Iran has launched a satellite into space and joined the space club.
Iran has launched a satellite into space and joined the space club. Despite smothering US sanctions, difficult economic problems and a mildly repressive regime, the people of this country continue to amaze the world with their ingenuity. They have some of the world's top institute of mathematics and physics, they have a robust biotech sector and a developing industrial economy. Not to mention an active literary scene where Kafka is widely read and poetry commonly quoted, an eclectic art scene, an award winning movie industry and an inflated share of the blogesphere.
Why do we continue to alienate this country of 70 million of the world's most dynamic people? Instead of a message of congratulations on their latest technological achievement achieved in spite of the pressure we impose on them, we welcome them to the space club by unleashing on them the usual propaganda machine.
The hypocrisy is maddening. If "they" make progress we assume there are cynical and ulterior motives. If "they" don't make progress it is because they are backward fanatical extremists who do not care about science and technology and we need to "modernize" them.
I am beginning to think that their foreign minister was right when I heard him say that the United States wants Iran to be limited to growing tomatoes and making air conditioning units. These people are reading Kafka, quoting Rumi, solving problems in string theory physics, exporting automobiles and placing satellite in space despite our every effort to hold them back. And we are telling them to grow tomatoes...
These are the descendants of the Persian Empires of the past. They have a claim to inventing science, to creating algebra, to discovering new stars, to introducing the world to human rights, to creating new forms of poetry, to inventing new forms of transportation.
Now they need our permission to build a satellite?