How can Iranian people feel happy when they are deprived from many of their ethnic, cultural, political and linguistic rights, and means of communication have been taken away from them?
Persian nationalists say that their ancestors considered happiness and joy a gift from God that would be realized each year by the arrival of Nowruz [meaning “new day”]. This thought is common among many nations’ popular cultures around the world. But apart from the fact that how exact this myth is, the question is whether this year’s Nowruz has brought happiness and joy for Iranian people or not. Or, in general, have people reached satisfaction and happiness after 1979 revolution?
It has been years that Iran is in isolation, distanced from its own surrounding countries. This condition has had significant impacts on Iranian people because joy and happiness would not be realized in isolation and distance from the surrounding environment. The condition that Iranian government has created for the people is like someone who has many problems with his neighbors and feels that he is being driven away because of something in which he is not directly involved, or even without having personal problems with others. Can this person be happy? Iranian people are in stifling economic, financial, social, and diplomatic isolation.
Can we talk about satisfaction and happiness in an atmosphere of isolation and spread of poverty? In addition to this, other negative social phenomena are spreading in the society: homelessness, grave sleeping, white marriage and other phenomena that have spread among many people– particularly in Tehran, the capital of Iran.
Many statistics indicate spread of poverty in Iranian society. Parviz Fatah, head of Imam Khomeini Relief Committee, said in late February 2017: “we have 11 million people below the poverty line.”
How can Iranian people feel happy when they see that their country is in the list of countries supporting terrorism, and many countries create restrictions for Iranians entering them? How can they feel satisfied when issues such as education, employment, investment, tourism, and traveling to other countries are always at risk of being disrupted?
How can Iranian people feel happy when they are deprived of many of their ethnic, cultural, political and linguistic rights, and means of communication have been taken away from them, to such an extent that the establishment has been trying to create a North Korea’s copy in Iran, thus making Iran an isolated country?
Philosophy of Nowruz is entering a fresh, new world after winter’s cold and dejection, and returning to life and warmth of spring, blooming of buds, and thawing of snow and ice. That is why they call it a “new day.” What will an Iranian citizen see with the beginning of the new Iranian year? Have economic, cultural, educational, and social conditions of citizens changed? Has the heavy burden that they have been carrying on their shoulders lightened? Do people feel that their country, apart from the surrounding countries, is opening its doors to the countries of the world? Do they believe that it is possible for them, like other countries’ citizens who are not called terrorists, to have certain rights, and they can freely travel to other countries?
After JCPOA, the Iranian citizen had distant dreams in mind. He expected that projects and investments pour into the country, providing job opportunities for him, his children and his neighbors. He expected to see improvement in his livelihoods, saving him from terrible disasters that struck him and his family during years of sanctions. Like citizens of other countries, the Iranian citizen has the dream of a “natural” life in a “natural” country. For Iranian citizen, the nuclear deal between Iran and P5+1 outlined the image of returning to the ordinary relationship with other countries.
But improvements in livelihoods, decrease in prices, and strategies for controlling unemployment and creating jobs — things that were his dreams for after JCPOA, and he used to dream about them during negotiations between Iran and western powers– did not come true. Iranian people soon faced a mirage that was carefully propagandized. Two years after JCPOA, the Iranian citizen sees that his conditions have worsened, the political regime is more violent, and failure surrounds him. At the time of the turning of the New Year, Iran people whispered to themselves, “When will the philosophy of Nowruz come true? When will Nowruz be a new beginning for a year better than the last?” But people whisper to themselves: “Why should this year be any different from the last when there are no signs of domestic and foreign change?”
In Arab neighboring countries, we wish goodness, happiness, welfare, and an honorable life out of the dark tunnel of evil, terrorism, social calamities, economic difficulties and hard life for nations living in Iran. Just as Iranian citizens suffer from Mullahs’ regime, our Arab lands in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and other countries are burning in fire due to terrorism and sectarianism of the same regime. We agree with the Iranian nation, and we wish that “happiness equation” comes true, goodness overcomes evil and health defeats sickness, and expansionist dream, sectarian slogans, and poison of terrorism go away from the region…But when will these wishes come true? When?
Translated Article: Watan Daily
