http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/opinion/L10KRIS.htmlPublished: May 10, 2004
To the Editor:
Nicholas D. Kristof's column from Iran ("Those Friendly Iranians," May 5) squares completely with my own experience in Iran last fall. I never expected the very high level of pro-American sentiment we received.
Clearly, this positive view of America is a backlash against the Islamic government in Iran. The Iranian people know that their government is telling them lies about the outside world, and they don't like being lied to.
As Mr. Kristof points out, Iran is much more likely to become the democratic bellwether in the Middle East than is Iraq. Perhaps Americans can learn a lesson from the Iranians' example: democracy depends on individuals making their own judgments about what is true and false in the news presented to them by their government and news media. Without this healthy skepticism, which is pervasive in Iran, true democracy cannot exist.
ROGER GRANGE
Nyack, N.Y., May 5, 2004
The writer is a documentary filmmaker.
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To the Editor:
Nicholas D. Kristof is certainly correct that the Iranians will throw off the yoke of the mullahs, and the best evidence of that eventuality is that the Iranians threw off the yolk of an American-installed dictator whose regime was no stranger to torture chambers.
While I was a student at U.C.L.A. in the early 1980's, I roomed with a brilliant Iranian Ph.D. candidate who relayed chapter and verse how his friends had been rounded up and tortured or killed because they advocated democracy.
From his perspective, the Iranian revolution was really a middle-class affair — significantly spurred on by a phalanx of Iranian students educated in the United States and intoxicated by democracy — that was hijacked by the hard-core Islamists.
JOHN H. ZIMMERMAN
Arlington, Va., May 5, 2004
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