\n<\/p>\n
\n\tOver a 50-year career in academia and foreign service, Hooshang Amirahmadi has seen it all on Iran.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Rutgers professor, 78, founded the transnational-relationship organization the American Iranian Council, ran the Center for Iranian Research and Analysis, visited Iran during its war with Iraq to try to bring about a resolution, authored numerous books in English and Persian and even submitted bids to run for president of Iran in 2005, 2013 and 2017 before the clerics disqualified him, presumably for his American citizenship and pro-democracy stances.<\/p>\n
\n\tAmirahmadi is also deeply ensconced in the U.S., where he\u2019s served as director of Rutgers\u2019 Center for Middle Eastern Studies and is\u00a0one of the more prominent public figures who holds both American and Iranian passports and travels freely between the countries. Not for nothing has Amirahmadi appeared frequently on CNN, Fox and PBS.<\/p>\n
\n\tGiven how many impressions of Iran \u2014 sometimes misimpressions of Iran \u2014 have been permeating the news since the Israel-Iran War began nine days ago, it seemed like the right moment to reach out to Amirahmadi, the man who often finds himself explaining each country to the other. The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> spoke to him a few days before the U.S. joined the Israel-Iran war early Sunday morning by\u00a0bombing Fordow and other key Iranian nuclear sites. Here are excerpts of the conversation.<\/p>\n \n\tSo much of what we see of Iran on TV shows here is a restless populace eager to help anyone who opposes the regime. The Apple TV hit\u00a0Tehran<\/em>\u00a0can make it seem like half the Iranian security establishment is working for the Mossad. How accurate is that representation?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWell, first you have so many Jewish people who are connected to Iran in some way. There are about 90,000 or 100,000 Jews still\u00a0living in Iran. And it\u2019s probably a lot more since there are all those who converted after the revolution so they could stay but at heart are still Jews. There are even people in the regime like this. So a lot of people in Iran, I don\u2019t think that they\u2019d all work for the Mossad of course, but they\u2019re certainly open to doing things that are against the regime. So the shows are correct.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnd they\u2019re not worried about being seen as supporting the enemy.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tA lot of Iranians have good feelings about Israel. The regime doesn\u2019t. But the people don\u2019t necessarily have an issue. In fact sometimes they\u2019re proud of Iranians who have succeeded there\u00a0\u2014 for example Shaul Mofaz [the Tehrani-born Israeli military hero and former Minister of Defense], he is someone even many Muslims are proud of. \u201cAn Iranian is a high-ranking member of a foreign government.\u201d These ties are stronger than you\u2019d think.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd has that remained consistently true even through recent history?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tNo unfortunately not. The last 10 or 15 years has gotten worse. When Israel started stepping up its killing of generals and nuclear scientists, I think that changed things for some Iranians. Not everyone \u2014 I\u2019d say it\u2019s still about 50-50. But it used to be a much higher number that were pro-Israel.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd these attacks are upsetting even to Iranians who don\u2019t like the regime? They don\u2019t see the nuclear scientists as tools of that regime, of what they don\u2019t like?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tNo because the nuclear scientists are not walled off like they are in some other countries. They\u2019re professors \u2014 professors living in their communities. That\u2019s why the killings have done so much to ruin Israel-Iranian relations.<\/p>\n \n\tWhere do you think the current conflict will leave those relations?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tUnfortunately it will increase animosity on both sides. When you have so much infrastructure destroyed on both sides \u2014 hospitals, roads, bridges, you name it \u2014 that\u2019s going to happen. At the beginning. But<\/em>. My hope is that it changes and it brings people together. Sometimes war does that. People need it so they can understand each other, can understand their common humanity. Human beings have used war that way. Why couldn\u2019t that happen here?<\/p>\n \n\tPostwar Germany and the U.S. would be a good example. OK, so let\u2019s talk about American news organizations. When you watch CNN do you think it captures what typical Iranians feel?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIran unfortunately has been presented to Americans as a pariah state made up only of terrorists. It\u2019s actually really a similar situation to what Iranian TV portrays vis-a-vis Israel \u2014 \u201cthey\u2019re all terrorists.\u201d And unfortunately it doesn\u2019t seem to ever get better. I\u2019ve worked on U.S.-Iran relations for more than 40 years and there\u2019s still animus for Americans toward Iranians because of this.<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s not necessarily all the networks\u2019 fault, though, when it comes to showing a wider spectrum, is it? Part of the issue is getting news coverage from Iran, just getting reporters on the ground.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThat\u2019s obviously a challenge. Another big problem is that\u00a0American universities produce very few Iran specialists. There used to be a lot, and now you have less, and those you do have tend to be American. They\u2019re great but we really need more who aren\u2019t just giving the American view.<\/p>\n \n\tThen you have all these dissident movies from Iran. We just had\u00a0The Seed of the Sacred Fig<\/em>\u00a0during Oscar season, which showed a younger generation opposed to the regime, and of course the\u00a0Women, Life, Freedom protests\u00a0of 2022\u00a0inspired [director] Mohammad Rasoulof to make the movie in the first place.\u00a0Jafar Panahi, one of the most well-known dissident filmmakers in Iran, just won the Palme d\u2019Or for his slyly political film\u00a0It Wast Just An Accident<\/em>.\u00a0The images of dissatisfaction with the regime and interest in democracy that these films platform \u2014 how representative are they?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWhat people don\u2019t remember is that Iran was the most pro-American country in the Middle East before the revolution. Why would that change? People below 50 or 60 may not think that way. But people above 50 or 60 do, and maybe they can help the younger people.<\/p>\n \n\tYou don\u2019t think even the older people have been influenced by the regime and its propaganda?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0No, I think the Iran street is actually very pro-American. It\u2019s the regime that isn\u2019t. If you want to see anti-American go to the streets of Saudi Arabia, where 35% of the people live below the poverty line. Not the palace. The palace, the so-called pro-American palace, that\u2019s just billionaires having fun. Trust me, they are not pro-American. In 10 years they\u2019ll have the most anti-American country in the region. The average Iranian is 10-times more pro-American than the average Saudi. Many Iranians, even if they\u2019re Muslim in name, they\u2019re secular, and they can be socialist or capitalist, just like Americans. The Iranian economy is a capitalist economy. But we tend to see things from a political lens and a regime lens and we don\u2019t realize that.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s actually been striking to me when talking about Iran and Israel that despite being mortal enemies they\u2019re both outliers as two of the largest non Arab-majority countries in the Middle East. That seems like a nuance that really gets lost, especially when other Muslim countries in the region are held up as bigger American allies.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIn Iran the regime is anti-American and the street is pro-American. And in Saudi it\u2019s the reverse.\u00a0 But of course it\u2019s the street that should matter more. The palace changes. The street doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \n\tThese are not nuances that necessarily come through on American television news coverage.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI mean you have Ted Cruz telling Tucker Carlson he\u00a0doesn\u2019t even know the population of Iran. I think many Americans understand these differences but our leaders on television don\u2019t give me a lot of hope.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tGiven that a war doesn\u2019t tend to make for the most humanizing effects, what\u2019s going to ensure the most accurate American perceptions of the Iranian people in your view?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWe need to see ordinary Iranians, not just the regime in the news. Someone needs to make a show [in Hollywood] where the main characters are Iranians in Iran. That\u2019s what will make for a deeper understanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over a 50-year career in academia and foreign service, Hooshang Amirahmadi has seen it all on Iran. The Rutgers professor, 78, founded the transnational-relationship organization the American Iranian Council, ran the Center for Iranian Research and Analysis, visited Iran during its war with Iraq to try to bring about a resolution, authored numerous books in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1076,1075,105,1079,84,1078,150,1077],"class_list":{"0":"post-9156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cable","9":"tag-cnn","10":"tag-expert","11":"tag-inaccurately","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-iranians","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-portray"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}