05/24/06 U.s.-iran Issues 'deja Vu,' Activist Says

Neighbors and activists assembled at the Wil-Mar Neighborhood Center Tuesday evening to discuss the Bush administration's current saber-rattling about Iran and its nuclear program.

"I get a sense of deja vu to the revolution of 1979" in Iran, said Madison Area Peace Coalition program host Allen Ruff. Then, he said, the main factor driving the fundamentalist forces of the Ayatollah Khomeini was U.S. support of the unpopular shah.

The Western-leaning shah alienated the peasantry and suppressed political opposition, except for the mosques, which allowed fundamentalist elements to brew.

Ruff said his concern is that a similar disregard for history is allowing the Bush administration to push for the overthrow of the current regime in Iran.

Saman Sepehri, the evening's guest speaker, agreed that U.S. pressure has fueled fundamentalism within his country.

Sepehri, a Chicago-based Iranian activist and journalist on the left, said moderate Iranians advocating women's rights and freedom of expression were "squashed" when Iran was declared part of an "Axis of Evil" because fundamentalists felt threatened.

Sepehri said modernizing elements must be taken into consideration by U.S. policy-makers. For example, he said women are increasingly becoming educated and getting professional jobs.

"One in three doctors is a woman compared with one in five in the United States," he said. "Over 60 percent of all university students are women."

On nuclear weapons, Sepehri noted that the U.S. gives Israel and India aid despite their possession of nuclear weapons. He said the Bush stance toward Iran is hypocritical on this issue.

Iran was within in its rights to possess nuclear technology for energy purposes under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, he said.

Alfred Meyer, of the Wisconsin chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, agreed with Sepehri that U.S. standards on nuclear technology were contradictory.

Decrying nuclear energy altogether, he pointed out that Louisiana Energy Services was enriching uranium in a facility in New Mexico.

"Why is it OK over here but not over there in Iran?" Meyer said.

\ E-mail: bbroeren@madison.com