On Iran

During his tour of the Middle East last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that the main obstacle to peace in the region was Iran. He sounded like a hapless traveler who’d started a huge fire in a forest and couldn’t control it; and instead of trying to put it out, he wanted to go out into the next forest and start an even bigger fire. Then he could claim that all these fires were making the forests safer.

Writing in the Guardian, Nasrin Alavi debunks many of Blair’s claims by pointing out the terrible role that the government of Saudi Arabia (i.e. Blair’s ally) has played and continues to play in escalating the war. She also points to Iran’s experiences with democracy and liberalism, and how today’s Iranian youths are fighting the regime.

(Alavi is the author of We Are Iran, a portrait of contemporary Iran through its blog culture. Last year, she contributed a column to this blog.)