Commentary on the Effect of Hussein Derakhshan’s Visit to Israel

Last Week Hussein Derakhshan embarked on a groundbreaking trip of a Reformist Iranian that had been raised in the Islamic Republic of Iran, to Israel. This is a very pioneering move in several aspects. It will give the world a chance to see a non-government affiliated Iranian perspective of Israel. It is in the opinion of this author that Israel should not yet be part of Iran’s political agenda. The country is plagued with too many more urgent matters such as rampant unemployment, addressing human rights, the dire need for improvement in health care and education, real solutions for its war veterans, and unbearable pollution in the cities, etc. However, this trip indirectly helps to progress the average Iranian’s perspective and angle of view, which is very important in order to tackle Iran’s many challenges that it faces today.

Hussein Derakhshan’s trip will give the Iranian people a chance to see behind the forbidden Oz curtain that the Islamic Republic has drawn so tightly, and we can finally see, is there the evil wizard that they claim to exist behind it¹? The main implication is that the ordinary Iranian can now have two homegrown depictions of what kind of a country Israel is. Completely western commentary is always subject to debate, because it is not derived from the same Persian culture and upbringing. The reporting of this trip will allow the average Iranian to see how objective and open minded the Islamic Republic of Iran’s illustration of Israel is and in turn, this will further allow Iranians to decide for themselves if the Islamic Republics interpretations of other issues are fair and objective as well.

The second result is that this trip is yet another voice trying to improve Iran’s social issues. Unsurprisingly, the current regime squanders all of its resources to silence various voices, instead of investing time and energy into striking agreements on important issues like unemployment, human rights, healthcare and education, which are imperative to solve. The Islamic Republic should heed the lesson that leaning too much to any one side will backfire. Throughout history, no government could survive by standing to one extreme or another. Extreme governments simply to do not work and do not have a long shelf life. One of the reasons that the Constitution of the United States has been able to succeed for so long after the American Revolution for Independence in the 1770’s is because the framework of the constitution did not lean to any one side, but rather was a compromise for all of the various factions that existed internally at the time. The Iranian government needs to take note of these facts. The results of their one-dimensionality is evident already, after crushing one voice from an angle different than their own, another emerges stronger than the one before.

¹. Oz analogy from an interview session of former presidential nominee John Kerry and Al Roker.