SIC TRANSIT

The coming rebirth or renaissance of Iran started about one hundred

years ago and can be divided into three phases, just like the three

trimesters of human gestation.

first phase: Early 1900s with the constitutional movement leading to the

end of the reactionary Qajar dynasty.

second phase: Pahlavi period from 1921 to 1979: About 58 years of

steady, progressive constructive building of the physical and cultural

infrastructures and organizational cohesion necessary as reliable

and sustainable foundations of a modern country.

Unfortunately this period of growth and development was negatively

and adversely impacted by various counterproductive forces including:

1) "Future shock", the intensely disruptive, destablizing and confusing

impact of rapid modernizing changes. These changes occurred too fast

and exceeded the psychological and cultural adaptive capacities of most

of the population.

2) The intense political tensions of the Cold War were severely stressful

and disruptive in Iran's internal political processes, misdirecting these

away from an open, transparent democracy, and , instead, producing a

repressive police-state dictatorship.

3) The oil companies continued to actively and maliciously undermine,

sabotage and destroy all Iranian efforts at building and improving their

country.

Third phase: The revolutionary and very destructive reactions to the

negative dynamics of the Pahlavi period led to the current regressive

conditions.

The single most important and outstanding fact of these last hundred

years has been the overall steady progress of the Iranian people to

increasingly higher levels of modernity and sophistication, with overall

underlying positive trends and currents for the people as a whole.

It is notable that, in its relatively peripheral and protected location, it took

Japan about 70 years (1880,s to 1950,) to achieve a form of democracy.

It has taken China (with a history more similar to Iran's) about 97 years

(1910's to present) to just begin to find its way toward a democracy.

In a post-theocratic Iran, progress toward a true democracy and prosperity

should be rapid. Iran has paid its dues in blood, sacrifice and suffering,

and will shortly become a viable secular democracy and a positive force in the

Middle East. It is never so dark as at midnight and just before the Dawn

of a New Day and Sunrise! After all, the Rising Sun, Iran's national

symbol, does always rise in the East!