR Iran Program Coordinator 

I live in upstate New York, where I have a beautiful backyard.  A beautiful backyard with a variety of flowers and trees, which attracts all kinds of butterflies and birds.  Every morning I take my coffee and go to my backyard.  As I drink my coffee, I listen to the birds, singing and dancing around me.  Looking at and listening to them makes me relax.  I really love this time of my day.  I close my eyes to hear them better, to recognize different birds’ songs.  

Silence!  And the sound of a huge explosion interrupted me.  I hear someone screaming “I am burning, help, help.”  Smoke is everywhere.  Fire is all around me.  The first thing that comes to my mind is “my kids.”  Where are they?  They were playing outside just now.  What if they are dead somewhere, what if…?  

I open my eyes.  I am still in my backyard and still birds are around.  Thank God.  That was just in my imagination.  That was an Iraqi woman’s voice inside me.  An Iraqi woman just like me, my age, with two kids and many dreams for her future.  Seeing her kids’ graduations, weddings.  Having a simple and lovely life.  An Iraqi woman who has to listen to the sound of explosions instead of songs of birds.  I am wondering if there are any birds still alive in Baghdad.  

I am happy that I am not in Iraq to listen to the explosions every fifteen minutes.  I am happy I am not in Iran to live with the fear of the American army surrounding me: in Afghanistan to the east, Iraq to the west, the Persian Gulf to the south and the American allies Azerbaijan and Girqizestan to the north.  I am happy that I don’t have to live with the fear of a war starting every moment. 

I am happy that I am not there.  But what about those people who live there?  People who live with this fear and anxiety every moment.  How about an Iraqi woman who is suffering every day not knowing why?  We should be happy here.  Our nation is in the war but we don’t feel it in our daily lives.  We should be happy to live here so we can still listen to the birds.  But should we be happy when another human being exactly like us is suffering every moment?  Should we be relaxed having our coffee every day without any sympathy for another creature of our God?  Should we stay still and do nothing?   

I came from the same war myself.  I was there when the Abadan refinery, the biggest and most modern refinery in the Middle East exploded.  I was there when my countrymen exploded on landmines.  I was there when people like us with love for their family, friends and homes had to bid a tearful goodbye to everything important to them.  I was there and saw with my own eyes, when a mother had to bury her kids with her own hands.  I was there when a father wanted to bury his kids in the living room so he wouldn’t miss them.  I was there when my school exploded and we watched as our classroom - filled full with its memories, laughter and worries - was destroyed.  I was there when a hospital exploded.  I was there and listened to the people burning and screaming with pain.  “I am burning, help, help.”  It is not baseless that I still hear these people while I am drinking my coffee in my backyard.  I live with these memories every moment.  These are parts of my life, my childhood and my existence. 

I know many people who have never tasted war behind their windows, yet they sympathize with other human beings.  I know many people in their backyards hear the pain of Iraqi people and the worries of Iranians.  So let us do something for those who feel the pain, smell the fear, touch the fire and lose all they have every single day.  They lose their homes, their loved ones and their dreams.  We can help them by signing an anti-war petition.  By attending anti-war meetings.  By supporting people, groups and organizations that support peace in the world.   

I decided recently to join the Fellowship of Reconciliation family, a family with a long and positive history.  I am the new coordinator of the Iran Program at FOR.  I decided to work for FOR, a pro-peace organization, because I believe that this is an organization that can help people who care for others and can prevent more war.   

In the Iran program at FOR we try to introduce Iranian people and culture to Americans and vice versa, so as to help these people face each other and gain understanding through personal experience, rather than the media.   

To this end we help delegations of peace lovers to travel to Iran to meet ordinary Iranians and bring a message of peace to them from the American people.  Our next delegation begins on February 21.  Details will be published soon through the FOR website and newsletter.  We will also bring Iranian cultural events to the U.S. to show and to promote the understanding of Iranian culture and society.  Events will include an Iranian film festival, a Persian poetry night, an Iranian New Year ceremony and a number of speakers.  More information will be posted on our website and newsletter as well.   

But dear peace lovers, for these things and more we need your support. The Iran program needs your support.  FOR needs your support to continue its message of peace.  Our world needs you to help stop another war — especially in the Middle East, which has suffered for more than half a century.  Help our world to have a more serene, peaceful and lovely future.  Help FOR to support that vision of peace and to continue its message of love to people everywhere.  Help the Iran Program to continue to introduce people to one another.  Help other people caught in the middle of a war to have their dreams and not to lose their faith and hope.  

I believe that as long as there are human beings in this world who are suffering from bomb explosions and attacks on their lives, we cannot have our coffee in peace while listening to the birds.  I want my kids to have their coffees every morning without the interruption of sounds from the past. 

Peace, love and happiness for all, 

Leila Zand
FOR Iran Program Coordinator

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Leila in New York

By Leila Zand

Any attack on Iran is the violation of Human Rights. 

I am an Iranian- American who loves both Iran and America.

I am Iranian enough to be worried for my people, their cultural heritage, their history and above all the path towards democracy that they have taken for the past 100 years.  I see that today they are in closer than ever to reaching this dream:  The Iranian women, students, workers, and other groups have worked hard to get here and are willing to even work harder to achieve this dream. 

What I feel my fellow Iranians are saying now, and they hope that everyone hears them, is that they are intelligent enough to make their own decisions.  I hear their cry, loud and clear, when they say, “Please do not destroy our dream that we have worked so hard for.” I hear them say, loud and clear, “Please let us determine our own future by ourselves.”  They cry out, “ Please DO NOT help us.”

And, as an Iranian, I say to you, my fellow Americans,  “Please let my people pave the path of democracy on their own.  Do not push them.  Do not send them back another 100 years!”  

I am an American-Iranian who loves both America and Iran.

I am American enough to not want to see more deaths and misery for my country.   I do not want to hear people from Europe and other countries, those we consider friends, speak about us as warmongers.  More important, I don’t want to see my young American brothers and sisters, giving up their lives and dying in order to satisfy the appetite of our blood-thirsty leaders.  I do not want to see my American children living in fear as a result of this administration’s agenda for world domination.   

I am Iranian enough and American enough to not support more death, more wounded, more war and more destruction.  I am human enough to dream of peace and happiness for all people.

So I say, Enough! to “The Access of Evil.”  I say Enough! to “The Great Satan.”  I say Enough to War.   

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The U.S.-Iran Nuclear Dispute: Dr. Mohamed El Baradei’s Mission Possible to Iran

Published in the Iran News (Tehran’s English daily newspaper), Sunday, July 13, 2003

Akbar Etemad, Ph.D.
[Founder and first President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (1974-1978), Member of the IAEA’s Board of Governors (1975-1977), President of the IAEA’s General Conference (1977)]

Najmedin Meshkati, Ph.D., CPE
[Professor of Engineering, University of Southern California]
Email: meshkati@usc.edu
URL: http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~meshkati/

Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General (DG) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was in Iran last week to urge Iran to sign and implement without delay and without conditions IAEA’s so-called Additional Protocol.  The protocol obligates the signatory country to allow the IAEA’s inspectors unfettered access to any nuclear or non-nuclear site in the country.

The IAEA’s Board of Governors met in mid June in Vienna, Austria and discussed a DG’s report on Iran’s nuclear technology development projects.  The U.S. government has been pressuring the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to state, in its next report on Iran which is expected in September, that it has discovered major discrepancies between Iran’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its actual practices.

This could lead subsequently to the IAEA requesting a special inspection of the Iranian facilities and possibly declaring Iran to be in violation of the NPT.  This finding would in turn pave the way for a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council, which may decide to further isolate Iran, or deal with it by other means.

What makes the timing and purpose of Dr. ElBaradei’s trip to Tehran even more critical is that Ambassador Kenneth C. Brill, U.S. Representative at the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna, had suggested on June 18th that the Board should be prepared to meet in special session on Iran rather than wait until the next scheduled Board meeting in September.

The present U.S. posture vis-à-vis the Iranian nuclear program is a curious one, considering Iran’s quest for atomic energy in the mid-1960’s began under the auspices of the U.S. within the framework of bilateral agreements between the two countries.  In 1967, the U.S. supplied Tehran University with a 5-megawatt pool-type research reactor; in 1975 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology signed a contract with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to provide training for the first cadre of Iranian nuclear engineers.  In early 1970’s, the influential think tank, Stanford Research Institute (SRI) recommended that in order for Iran to satisfy its energy needs, Iran had to build up its capacity for generation of 20,000 megawatt of nuclear electricity in a 20-year period.

According to declassified confidential US Government documents posted on the Digital National Security Archive (http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com), in the mid- and late-1970’s the U.S. complimented Iran’s efforts at expanding its non-oil energy base and wished for the American companies to participate in Iran’s multi-billion dollar nuclear energy projects.  In an address to the symposium on “The U.S. and Iran, An Increasing Partnership” in October 1977, Mr. Sydney Sober, a participant representing the U.S. State Department stated that the Iranian government intended to purchase eight nuclear reactors from the U.S. for electricity generation and an agreement was being worked out with Iran on the civilian use of nuclear energy.  On July 10, 1978, representatives of the U.S. and Iranian governments initialed the final draft of the much awaited “U.S.-Iran Nuclear Energy Agreement.”  This (bilateral) Agreement was to facilitate cooperation in the field of nuclear energy and to govern the export and transfer of equipment and material to Iran's nuclear energy program.  The U.S. did not object to other countries seeking a slice of the Iranian nuclear pie.  In the mid-1970’s the German and French companies pursued openly the sale of nuclear technology to Iran, which took place contemporaneous with the conclusion of the Iranian-Indian nuclear cooperation treaty, as well as Iran’s acquisition of uranium supplies from South Africa, and use of American technology to explore for uranium deposits in Iran.  In 1974, the German firm Siemens and its subsidiary Kraftwerksunion (KWU) began work on the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant on the coast of the Persian Gulf.  Had the 1979 Iranian revolution not happened, the KWU would have continued its work, in all likelihood, with the cooperation of Bechtel Power Corporation, its joint-venture partner in many power plant projects around the world.

The rise of the Islamic republic put an end to the U.S. role in the development of Iran’s nuclear energy program.  Meanwhile the Soviets (now Russians), who had been shut out of the venture earlier, have stepped in to complete the power plant at Bushehr.  The U.S. economic sanctions against Iran has placed Iran’s nuclear program at the mercy of inferior Russian technology, home-grown initiatives, and clandestine acquisition of purchases of nuclear technology on the world market.

The Bush Administration is insisting that Iran must immediately and unconditionally implement the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) new inspection regime --the Additional Protocol.  This protocol has not yet been adopted by Iran nor many other countries, including the U.S.  Of the 183 nations that are party to the NPT, as of May 15 of this year, 78 states have said they will adopt the Additional Protocol, but only 33 countries are actually implementing (“In-Force”) the terms of the protocol; many of these, however, are countries that can hardly keep electricity flowing uninterruptedly in their capital cities on a daily basis much less have the wherewithal to pursue nuclear ambitions.

The biggest problem of the Additional Protocol is that it violates the letter and spirit of the NPT, destroying the very delicate balance between two competing interests – namely, the development of a nuclear technology as an expression of a country’s legitimate sovereign right to seek peaceful usage of this technology, and abjure in return the development of nuclear weapons.  The protocol is mired with inherent technical problems, especially its Part II which cannot easily be implemented, and is laced with unbalanced mechanisms.

Nuclear energy must also be de-coupled from nuclear weapons.  As a signatory to the NPT and in its Article IV language, Iran has the “inalienable right” to research, develop, produce, and utilize nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.  Instead of threatening Iran, the U.S. ought to temper its rhetoric in favor of adopting a negotiated settlement of its concerns and Iran’s legitimate energy needs.  First and foremost, the issue of nuclear technology should be separated from political wrangling between the two regimes.  Secondly, the technical issues should be discussed directly by the representatives of the two countries in a bilateral standing committee of experts, not in an international forum.

Iran, determined to develop her nuclear energy option, will be acquiring components for nuclear reactor systems, through various means, from many sources.  By pressuring Russia to cancel its one billion dollar contract to sell nuclear reactors to Iran, and by not providing any viable alternative to her, the United States unintentionally is taking a major risk which could have dire consequences.  Technically, this effort could result in a piecemeal assemblage of potentially incompatible parts, of dubious reliability, in an untested reactor of questionable Soviet-designed technology with no operational track record, and obsolete safety systems.  A hastily built or secretly-designed, untested Iranian nuclear reactor could pose a much higher risk to the global security, health, and environmental sustainability.

The U.S. pressure on the IAEA threatens to diminish its role as an effective and impartial arbiter of the NPT regime. By seeking to convert it into an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, the Bush Administration raises the same thorny question about the relevance of the IAEA as the U.S. policy with respect to Iraq raised about the utility of the United Nations.  Easing off the pressure on the IAEA and transferring the nuclear argument with Iran to a bilateral forum will leave the IAEA free to do what the NTP regime set it up to do, to inspect, monitor and report, instead of getting embroiled in political feuds.

By seriously considering Iran’s and Russia’s most recent offers to participate in completion of the Bushehr nuclear plant, the U.S. would be making an offer that Iran cannot refuse.  The premise of this cooperation in nuclear technology development is that the most efficient control on technological matters is through the systematic integration of one country’s technology with that of other countries, such that no one component of the system could operate independently of the whole system.  Tight integration, inter-dependency and correlation among technologies of different countries provide much more oversight, control, and assurance than restrictions and isolation.

Cooperating with Russia and Iran will constitute a paradigm shift in the U.S. foreign policy.  It not only assures much higher safety levels for Iranian nuclear power plants, but also provides assurance for effective IAEA safeguard-related controls and accurate verification of nuclear technologies in cooperating countries.  If successful, this project would serve as a model to help develop viable and sustainable nuclear energy programs within the United States and in other regions of the world.

A good precedence and a working model for grafting American technology to improve the safety of a Soviet-style nuclear reactor, the kind which is under-construction in Bushehr, called the VVER-1000 reactor, is the Temelin nuclear power plant in the Czech Republic.

Construction of the Temelin two VVER-1000 reactors started by the former Communist Government in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet time, but the work was halted in 1992.  In 1994, drawing upon from its extensive reactor vessel design and safety technologies in the U.S. and experience of working on nuclear power plants in Ukraine and Bulgaria, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, with a $317 million loan guarantees from the United States Export-Import Bank (an independent Federal agency that aids and finances United States exports), participated in completing the Temelin’s reactors.  Westinghouse most important contribution included improving reactors’ major safety problems and fire protection systems.  The Russian regulation and control system were replaced by most modern technology and the design of the reactor core and fuel assembly designs were improved by Westinghouse.  Temelin’s main regulation and control systems are the same as in Britain’s Sizewell B nuclear power plant.

It will be the irony of ironies if the United States and Iran were to draw closer to one another on an issue that would only tear them farther apart if neither relented on its self-righteous bombast.  By exercising further restraint, flexibility, and mature nuclear diplomacy the two governments of U.S. and Iran will draw more closely together in the pursuit of the world peace.

After his most recent agonizing experience with Iraq, the hard-working Dr. ElBaradei deserves a break.  Let’s hope that they give him that.

******

Dr. Akbar Etemad was the founder and first President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran from 1974 to 1978, now lives in France.  During this period, he also held senior (elected) positions at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) two main policy making organs: the Board of Governors and General Conference.  He was on the IAEA’s 35-member Board of Governors for two years and was elected as the President of the General Conference in 1977.

Dr. Najmedin Meshkati is a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) and a NASA Faculty Fellow at Jet Propulsion Laboratory this summer.  He has been conducting research on the nuclear safety and security for the last 20 years.  He has inspected many nuclear power plants around the world, including Chernobyl in 1997.

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Mr. Habib Ahmadzadeh

By Leila Zand

I just came back to the United States after a three-week trip to Iran. I led two civilian diplomacy delegations during those three weeks. The first one was a delegation of three Code Pink leaders, small in number but important in substance.

Being with the two co-founders of Code Pink and another key member was a wonderful and unique experience. I learned a lot … and expended much energy! They are passionate about the need for peace and tireless in their pursuit of that goal.

The Code Pink members who traveled with me were Jodie Evans, Medea Benjamin, and Colonel Ann Wright, all of whom are very experienced international travelers. Ann is a wonderful woman who spent many years in different countries as a U.S. diplomat, which has led to different political perspectives and layers to her work. Medea and Jodie, who co-founded Code Pink in 2002, are visionary, incredibly creative in their work style, and full of energy. 

Although this was a Code Pink delegation, and each of these women have traveled widely, they decided to arrange this trip to Iran through FOR. The success of our delegations, in gaining access to different groups and community leaders in the country, was an incentive for this special collaboration. We discussed the mission and vision of each of our organizations – there are aspects that are consistent (e.g., our common commitments to preventing war, promoting nonviolence, pursuing civilian/citizen diplomacy, and advocating for justice), and ways we are different (for instance, the tactics we use). So it is understandably difficult to match the two organizations’ visions, but we tried and succeeded to a great degree. (For more information please check Code Pink’s web site as well as FOR’s Iran weblog.)

The second delegation, which I co-led along with Mark Johnson, the executive director of FOR, and Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, was more of a regular FOR civilian diplomacy delegation.

We had 14 members in our delegation, ten from the Jewish community, including two rabbis. This was the first time, to the knowledge of FOR’s staff, that the majority of participants of a delegation to any part of the Middle East were of Jewish faith. (FOR-sponsored peace delegations have traveled to Iraq, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan, among other countries.) This delegation was also special because five members were under 30 years of age, which gave this group a wonderfully young spirit.

The primary focus of this delegation was interfaith dialogue, and we were able to follow that goal, thanks to being hosted by the government’s Center for Inter-religious Dialogue. We also met many different organizations and individuals who work for peace and promote understanding between Iran and the outside world. Our meetings included visits with: Iranian war veterans who are advocating for peaceful resolution to conflict; Mofid University faculty and students, in the holy city of Qom; several Jewish organizations and synagogues throughout the country; Members of Parliament – including elected women as well as Christian and Jewish representatives (minority religions have official representation in the Iranian Parliament). We also had opportunity to meet with Ayatollah Sayed Mousavi Bojnourdi, the head of the Imam Khomeini Research Institute in Tehran, and finally, at the end of our trip, we attended the Islamic World Peace Forum.

Personally, for myself, the most exciting part of this trip was to meet with many of my countrymen and women with diverse backgrounds, many of whom I did not previously know.

One of the interesting people I met was Mr. Habib Ahmadzadeh, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. Habib was 16 when the war started. He is originally from Abadan, a city known as the Bride of the Middle East for its beauty. Abadan – located at the top of the Persian Gulf in western Iran, at the southern end of its border with Iraq – was one of the very first cities to be attacked by Saddam Hussein’s forces in August 1980, when war began between the two countries.

Habib has many stories to tell from the war. Not only Habib’s own stories captured my attention, but the stories of his friends and comrades did so as well. Habib introduced me to a new phase of my love for my country. He captured my soul by telling me things about a part of my native land that I never knew, stories of the war and the sacrifices that my country folk made during the war. He took my heart into the streets and alleyways of Abadan and nearby Khorramshahr.

With his memories, Habib took me into the heart of the war with all its bitterness and ugliness. I found out that I knew very little about my country and its people. I found out I knew only a little about the evil parts of the war. Until then, I had heard a lot about the Iran-Iraq war, and had even experienced it to the extent of being a youth in Iran during those years. I had seen many pictures, read many stories, and heard many dramatic reports of the war. But Habib’s recollections were more real than anything I had seen, read, or heard thus far. 

Now Habib works very hard, along with his other friends, those who like him and have had the same experiences, to deliver the messages of war and peace. Even though Habib and his friends are not registered as an official organization, I would like to call them “Veterans for Peace.”

They work in the arts, making movies and documentary films, writing stories, and working on projects aimed at educating the younger generation to understand the ugliness of war. Much of their work is based on their memoirs and stories from the days of the war. Fortunately, one of Habib’s books, Chess with the Doomsday Machine, is translated in the English by Paul Sprachman. Limited copies can be found online, including on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Machine-Bibliotheca-Iranica-Translation/dp/1568592159/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229382821&sr=1-5

Meeting Habib has been a revelation to me. I plan to write more about him, his friends, and their work.

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