FOR JEWS, TWO IRANS

For Jews, There Have Always Been Two Irans - Abbas Milani
The Bible is full of praise for Persia (today's Iran) and for its rulers. In 1941, as Hitler was beginning to put in motion his murderous "final solution," the Iranian government convinced Nazi "race experts" that Iranian Jews had lived in Iran for 2,500 years, were fully assimilated members of the Persian nation, and must be afforded all the rights of Iranian citizens. The Nazis accepted the argument, and the lives of Iranian Jews residing in Europe were saved. Ahmadinejad's shameful pronouncement about wiping the State of Israel off the map is the continuation of a policy that does not reflect Iranian history and character but caters to the lunatic fringe of Iranian politics and of the Muslim world.

The captive people of Iran, or the millions forced into exile by the regime, must not be held responsible for the sins of the ruling cabal. Instead we must try to find ways to help the Iranian people achieve their hundred-year-old dream of democracy. The writer is director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. (International Herald Tribune)