Lessons from three years of imprisonment in Iran
The survival of Iran’s government in maintaining hostility
It is against America
Wang Xiu, a professor at Princeton University in the United States, who was imprisoned in Iran from August 7, 2016 to December 7, 2019, writes in a note to the US Foreign Affairs magazine:
In August 2016, shortly after I was arrested by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, one of my interrogators asked me what I thought about the hostility between Iran and the United States.
I told him clearly that US President Barack Obama should visit Tehran and open a new page of relations, as President Richard Nixon had done in 1972 by going to Beijing.
But my perspective on the relationship between the United States and the Iranian government and the nature of the Iranian regime changed during my 40 months of incarceration in the infamous Evin prison.
There I witnessed the true face of the regime from the inside and learned a lot from interacting with Iranian prisoners from all walks of life, many of whom used to work for the regime.
Enmity with America is at the root of the ideology of the Islamic Republic, a government that deceptively positions Iran as the defender of Muslims against the American empire.
The Iranian government is not interested in reconciling or normalizing relations with the United States, because doing so would nullify the nature of this revolutionary regime. The Iranian government is opportunistically using this threat and fake foreign enemy to suppress internally and expand its influence throughout the Middle East and beyond.
The need to maintain controlled hostility against the United States, regardless of American policies toward Iran, is widely accepted among Iranian officials.
A detainee who used to be a high-ranking Iranian government official told me that Saeed Jalili, the former secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, stated in a public meeting that the regime did not want to compromise with the United States because it would undermine the regime’s legitimacy.
In fact, the Iranian government wants to maintain a manageable tension with the United States to justify its domestic and foreign policies. Loyalists of the Iranian regime are exploiting the hostility against the United States to achieve their personal interests.
My interrogator told me at the end of the interrogation that I had to confess that I was an American spy, although he knew that I was not a spy, but he said that this confession was necessary so that the Iranian intelligence services would create a case against me and demand payment and a prisoner exchange with the United States. become I was shocked by the honesty of the interrogator!
American policymakers must understand that at the heart of the Iranian regime’s problematic relations with the United States lies this fact: the survival of the sectarian government and the interest of the Iranian regime’s supporters in maintaining hostility against the United States.
The Islamic Republic is constantly playing a delicate game to maintain a state of conflict without leading to war or the destruction of the regime. A game that unfortunately has real consequences and suffering for the common people of Iran and even the entire Middle East./Kalame TV
@Sahamnewsorg
This post is written by mkarimia46