Iran, Jews and Pragmatism

By ROGER COHEN
NYT

LOS ANGELES

The Persian New Year, or Norouz, is celebrated this month, often with great extravagance. Among its traditions is jumping over a bonfire while declaiming: “Take away my yellow complexion and give me your red glow of health.”

One way of looking at Iran’s particular calendar, its language and Shiite branch of Islam is as forms of resistance against the Arab and Sunni worlds. Shiism has been a means to independence. The defense of Farsi against Arabic took the form of a medieval epic, “Shahnameh,” by the poet Ferdowsi.

I have, in a series of columns, and as a cautionary warning against the misguided view of Iran as nothing but a society of mad mullah terrorists bent on nukes, been examining distinctive characteristics of Persian society.

Iran — as compared with Arab countries including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — has an old itch for representative government, evident in the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. The June presidential vote will be a genuine contest by the region’s admittedly low standards. This is the Middle East’s least undemocratic state outside Israel.

(More here.)