In the 1960s and 1970s, every major city in Iran had an Iran-America Society — a place where American military personnel taught English during the day, and in the evenings the halls came alive with music, parties, bingos, and sports. I was sixteen when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In shock, I rushed to the Society. To my surprise, it was open. I asked my teacher anxiously, “What will happen to America now?” He answered calmly, “It is a sad day, but life goes on. We have a Vice President who becomes President after the death of Kennedy.”
That moment was our first lesson in constitutional democracy. Only those who do not understand the power of a constitution ask such a question. Eighteen years later, we witnessed Ayatollah Khomeini’s deception and the tragedy that followed — thousands of Iranians died protesting a single article in the new constitution: “Velayat-e Faqih.” Since then, generations have lived under its shadow, trapped by laws written to serve one man’s ideology rather than a nation’s destiny. Since 1979, Iranians have lived in a dream of illusions. The world hears the name “Iran” and imagines “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” “terror,” “crisis,” “poverty,” and “corruption.”
Meanwhile, the boardrooms of the Military–Industrial Complex quietly echo, “Long live Iran!” The leaders of the East, the West, and Iran’s neighbors all whisper the same truth: “This regime is good for business.”
But ask the ordinary Iranian in the street, and you will hear a very different story: “We were deceived by an unknown cleric whose classmates made him an Ayatollah. He took advantage of the Shah’s corruption and promised us freedom and prosperity. We trusted him and voted ‘Yes’ to the Islamic Republic. But he betrayed us, wrote a constitution that defied the Qur’an itself, and brought us nothing but poverty, misery, and endless crisis.”
Indeed, poverty, misery, and crisis have been the three pillars of the Islamic Republic for forty-six years — enriching everyone except the people of Iran. Yet forty-six years is but a blink of an eye in Iran’s four thousand years of written history. This is not imagination. Many great scholars of international relations — including Henry Kissinger — have noted that Iran, by its history, geography, and national character, is a natural ally of the United States, provided it is ruled by a democratic, modernizing government.
A democratic Iran would share America’s strategic interests in regional stability and open trade routes, but also its civilizational values — independence, education, and respect for law. Once freed from its current ideological chains, Iran could again become a constructive partner of the West. This is no longer imagination. It will happen. For three years, the main obstacle has been the delayed inclusion of Saudi Arabia in the Abraham Accords — a step that now seems imminent. Once that occurs, it will be time for the United States to act: to confront the eight clauses in the Iranian Constitution that explicitly threaten America and its allies, and to apply smart sanctions against the Ayatollahs’ oligarchs who have looted Iran for nearly half a century. That will open the path for the Iranian people to change their constitution and reclaim their future.
Our inspiration to write this comes from an article titled “America First Citizens Are Alive and Focused,” by LTG Tom McInerney (USAF, Ret.) and MG Paul E. Vallely (US Army, Ret.), first published in 2014 and recently revised. The first paragraph of their piece struck me deeply, for it revealed a mirror between the people of America and the people of Iran:
“‘THE AMERICANS’ has been a Stand Up America US Foundation project focused on ‘America First’ citizens, whose goal is the restoration of the Constitution and preservation of the Republic. We are Americans before we are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, or anything else. The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Rule of Law — rooted in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — must be taught to children early, understood by adults, and honored throughout life.”
Indeed, the American mindset belongs in the Independent Constitutionalist arena, and The American Papers will help sustain those beliefs. And so too, the Iranian mindset — formed through thousands of years of civilization — belongs to a way of life that once stood between the Greek and Roman Empires, from China and India to the Mediterranean.
Long before the word constitution was invented, the principles of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness were taught to Iranian children as Zoroaster’s three commandments: Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds. Cyrus the Great proclaimed freedom of religion and human rights — recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder, preserved today in the British Museum.
A letter preserved in the Smithsonian Museum, written by Thomas Jefferson, indicates that the Founding Fathers of the United States studied the history of great powers and found Xenophon’s “Cyropaedia” — the life and teachings of Cyrus the Great — a valuable guide in shaping the principles of the U.S. Constitution. It may not seem prudent to leap from four thousand years ago to today, but history always bends toward truth. Wars will end — one way or another — and in the end, it is always the will of the people that prevails.
What Israel is doing today is guided by intelligence and understanding. They have studied the Iranian Constitution. But they know the regime will fall eventually; it is not their ultimate priority. The true priority, for now, lies in satisfying the Military–Industrial Complex and securing normalization with Saudi Arabia. When that process is complete, the time will come for America to stand once again with the people of Iran — not against a regime, but for a rebirth of constitutional freedom.
John Q Naimi -Director Cyrus Force Iran
MG Paul Vallely Co-Director
Contact: Sohrab ChamanAra sohrab@chamco.net
www.CyrusForce.org
This article originally appeared on Stand Up America US. Reprinted here with permission.
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