Youthful, dynamic, defiant: the Iran we don’t hear about

Once again Iran is back in the news, this time for its unprecedented retaliatory attack on Israel. As an Iranian, it saddens me that my country, with its rich history and dynamic culture, appears in the Western media only in the context of death and destruction.

Iran is a country filled with fascinating contradictions, making it one of the most unknown and misunderstood countries in the world.

Let’s begin with the fact that Iran, known for its oppression of women, has more female university graduates than male. And despite its highly restrictive press freedom, it has possibly one of the most politically engaged and informed populations on earth.

Authoritarian governments are known to fear the power of film and Iran is no exception. In its attempt to eradicate freedom of thought and expression, Iran heavily represses filmmakers and censors their work – and yet Iran’s cinema continues to flourish, enjoying remarkable ascent and global prominence.

Despite the common chants of “Death to America”, visitors to Iran are often fascinated by Iranians’ obsession with American TV shows such as Friends, and by their love for Western foreigners.

Iran has an incredibly young and highly educated population. One in every five Iranians is under the age of 14.

Iran’s youth population is modern and globally connected. The regime insists on modesty and piety, but Iran is the nosejob capital of the world, and its youths are more interested in heavy metal music than religious sermons.

Iran’s hostility toward Israel is falsely portrayed as anti-Semitic, despite the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s repeated clarification that “the ‘abolition of the Israeli regime’ ... does not mean the abolition of Jewish people”.

The Jewish community in Iran is the largest in the Mid-east outside Israel, and feels safe and respected there. It’s true that the vast majority of Jewish people fled Iran immediately before and after the 1979 revolution (150,000 before the revolution to about 12,000 today), but that was part of the post-revolution exodus of upper-class Iranians of all faiths, especially those with close affiliation with the late Shah of Iran.

There is a sizable group of mainly overseas-based Iranians who support Israel and naively hope that perhaps, selected bombings of Iran’s military sites would liberate their country from the clutches of its authoritarian regime.

You might have heard of Iran’s compulsory hijab but may not know that many Iranian women openly flaunt the compulsory-hijab rules by appearing in public unveiled.

Just before Iran’s attack on Israel, reports emerged of the sudden resurfacing of the morality police. It surprised me to learn that some of the people who are arguing most passionately against the violent enforcing of hijab laws happen to be the most ardent supporters of the Iranian regime and its Shia ideology.

I became aware of it by listening to some of these people on X’s audiosharing platform. An ordinary Iranian, disinterested in the nuanced views of the regime supporters, would not know this.

It is not just outsiders who misunderstand Iran. Many Iranians themselves see their country only through their own narrow lens of lived experiences and selected readings.

For example, there are many Iranians who are completely unaware of the country’s Iranian-African community (look up the Collective for Black Iranians).

It irks me when Iranians introduce themselves as being from Persia because doing so ignores Iran’s colourful array of ethnic minorities: Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Baluchis, Lurs and many others who live alongside Persians in Iran.

The minority peoples of Iran have their own rich cultural and linguistic heritage but they struggle against cultural, linguistic and economic Persian supremacy. This is despite the fact that one of the greatest heroes of Persians is Cyrus the Great, the ancient king known for his political philosophy of tolerance and respect toward non-Persians, who saw no need for cultural or linguistic homogenisation among his people.

Recently, I have been reading about the Greco-Persian wars, almost all of which were motivated by a combination of paranoia and revenge. Magnificent cities were laid to waste and long-enduring empires came to an end because of military adventurism of vengeful and corrupt rulers.

Reflecting on the current events in the Middle-East, it seems to me that the same destructive factors are, once again, at play there.

I believe, more than governmental actions, long-lasting peace is a civil and cultural process. It warms my heart to know that the 13th century mystic poet Rumi, whose works were written mostly in Persian, is the best-selling poet in the US.

Rumi’s poems give the wider world a window to the wisdom of love that permeates so much of Iranian culture, showing it in a way that is rarely reflected in the news.