After Iran’s leader was killed by a US air strike, pro-intervention media emphasized the celebration of many Iranians. But a nation of 90 million isn’t a hive mind, and the bitter experience of previous wars puts initial celebrations into grim perspective.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. On the fourth day of the attack, Israeli journalist and former Knesset member Uri Avnery, traveling in a private car accompanied only by a photographer, “crossed the border at a lone spot near Metulla and looked for the front, which had already reached the outskirts of Sidon.” As Avnery and his photographer drove into the country, their progress was slow.
We passed a dozen Shiite villages and were received everywhere with great joy. We extracted ourselves only with great difficulty from hundreds of villagers, each one insisting that we have coffee at their home. On the previous days, they had showered the soldiers with rice.
A few months later I joined an army convoy going in the opposite direction, from Sidon to Metulla. The soldiers were now wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, many were on the verge of panic.
Avnery recounted the story in an article titled “Bitter Rice,” published in CounterPunch less than a week after George W. Bush launched his war in Iraq. At the time, many Iraqis, both in Iraq and in the Western diaspora, were celebrating the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship. Avnery’s message to Americans was simple: Don’t count on this lasting. Relief at the fall of a hated regime can quickly turn into seething resentment against the foreign attackers who have turned the country into a war zone. Some of the same people who really might be momentarily willing to greet you as liberators may be shooting at you by the end of the year.
When Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was killed in…
Auteur: Ben Burgis
