WHY W SHOULD GO THERE AND ADDRESS THE IRANIAN PEOPLE IN PERSON:

From the Tehran street: What does the man on the Tehran omnibus think about his country's nuclear ambitions? (Esther Herman, June 2006, Prospect)

Spring 2006

Iranians are in a kind of denial. They are pretending that sanctions won’t happen and won’t hurt. “We lived through the war with Iraq,” is the standard line fed to reporters. “We’ll live through this.”

Why do Iranians mistrust everything the government tells them, but trust their spin when it comes to the nuclear issue? We wonder. If you have followed the nuclear issue at all, then you know that it is reported that Iranians support their government in this issue. Yet, when you hear Iranians on the street respond to reporters (and to me and to Keivan) they always say, “We support nuclear energy.” You would be hard-pressed to find an Iranian who says, “We need nukes. We are willing to be isolated for nukes.”

The standard line in Iran is that the west wants to prevent it from having nuclear power, not arms. Because the Iranian regime's spin is simple—changing only one simple fact instead of many—it is easy to believe. It is a good piece of fantasy. It does not clash with the message Iranians are getting from any number of outside sources.

All of our news channels are blocked as the security council begins its discussion of Iran and its nuclear programme Presumably this is to prevent us from becoming alarmed over the nuclear talks in Vienna. Who knows? On the first day of the talks, Keivan wakes me up at 5 in the morning to tell me there will be no sanctions. “There was no evidence of intention to make a bomb.”

"Where did you get that information from?"

"Iranian news."

Of course, the talks are not over.