Iran: Empire of the Mind (51 page)

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Authors: Michael Axworthy

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5
Katouzian 2007; see also Moaddel 2004.
6
For these, and for a brilliant snapshot of the general attitudes of at least some young Iranians, see Alavi 2005; also Varzi 2006.
7
One of those historical facts that modern Britons, left bereft of their own history by their education system, often forget to remember.
8
170 US, 17 British. Figures taken from BBC (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6351257.stm
) and the
Daily Telegraph
(
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/25/wirq225.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/25/ixnews.html
).
9
On 15 July 2007 the
Los Angeles Times
reported, on the strength of comments by (anonymous) senior US military officers and others that although the finger had been pointed at Iran and Syria, the largest number (45 per cent) of foreign suicide bombers and insurgents in Iraq were from Saudi Arabia (plus 15 per cent from Syria and Lebanon, and 10 per cent from North Africa—figures for Iran were not given, presumably because they were off the bottom end of the scale). Suicide attacks have systematically killed larger numbers of civilians and soldiers in Iraq than other kinds of attack, and they are predominantly (if not entirely) carried out by Sunni insurgents. The same source claimed that 50 per cent of all Saudi fighters in Iraq came there as suicide bombers, and the article commented:
‘The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key ally that at best has not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.’
10
In April 2007 the Iranian Supreme Court overturned murder verdicts against a group of Basijis convicted of killing people they regarded as immoral in the south-eastern city of Kerman (in 2002). The victims included a couple that were betrothed, who had been abducted while on their way to view a house they had been hoping to live in together after their marriage. The Supreme Court accepted the men’s defence that they believed (on the basis of guidance from Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi) they had been justified, after giving warnings, in killing people they regarded as immoral. It was thought that there could have been as many as 18 such killings in Kerman, and similar murders in Mashhad and Tehran also (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6557679.stm
).
11
The formula had been used before by Khomeini and others, and had been translated by representatives of the Iranian regime as ‘wiped off the map’. Some of the dispute that has arisen over what exactly Ahmadinejad meant by it has been rather bogus. When the slogan appeared draped over missiles in military parades the meaning was pretty clear. It was partly to address Ahmadinejad’s remarks, but also because it has often been passed over, that I have paid some moderate attention to the history of Iran’s Jews in this book.
12
Gilbert 1999, p. 639.

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