LETTER

Excellent piece

Civil society is more important than the form of government.

I enjoyed reading your letter, thank you.

Doos te aziz....The US

Doos te aziz....The US policy has been changed not because of Ahmaghi nejad...this is complicated process that has changed in US....if u want think like that u could say Obam won b/o Ahmaghi nejad!!

Got it wrong

Comments are talking about Ahmadinejad and his works or anti-works but the spirit of this article seems to be more general and concerned about presidency not just Ahmadinejad or Mousavi, etc. We need to discuss what we expect from next president as the article tries to pose.

How you can say these about

How you can say these about most of the poeple? There was a time that there was not a basket(if you remember 30 years ago and even 15 years ago) in the streets, and the culture had some problems so people do not keep their small pockets of garbages until they arrive home. They just throw it wherever tey were walking.. But now, it is getting better and better. The population is so high in the capital so if just 2% of people throw their garbage wherever they want it will be a mess, so it is even less than that. Another point, having a knife is a crime. Though it is not restricted but during whole my life I have seen just 2 buddies that had it. And I should say at that time it was a fashion that girls have a knife just to feel more safe. Now it has passed. If there are very few people who have that do not exaggerate it. Those exist in any society.

I agree with the writer Mr.

I agree with the writer Mr. Ali Tizghadam

I also agree with dariush45. Nicely said, Fair and balanced.

just to say one of the things Ahmadinejad tried to do and backfired is that he tried to reduce the bank loans to rich and tried to expose them. They saw him as a danger to their interest and they do whatever they can to bring him down. Then his trying to reduce the interest rates paid on bank account savings.

People in Tehran don't look normal

What I have seen in Iran is that many people just simply don't trust their government. In fact they believe in opposite of what the government says.
People throw their garbage in sidewalk or in "Joobs" where there are plenty of garbage baskets in sidewalks.
Most young kids have a knife for personal protection. They fight for anything, from a car accident to looking at their sister.
I think most people in Iran are not normal. I mean they just don’t act normal.
It will take years to change their behavior. And this will not even start until a good government be in place. Then it would take generations to see the result.

you need to remeber the atmosphere in 2005 time frame....

Anonymous-11234,

President of Iran makes decisions, things happen, some are by design some most are not. There are many faults one can find with his handling of economy. But in foreign policy, fact is that when he came to power there was the 'axis of evil" and a very serious threat of invasion of Iran by Bush administration. We went from that to Obama's policy.

Ahamdinejad had a policy of taking fight to the enemy. Khatami on the other hand wanted to make deals with the west. The deals all failed, the end result of the axis of evil label.

Is it direct result of the Ahmadinejad's policy? I don't know. But one had to acknowledge the success, intentional or not. Just as we criticize his economic policies eventhough he may have had the best of intentions.

In my view, the world has to see Iran as capable of having a peaceful and confrontational attitude. Ahmadinejad showed the later, he did his thing.

Now going forward, with Obama as US president, Ahmadinejad's approach would isolate Iran. Iran needs a, non controversial, calm calculating president to give talks another chance.

Ahmadinjead needs to take a break for 4 years, and see where things would go from here. Threat of return of Ahmadinejad may be the ace that Iran needs right now.

It is all about marketing future rather than trying to just market failure of Ahmadinjed.

Darius45

would you please let us know what did exactly do Ahmadi-Nejad in his presidency? What benefits did we get out of his works?

عيب مي جمله چو گفتي هنرش نيز بگو!

It basically boils down to what hafez said:

عيب مي جمله چو گفتي هنرش نيز بگو

It is true that Ahmadinejad has done many wrongs. If you want to fault him for it, you also have to credit him for the intended (or unintended) positive consequences of his presidency. For example, he screwed up the economy, but then may be he is partly responsible for the change of US policy in the middle east. Or for connecting with the rural areas of Iran, etc.

It all boils down to whether you want to market the past, or market the future.

Obama did this masterfully in the last US election. Instead of arguing against Bush administration Iraq policy, he came out and said that the surge did work. Even though, in reality, the extra troops didn't have much do to with the changes in Iraq. There were many other possible explanation that he could have argued such as change in US policy to start paying the insurgents rather than fighting them, or the resolution of the ethnic separation of Iraqis along religious lines.... He could have argued, and lost the election about the validity of the surge, he accepted it as success but asked the question where do we want to go from now?

The candidate in Iran need to do the same. Give Ahamdinejad credit where it is due and criticize him where his mistakes were. At the end market their own vision of future while fully respecting Ahmadinjead as the President of Iran.

Ahmadinejad clearly has mindset of taking the fight to the other side. This may be exactly what you have to do at some point. But sometimes may be you need to take peace to the enemy. Mousavi showed that Ahmadinejad has problem working with the system. That was an asset when Bush was trying to Bully everyone, but when there is opportunity for discussion then you want to put the right person in that can discuss the future reasonably and rationally.

I am glad there is the current debates and like its format. I think any one that is going to be the next Iranian president must be able to at least debate his case in Farsi among Iranians. I am confident the collective wisdom would produce the right result. It has so far, when you think about Hashemi, Khatami, and Ahmadinjed showed up exactly when there was a real need for their vision.

Re:Lack of a Sense of Belonging

Dear Mamane-Omid;

I certainly agree with you on the issue you drew. Yes, sense of belonging does not exist in our society and this is a major concern. The part that I may disagree with you is in that you condition it to the existence of a domocratc government. I believe even in a non-democratic government still we may be able to generate a good sense of belonging by being honest to the people and by doing our job to the best we can. If a government (even a very limited one like what we have in Iran) proposes a program and regularly reports to its nation about the progress of the program then people feel that this program is theirs and can easily get a sense of belonging. This is doable even now.

Mamane-Omid

"Sense of belonging" may be related to some of these social behaviors, but definitely not all of them. Sense of belonging has nothing to do with our crazy driving and disobeying the rules. Actually, Iranians even in USA, Canada, etc drive crazy whenever possible.
I agree with many points of this article, but we need to find appropriate tactics to deal with them. As article points out "Dorough-Zodaaee" is something very necessary but at the same time really hard to deal with.

Lack of a Sense of Belonging

All of the national traits you attribute to Iranian behavior, from overcharging for water in Toronto to the way Iranians drive, seem to be caused by a lack of a sense of belonging. In other words, IMHO, it is due to feeling inconsequential in the affairs and future of the country (beh-man-chech attitude), which results from the absence of a democratic government to give the citizenry a sense of collective ownership of the country and responsibility towards one another. TIs like Wild-Wild-West where every man was for himself.

Mamane-Omid