Category Archives: Past as Prologue to Future

Cold War Joke

A joke from decades ago–during the Cold War, a golden age as far as the American worker was concerned.

An American businessman visited a factory in the Soviet Union. He was shown around the place. “Who owns this factory?” the American asked.

“The workers,” his guide said.

Leaving the factory, the American noticed three cars in the factory’s parking lot and asked who they belonged to. He was told the cars belonged to a couple of the factory’s managers and a government inspector.

Later, a Russian factory manager visited a Ford plant in Michigan. He was shown around the plant.“Who owns this factory?” the Russian visitor asked.

“Mr. Ford,” his guide told him.

On leaving the factory, the visitor noticed the large parking lot full of vehicles. “Who owns those cars?” the visitor asked.

“The workers,” his guide replied.

The anecdote was intended to show the actual results of capitalism versus communism. It was intended to illustrate how workers under a capitalist system are better off than those under a communist system.

At the time, according to what I have read, Mr. Ford believed his workers would perform better if they were paid adequate wages and had benefits like health insurance.

I don’t know about the Ford family today, but it seems many employers have forgotten that they depend on their employees to produce the products their wealth depends on.

Jobs change. What the products are and what procedures are needed to produce them have changed—whether it’s a physical product, a software program, or support services like janitorial work.

What hasn’t changed is the need for workers to find pride in what they do and to be adequately compensated for it.

Inadequate care of the working class will cost all of society—in alcohol and drug problems, in costs for sickness not treated early, in workers untrained for the jobs of today.

Capitalism is indeed a most efficient economic system—as long as the system itself is not placed ahead of the workers who operate it.

A Post-Religious Society?

A couple of years ago, an article in The Economist emphasized the decline of religion in Britain. (“This sceptic isle,” August 13, 2016)

Churches are being sold. The percent of those describing themselves as “religious” has declined from 80 percent for those born before 1980 to 40 percent for those born after.

In the United States, the article pointed out, the nonreligious portion of the population rose from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014.

Who, the article asked, is going to take over the functions previously performed by religious institutions? Jobs like feeding the poor and counseling the grief stricken?

Of course, in the two millennia since the birth of Christianity, it has risen and fallen a number of times.

Byzantium, bastion of might and Eastern Orthodoxy, endured for over a thousand years before its military defeat by the Ottoman Empire.

But Ottomans failed twice to conquer Vienna and the rest of Europe. The European Renaissance and then the Reformation unfolded, movements both secular and religious.

After Christendom lost its way and became embroiled in barbarous wars, it declined, and the Age of Reason followed. However, Christianity eventually revived. Missionaries carried it to Africa and Asia. Other Christians were active in social issues, including the movement to abolish slavery. In the twentieth century, Christians took leadership roles in the civil rights movement.

Though the Christian faith now is going through a bad patch in Western countries, it is growing in Asia and Africa.

Somehow, one or way or another, resurrection seems to happen.

Family Reckonings

At the request of a relative, I began looking through old family genealogical records collected by my mother.

Both sides of my family, it appears, have been in North America since before the American Revolution. I read with interest the records of one ancestor when, as an old man, he applied for a pension for his service with the Continental army. He joined in 1777, took part in various battles as a “wagoner,” was captured at one point, but managed to escape, then rejoined American forces.

That’s the sort of ancestor you brag about.

Then I found another record. This Civil War ancestor “died of acute Laryngitis at Rock Island, Illinois, barracks as a prisoner of war. He is buried in grave 11170. Captured Oct, 1863 at Pinewood Factory, Company “A”, 24th Tennessee Sharpshooters.”

As I recall, rations for Confederate prisoners were decreased at Rock Island in retaliation for the inhuman conditions in Andersonville, Georgia, a prison managed by Confederates for captured Union soldiers.

According to family lore, the branch that produced my Confederate ancestor consisted of fairly well off Tennessee landowners. Probably my ancestor owned a few slaves. Perhaps he joined the Confederates to protect his property and his “right” to own slaves. Mostly likely he held racist views.

And I thought about the folly of slavery, growing in this country even as William Wilberforce and others in Great Britain were beginning the campaign to end the slave ships. That country was the enemy against whom my other ancestor fought.

The United States took an immoral turning in allowing slavery. And the war that brought those men to miserable deaths in fetid prisons was just as misguided.

Sure Way to Corrupt Religion? Join It to the State

Absent persecution, religion separated from the power of the state may flourish. Sometimes it triumphs even over persecution. Joined to the state, however, it tends to be corrupted.

During the European Middle Ages, kings used the church to increase their power. Religious leaders began allying with kings. The religious hierarchy become corrupted. Christianity itself split into warring factions.

Many lost faith in religion, and Christendom gave way to the Age of Reason.

Meanwhile, in newer settlements in North America, government began to separate itself from religion. Amazingly, religion flourished and gained influence.

Religion works best as leaven within a society. Join it with political power, and corruption sets in.

A Sorting of People

In his book, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, former President Jimmy Carter pinpoints the first time he was aware of racial prejudice.

Growing up as the son of a white landowning family in a mostly black community, he played with the black neighborhood children. For him, they were simply playmates.

Then one day he and his friends were going through a farm gate. His black friends fell back, allowing him to enter first. He thought they had set up some kind of childish trick—something in the path, perhaps, that he was meant to stumble on. Then he realized that they were giving precedence to him because he was white.

A thousand thoughts must have clicked in his mind. That was his first understanding of a system that favored one group of people above another because of skin color.

His pilgrimage toward understanding the absurdity of racial prejudice mirrors the journey of many Southern whites. Some of us who struggled on that journey are now amazed at the strength of prejudice in this day and age.

Today’s Town Crier

In the days before widespread literacy, some governments announced public proclamations by a town crier.

As time passed, literacy became more important for commerce and making a living. Public school systems increased.

However, news, other than local, was not yet an important part of ordinary life. In the novel by Paulette Jiles, News of the World, Civil War veteran Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd makes a living by traveling to small Texas towns and charging money to read newspapers to audiences.

It took radio and the advent of world wide wars to make news a staple of the average American household. Television brought the horror of the Vietnam conflict into the living room.

From earliest colonial times, courts decreed that truth was the deciding factor in what could be printed as news. Even if a news story was derogatory to public officials, it must be allowed if it was true. If it was not true, the source of the falsehood could be sued for libel.

Today, we have fewer “gatekeepers,” that is, editors and investigators, to test stories for the truth before they are “printed.” Today, because of the internet, truth and lies can unsettle whole populations before stories can be unraveled.

Whether this glut of words—news, opinion, knowledge, entertainment, lies, gems of wisdom, personal data, and a hundred other kinds of reportage—is good or bad is an open question. The outcome depends on how responsible we literate beings are in what we choose to read.

What Overcomes Allegiance to Our Political Tribe?

Early Christians were the first to place religious convictions above tribal loyalty, wrote Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury.

“For the first time in human history, individuals claimed the liberty to define the limits of their political loyalty, and to test that loyalty by spiritual and ethical standards.” (Rowan Williams, “The Two Ways,” Plough Quarterly, Autumn 2017).

In answering accusations against them, one early group responded. They were not rebels against the state and had no wish to overthrow it, they said. They would pay taxes to it. They would not, however, worship the emperor. “They would not grant the state their absolute allegiance.”

Throughout history, states and empires have come and gone. Some have established centers of civilizing influence. All demanded some form of loyalty to the state apparatus.

The early Jesus followers called for a loyalty higher than the tribe, higher than whatever state was in existence at the time. They proclaimed their allegiance to his teachings and said those teachings took precedence over any other authority.

A question for us today, the religious and the non-religious alike, is whether we worship some political cause or, instead, give allegiance to greater causes like justice, mercy, and serving the widows and orphans.

The Possibility of Something Better

Democracy’s track record has fallen in recent years, due to its failure in many developing countries. Why has the United States endured, even though challenged in the past and certainly challenged today?

The country’s founding document, the U.S. Constitution, and the deference given it over the years, has provided stability. The Constitution is imperfect, given that it is a human document. Most of us, if we could travel back to influence its creation in the late 18th century, would have attempted to alter some of its provisions. The evidence that even its creators thought it imperfect is the provision for amending it.

Yet it enshrines for us certain basic values that have defined us. Our laws are judged by it.

Influencing our history, whether many of us think about it or not, is the idea that we were created as a nation of principles and not of privilege.

We certainly fail at times to live up to this high calling. Nevertheless, privilege—of class, money, gender, race, religion, or other—has constantly been challenged.

It necessarily means that we start with reality—our imperfection. We may, and often do, fall short, but the possibility of movement toward something better is always there.

You Can’t Return to the Past, Except Maybe in a Book

As a newbie U.S. Foreign Service officer in the early 1990’s, I remember my first assignment in Saudi Arabia as a marvelous adventure. It was as exciting as the stories I used to read in my childhood.

I visited exotic market places with new friends, walked through ancient ruins, and fell in love with Middle Eastern food. Once in a while I took leave to visit Europe, exploring countries I had only read about.

My career began before terrorism led to intrusive pre flight searches in airports. I traveled before airplanes became boxcars of pressed humanity.

In the course of my job, I learned to respect those who saw the world through a different cultural lens. I visited prison wardens, assistants to emirs, and foreigners with custody of American children.

I can’t go back to those days again. By the end of my second tour in Saudi Arabia in the early 2000’s, I had to live by new restrictions on travel. We learned to be alert to the possibilities of terrorism, and not only in the Middle East. From the U.S. consulate in Dhahran, we watched on television as the twin towers fell on September 11, 2001.

Fortunately, I can conjure in novels the lessons I gained during the earlier days. The novels dredge up insights, before so much fire and fury, that I am only beginning to understand.

August 7, 1998

Unless you were directly affected by it because of your profession or your family ties, you probably don’t know the significance of that date, twenty years ago.

Bombs detonated simultaneously at U.S. embassies in East Africa: Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. That day, 213 were killed in Nairobi. Around 5,000 were injured. Most of the dead and injured were Kenyans, either working at the embassy or in nearby buildings. Twelve Americans were killed.

In Dar es Salaam, eleven Tanzanians were killed. Eighty-five Tanzanians and Americans were wounded.

The July/August 2018 issue of The Foreign Service Journal is dedicated to the “remembrance, reflection and resilience” of the American, Kenyan, and Tanzanian survivors.

Among the personal stories:

The information systems manager in the Nairobi embassy, a Kenyan, almost buried under debris, realized he was still alive and crawled out to rescue others. A picture shows him on one side of a bloodied survivor helping him walk to safety.

One American remembers planning to meet his wife for lunch at the embassy, then, at the end of that day, having to tell his daughters that their mother had been killed.

Another remembers leaving for a meeting in a part of the embassy that was less damaged, then returning to his office, moments after the blast, to find all his colleagues dead.

The survivors remind us: no one ever gets over this kind of experience.

They dealt with grief and with post traumatic stress.. Some struggled with getting their minds around the utter evil of an act which devastated the lives of so many innocent people.

They learned the vital importance of community. Many mentioned an overwhelming realization of love for their family that influenced them the rest of their lives.

Over and over, survivors stressed how grateful they were for the leadership of the ambassador, Prudence Bushnell. She strived to bring the community together to get through the horrible nightmare.

In her recounting, Bushnell said, “I discovered a depth of sadness and breadth of anger I did not know I had. I also learned I could not take away anyone else’s pain, trauma, anger or sadness, but I could accompany them.”

Another lesson from survivors is the healing many found in turning their experience into service for others. One said, “From that moment on, my life’s purpose has been to promote understanding between people of differing backgrounds.”

Lessons learned: Family, community, and service were priceless weapons in surviving August 7, 1998. They remain so in all the senseless tragedies since then, from September 11, 2001, to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida this year.

A New Game of Dominoes

Remember the domino theory? The United States went into Vietnam because, if Vietnam fell to communism, it would knock others into the communist orbit.

We lost that war, and a domino game indeed plays out—just not the one we envisioned. Instead, Ben Barber writes, “Today’s dominoes are not allies of Beijing or Moscow, nor do they practice central state economic planning. They are crony-capitalist, one-party states. (“Authoritarianism Gains in Southeast Asia,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2018).

With the possible exception of Tunisia, the Arab spring attempt to establish democracy in North Africa and the Middle East has been a failure. Autocracies, like Saudi Arabia, says Barber, “kept the lid on and ensured domestic peace, at the cost of stifling the tender shoots of democracy.”

We “liberated” Iraq, but the vacuum created by that liberation led to all sorts of mayhem, including the Islamic State.

We fought proxy wars, which usually failed. By contrast, during the days of the original domino theory, we never fought the Soviet Union directly. Instead, we strengthened our own nation so that, for a time, people who worked hard could buy homes and send their children to college and start businesses of their own. That kind of policy defeated the Soviet Union.

Our war in Southeast Asia lost the lives of thousands of Americans and a million and more lives of civilians. Our reward, says Barber, was crony capitalism in those countries.

Now, one after the other, more nations are choosing capitalism—the worst kind. They are choosing capitalism without the laws and the oversight of democracy.

They Didn’t Listen to Each Other

Michael Massing’s book Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind, chronicles the religious and political conflicts of the 1500’s. It highlights the writings and lives of two of the most important players in the conflict, the Dutch humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, and the German reformist, Martin Luther.

An era of corruption cried out for reform. The newly invented printing press gave dissidents a means of appealing to the masses, similar to the power unleashed today by the internet.

Too often, however, those with different views failed to listen to each other.

The author comments on Erasmus in the year 1514, as European conflicts descended into savage bloodletting: “He wondered what it was ‘that drives the whole human race, not merely Christians, to such a pitch of frenzy that they will undergo such effort, expense, and danger for the sake of mutual destruction.’”

The young Holy Roman Emperor at this time, Charles V, “had inherited the idea of the church as a universal and absolutist institution that could not tolerate the tainting presence of Jews or Muslims . . . ”

When Martin Luther first set out his famous theses in Wittenberg, he intended only to call attention to certain church abuses. He wanted to reform the church, not rebel against it. For this and other writings, he was labeled a heretic and left the church.

His writings became more incendiary. His approval of the crushing of the peasant uprisings, as well as his anti Semitism, are horrifying.

Today, we grow increasingly shrill in cursing and labeling each other. Accusations are magnified by the ubiquitous internet. To what end?

Fatal Discourse provides a cautionary history.

By the Waters of Babylon

Sometime in high school, we read the post apocalyptic short story “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét.

It was first published in 1937. Benét and his readers no doubt remembered the horror of World War I. Many already feared another war as the Nazi era began in Germany.

For us during the Cold War, it was a sober reminder of our nuclear war fears. We were the first people to know a time when human folly could destroy the planet or at least make huge parts of it unhabitable.

As we teenagers read Benét’s story, we realized, with horror, that the wasted world the young man was traveling through was ours. The city he visited was a silent, destroyed New York City.

The story has stayed with me, given me reason to rejoice when finally, in the 1990’s, it looked like the world might give up its nuclear weapons.

Now the horror of that first reading sobers us. We thought the beast was slain, but it has returned.

Who Writes Rules for the World Now?

Western nations began writing the world’s rules in 1492, when Columbus bumped into an island off the coast of North America in his search for a faster route to the riches of the East.

Spain and Portugal, France and England, the Netherlands and other nations conquered native populations all over the world. Even Denmark laid claim to several islands in the Carribean and imported African slaves to work sugar plantations there.

Some conquests were more brutal than others, but the aim always was the use of the conquered populations for the economic and often military benefit of the conquerors.

As European nations fought each other for power, these conflicts became the world wars of the 1900’s, touching far flung possessions. Finally, exhausted by war, the ruling countries began freeing their conquered populations.

The United States, not devastated by war like Europe, became the chief guardian of international order. During this time of relative peace and growing global connections, the United States benefitted from increasing world trade. As the most powerful nation, the United States oversaw the world’s rules.

However, it was inevitable that Asia, with its massive populations, would play a greater role in the world. China is the most populous nation on earth, with India a close second. The United States is third. China, especially after it had recovered from Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, grew and thrived economically.

Economic power brings political clout, as the United States knows. How does the United States deal with this new giant on the scene, economically strong with different ideas of political governing?

Will a new trade war, brought about by tariff increases on certain products, threaten this world order, until now weighted in America’s favor?

Separation Without Withdrawal?

Rod Dreher, author of the much-discussed book The Benedict Option, commented on his book in Plough Quarterly (Summer, 2017). His book takes its name from Saint Benedict, a Christian monk in Italy during the Middle Ages. Benedict set up a religious order to, in Dreher’s words, “best serve the Lord in community during a terrible crisis.”

In commenting on his book, Dreher said, “Put all thoughts of total withdrawal out of your mind. That is not what the Benedict Option calls for.” It does, however, call for “a strategic separation from the everyday world.”

Following Dreher’s article, Ross Douthat, a columnist for The New York Times, continued a series of commentary on the book. Douthat seems less certain that the future is quite as bad as Dreher depicts.

“But,” Douthat writes, “I also don’t think it necessarily matters . . . because I think where we are right now is clearly a place where many of the things he calls for . . . are necessary and useful and important, no matter what happens in ten or twenty or thirty years.”

Douthat added, “Building resilient communities may not be the answer; . . . but it is an incredibly important answer to the challenges of our time.”

Not all communities are good. Nevertheless, even destructive communities like street gangs and the Islamic State illustrate the craving we all feel for identity and purpose.

The loss of community—the loss of belonging—fosters lack of purpose. Without purpose, we flounder.

For Their Darkest Hour and Ours

The movie Darkest Hour, starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, captivated me. For a couple of hours, I was aware of little except what was acted on the screen. I was there in Britain’s darkest hour when Hitler, having rolled over most of Europe, was miraculously stayed.

Our present time calls us to revisit past times when the forces of good, heavily besieged, nevertheless triumphed over evil. We gather around our virtual campfires, telling our stories and renewing our strength.

Dunkirk is another movie visiting this same time period. At the end of the movie, two soldiers have just escaped to England. They have been rescued by the armada of small private vessels that brought thousands of the British army from France to safety. One of the soldiers reads an account of the speech Churchill delivers at the end of Darkest Hour.

By contrast, another movie, The Post, dramatizes later history in the United States, that of the Watergate scandal. We sense that this movie was made with our current era in mind.

Men in high places were guilty of abusing their power. The fact that Katharine Graham stars as a woman newspaper publisher in a vocation dominated by men adds to its timeliness.

I have not yet seen The Post and cannot offer a critique. I am certain, though, that as long as we are able to recite tales of past victory over dark forces, we retain the possibility of overcoming our own darkest hour.

Reflections After Reading THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE by Margaret MacMillan

This year, 2018, marks the final centenary of World War I. Margaret MacMillan’s sober rendition, not of the war itself, but of the numerous small decisions that led to that war, makes chilling reading, especially given today’s political climate and the possibility of nuclear annihilation.

Underneath a picture of Wilhelm II, the German leader under whose reign World War I took place, is McMillan’s description: “Wilhelm II was vain, bombastic, and neurotic. This photograph, taken when he was a young man, shows something of the insecurity which lurked behind the bristling mustache . . . ”

Substitute a flowing yellow hairstyle for the mustache, and I can’t help but think of Donald Trump.

MacMillan writes further of the German leader: “He did not like being contradicted and did his best to avoid those who disagreed with or wanted to give him unwelcome news.”

The War That Ended Peace stuns the reader with the shortcomings of most of the leaders during this period. We marvel at how eager they were to subjugate smaller nations, to spend huge sums on weapons, and to believe that their nation must dominate all others.

The last few sentences of MacMillan’s book are a brilliant summation of the period:

“And if we want to point fingers from the twenty-first century we can accuse those who took Europe into war of two things: First, a failure of imagination in not seeing how destructive such a conflict would be and second, their lack of courage to stand up to those who said there was no choice left but to go to war. There are always choices.”

Freedom of Religion: the Right to Choose

Freedom of religion is based on the right to choose your faith community, that is, to associate with those who share your spiritual journey.

Freedom of religion is not something that began with the U.S. Constitution. The Roman Empire generally accepted the right of its subject populations to practice whatever religious beliefs they chose, so long as they did not appear to threaten the empire.

The Jewish Jehovah God was intimately bound to his people, caring for them and demanding a certain standard from them. Prophets tied the worship of God to justice and special concern for the vulnerable. God required his people to worship him and him alone, but the rest of the world could go its own way, as long as no other nation interfered with the Jewish worship of their God.

With Christianity and Islam, a different outlook emerged. At first, Christians saw the gospel as good news to be proclaimed, but they sought no political power. Only later did political leaders try to fuse Christianity with governing authority. This joining led to a perverted view of Christianity as simply one more lever of power.

Islam, the other evangelistic religion, conquered lands for their religion but generally allowed Christians and Jews to live in their own religious communities so long as they paid a tax for the privilege. Unlike Christianity, Islam was from the beginning a state religion.

Lands influenced by Christianity began to see the value of individuals choosing their own religious communities or no community. Christianity was a religion of the heart, not of an external state. Christianity shook off the shackles of Christendom.

When a religion—any religion—begins to force itself on those who wish to believe otherwise, that religion begins to lose its moral authority. When religion must force itself onto a society, it has failed.

Chills from Prague Winter: a Story of Nazi and Soviet Takeovers

Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948, is a memoir by Madeleine Albright. She chronicles the atrocities of Hitler’s rise to power in Europe, followed later by the Soviet takeover of her birth country. She reminds readers of the need for constant vigilance against demagogues.

Albright is the daughter of a former Czechoslovak diplomat, serving his country before, during, and after World War II. Albright’s family immigrated to the United States following the takeover of Czechoslovakia by Soviet communists. Albright later was U.S. Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton.

She tells of Hitler’s ascent in Germany and his unexpected rise to power. Hitler “transformed his country from a tottering democracy into a tightly organized dictatorship with a skyrocketing military budget and an aggressive international agenda.”

Konrad Henlein, a Czechoslovakian of German ethnicity, was used by Hitler in his conquest of the country. Henlein, Albright tells us, “was motivated less by Nazi ideology than by the lure of power and fame. His skill as a politician stemmed from his gift for lying with apparent sincerity.”

In paving the way to World War II, Albright quotes Winston Churchill’s assessment of Hitler, explaining why Europe was so desperately duped by him: “ . . . the world lives on hopes that the worst is over, and that we may yet live to see Hitler a gentler figure in a happier age.”

I could not help but be reminded of expressed hope in the early months of Trump’s presidency that he would become “presidential.”

Czechoslovakians of German ethnicity had valid reasons for contention with the Czech government, but their complaints were grossly exaggerated by Hitler to justify his occupation of their region. Similar to today’s “fake news,” Hitler spun the story his way.

I am reminded of Americans with valid complaints about their status—workers who have lost jobs and wages while digital newbies barely out of school become wealthy, or evangelical Christians who are sneered at. Unfortunately, they too often allow themselves to be used by politicians interested only in the advancement of their own fortunes or political agendas.

Yes, Albright’s memoir chilled me. We are never home safe. Democracies have fallen. Constant, sober vigilance is always needed.

Iran Is Persian, not Arab

For many Americans, Iran is barely on the radar screen. They confuse Iran with its neighbor, Iraq, and they tend to think of Iran as an Arab country.

In fact, Iran is not an Arab nation. Iran is the descendant of ancient Persia. The official language of Iran is not Arabic but modern Persian, also known as Farsi.

Though Iran is a Muslim majority nation, most Iranian Muslims are Shia Muslims, a minority in Islam. It differs from nations like Saudi Arabia, where the majority are Sunni Muslims. The division goes back centuries to disagreement over the successor to Mohammad .

American feelings about Iran are mixed with the horror of 9/11 and other terrorist activities. While Iran is certainly implicated in upheavals and bloodshed in the Middle East, none of the 9/ll terrorists were Iranians. Fifteen were Saudi Arabians and the others came from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon.

Columbia University professor Gary Sick served under President Jimmy Carter while American diplomats were hostages in Iran (1979-1981). In writing my novel If Winter Comes, set during that period, I read his book, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran, during my research.

In a recent article in The Foreign Service Journal, Sick highlights Iran’s unique culture, going back 2,500 years. Also unique among most Middle Eastern nations, “Iran has experienced at least five major political upheavals in just 100 years” and has “a remarkable record of political activism.” (“Iran Inside and Out,” October 2017)

Religious leaders exert outsize influence over who competes in Iranian elections. Nevertheless, Iran has a more active record of political engagement than many of its neighbors. All Iranian citizens can vote. Regular elections are held for presidential, parliamentary, and municipal offices.

Reform minded candidates do manage to make it through the process. The current president, Hassan Rouhani, is a reformist, though he does not hesitate to stand up for his country in verbal battles with President Donald Trump.

Americans would profit by a deeper understanding of this fascinating country and the complex negotiations that led to the Iranian nuclear deal. Iran, more than many Middle Eastern nations, holds promise of change. We should not lightly dismiss our agreement with them.