The city of Estafan towered above all others for a hundred years. It beguiled travellers who came to marvel at what the human mind could create. The heights to which God and Islam could raise the human spirit.
Here was a city on which the legend of Persia was built, a name that still evokes a sense of culture, and of civilisation and of glory. Strange then that the same country under its modern name of Iran conjures in the Western mind entirely different images. Images of fanaticism, of revolution and of dark forces at work.
In the labyrinth of the Esfahan bazaar you can search out a sense of old Persia that lingers still.
Ali Estahani Mague naturally wants to promote the obvious virtues of his wares. But it is the virtues of his people that he extols with most passion.
Ali: I really believe that we are the greatest nation all around the world.
Like many of his people Ali is distressed that his people are so often portrayed as fanatics driven by hatred.
Ali: If a foreigner in all the world asks one person for help, they don’t wait, they don’t doubt on it. They do as much as they can for a foreigner.
If you look beyond the image of a fanatical Islamic nation you find a people preoccupied with matters far more mundane than exporting religious revolution.
Ninety kilometres through the desert north of Esfahan lies Jishaban. Like most Iranian villages its population gets smaller and older as its young head off in search of wealth in the cities.
Ashraf and her daughter spend up to 7 months weaving each carpet for a return of perhaps $100. Money they desperately need but which buys less and less in today’s Iran.
Ashraf: The thing is nowadays you find that everything is so expensive. There is no profit in it, we get nothing out of it because it costs so much.
Hers is a worry shared by most of Iran’s 50 million people, a concern which today drives Iranian politics.
The Iranian revolution was conceived in political repression, born into social and economic chaos and nurtured by the most bloody war in half a century.
When Sadaam Hussein invaded hundreds of thousands willingly died to defend the revolution.
Today unity in war is a thing of the past. The Mullahs who run the country are now deeply divided.
Chanting: down with USA, down with USA
The monolithic face of modern Iran is still put on show for special occasions.
Old enemies are berrated in a show of fervour and unity that becomes increasingly hollow as each annual celebration of the Revolution passes by.
The Iotollah Khomeini is dead.
His successors are spilt between those who hold onto his isolationalist principles and the pragmatists who want Iran to rejoin the international mainstream. Iran is not greatly loved by the west.
Rajai: We have to be more open, we have to have a better media, a better language of addressing issues. Some of our papers might sometimes adopt provocative language...
Rajai Khoresani is part of today’s dominant pragmatic faction in the Government ... but there are still areas of no compromise.
Q. It seems to me the single most important thing Iran could do to challenge that image is to lift the Fatwa on Salman Rushdie...
Rajai: No, it is not possible and I don’t think it will solve the problem. If this interview is intended to find a way for withdrawing the fatwa its not going to work.
Six years almost to the day since the fatwa was passed against Salman Rushdie - can you not understand the shock with which it was received in the West.No-one in the Iranian administration is after carrying out the fatwa. It is not the intention of the government or the program of the government to go and carry it out. No-one.Would you be happy as a Muslim if Rushdie was killed as the fatwa dictates.You see even those who carry out such a verdict, they themselves don’t feel pleased. They don’t enjoy it definitely. It’s a very difficult thing to do. But when it is done it is the right thing which is done.
Such views are hardly likely to endear Iran to the non-Islamic world, because of the publicly hostile face it constantly shows to the West.
The aggressive face - even if stage managed - undermines Iran’s denial of the catalogue of charges levelled against it.
Q: Iran, one perception, a country that supports terrorism abroad. True or false.
Rajai: Completely false.
Q: Does Iran condemn any attack on civilians in any other country for any reason.
Rajai: We condemn any terrorist attempt by anybody against anybody.
Q: Against any civilians.
Rajai: Definitely.
Q: No Matter what their religion, even Jewish.
Rajai: No, no. Our Jewish fellow countrymen are highly respectly. We love them. Against those Israelis who are doing the same against Palestinians it might be justified.
Q: What about Israeli embassies abroad.
Rajai: Let’s make a distinction between terrorist acts and those people who are fighting each other. I think Palestinians and Israelis are at war.
Q.The Islamic bomb. Does Iran want nuclear weapons?
Rajai: Definitely not. We strongly fight for de-nuclearisation of the Middle East at large. We neither want or make any attempt to test it experimentally.
Q. Iran has set out on a Holy War , a Jihad, to export the Islamic revolution to the rest of the world. True or false.
Rajai: True ... and false. You cannot promote Islam by force, Islam like all cultural phenomenon it can be exported only through peaceful methods.
The Government may wish to export the Islamic revolution, but Iranians are increasingly looking for more than spiritual sustenance and political dogma.
The ski slopes north of Tehran have never been this busy in 16 years. The men and women have to ski segregated slopes but they’re united in pursuit of distraction from their daily worries.
Such worries are pervasive... even men like Ali Raskidar who remain true believers in the Islamic revolution...
Ali: Thank goodness we have food on the table although I must admit it’s getting more expensive.
At the factory where he’s an Islamic Trade Union leader, Ali promotes the Islamic spirit on the workshop floor ... and in the factory mosque.
But if 16 years is a long time for true-Islamists like Ali to maintain the spiritual struggle, many of his countrymen are quite simply - getting impatient.
After the bloodshed, after hardship that they went through and after especially that oppressive war which we had with Iraq the people want a better life.
Dr Farhad Basri is the owner of Ali’s factory.
He believes today’s Iranians want the comforts of this life, not the next - like the refrigerators, washing machines, the air conditioners for which demand far exceeds supply.
Dr Basri’s one of thousands of wealthy Iranian exiles encouraged to return to Iran by a regime desperate to regain the business acumen lost during the revolution.
Basri: Actually I felt much better when I came home than before because the kind of propoganda, the kind of information which we had back in the United States we expected a much much tougher time. Much more restriction.
Yet the Mullahs are afraid of Western influence. This year, they are trying to ban access of a million private satellite dishes which bring in everything Western from news to rock and roll.
For the children of exiles, like Dr Basri’s son, Faruz, it’s a lifeline, while for other Iranians it’s about the the only glimpse of what the outside world has to offer.
Boys talking: I’m paying you and he wants something done without being paid.
Cocooned in an international school that caters especially for the children of former exiles, Faruz and his classmates find themselves confronting issues they’ve never encountered.
Boys: You can bribe anybody anywhere. No, no that’s not true.What do you think’s easier - to bribe someone in Somalia or America. It doesn’t make a difference its still the same idea.It’s not the same idea cos people there are poor they’ll do it.You can bribe anyone anywhere.Teacher: Did you hear about the use of financial corruption in the states. Of course.There is everywhere in the world because of the lack of religious ideology.But its not always wrong.Its not the lack of ideology.So because people are bribing each other you’re going to say that’s a lack of religion.....
The boys are Iranian insiders... but their background gives them an outsider’s perspective ...
Kids: It’s obviously difficult to come back. Yep, when I first came back I thought I’d see people in ski masks holding machine guns. But, its not like that. It’s nothing like that. It’s clear why people think like that because everytime I saw on NBC or anything any pictures of Iran it was always downtown they always show rally’s of people marching and screaming and stuff and they only show terrorism on the tv.Whenever there’s any talking about terrorism the first name that comes up is Hizbollah and Iran paid for it.
The school’s given permission for us to talk to Faruz and his friends but we find ourselves straying into sensitive topics.
This is sensitive ... the school gets nervous and the headmaster calls a meeting.
Headmaster: It’s a new society and this society is new for them.
Iran is trying to build a new society... or at least resurrect the values of an old one but the Mullahs have failed to strike a balance between ancient Koran principles and the realities of the 20th century.
Iranians have accepted Islamic rule, but they also want what the West has to offer.
The Mullahs have to come to terms with that just as the West has to come to terms with them...
Here was a city on which the legend of Persia was built, a name that still evokes a sense of culture, and of civilisation and of glory. Strange then that the same country under its modern name of Iran conjures in the Western mind entirely different images. Images of fanaticism, of revolution and of dark forces at work.
In the labyrinth of the Esfahan bazaar you can search out a sense of old Persia that lingers still.
Ali Estahani Mague naturally wants to promote the obvious virtues of his wares. But it is the virtues of his people that he extols with most passion.
Ali: I really believe that we are the greatest nation all around the world.
Like many of his people Ali is distressed that his people are so often portrayed as fanatics driven by hatred.
Ali: If a foreigner in all the world asks one person for help, they don’t wait, they don’t doubt on it. They do as much as they can for a foreigner.
If you look beyond the image of a fanatical Islamic nation you find a people preoccupied with matters far more mundane than exporting religious revolution.
Ninety kilometres through the desert north of Esfahan lies Jishaban. Like most Iranian villages its population gets smaller and older as its young head off in search of wealth in the cities.
Ashraf and her daughter spend up to 7 months weaving each carpet for a return of perhaps $100. Money they desperately need but which buys less and less in today’s Iran.
Ashraf: The thing is nowadays you find that everything is so expensive. There is no profit in it, we get nothing out of it because it costs so much.
Hers is a worry shared by most of Iran’s 50 million people, a concern which today drives Iranian politics.
The Iranian revolution was conceived in political repression, born into social and economic chaos and nurtured by the most bloody war in half a century.
When Sadaam Hussein invaded hundreds of thousands willingly died to defend the revolution.
Today unity in war is a thing of the past. The Mullahs who run the country are now deeply divided.
Chanting: down with USA, down with USA
The monolithic face of modern Iran is still put on show for special occasions.
Old enemies are berrated in a show of fervour and unity that becomes increasingly hollow as each annual celebration of the Revolution passes by.
The Iotollah Khomeini is dead.
His successors are spilt between those who hold onto his isolationalist principles and the pragmatists who want Iran to rejoin the international mainstream. Iran is not greatly loved by the west.
Rajai: We have to be more open, we have to have a better media, a better language of addressing issues. Some of our papers might sometimes adopt provocative language...
Rajai Khoresani is part of today’s dominant pragmatic faction in the Government ... but there are still areas of no compromise.
Q. It seems to me the single most important thing Iran could do to challenge that image is to lift the Fatwa on Salman Rushdie...
Rajai: No, it is not possible and I don’t think it will solve the problem. If this interview is intended to find a way for withdrawing the fatwa its not going to work.
Six years almost to the day since the fatwa was passed against Salman Rushdie - can you not understand the shock with which it was received in the West.No-one in the Iranian administration is after carrying out the fatwa. It is not the intention of the government or the program of the government to go and carry it out. No-one.Would you be happy as a Muslim if Rushdie was killed as the fatwa dictates.You see even those who carry out such a verdict, they themselves don’t feel pleased. They don’t enjoy it definitely. It’s a very difficult thing to do. But when it is done it is the right thing which is done.
Such views are hardly likely to endear Iran to the non-Islamic world, because of the publicly hostile face it constantly shows to the West.
The aggressive face - even if stage managed - undermines Iran’s denial of the catalogue of charges levelled against it.
Q: Iran, one perception, a country that supports terrorism abroad. True or false.
Rajai: Completely false.
Q: Does Iran condemn any attack on civilians in any other country for any reason.
Rajai: We condemn any terrorist attempt by anybody against anybody.
Q: Against any civilians.
Rajai: Definitely.
Q: No Matter what their religion, even Jewish.
Rajai: No, no. Our Jewish fellow countrymen are highly respectly. We love them. Against those Israelis who are doing the same against Palestinians it might be justified.
Q: What about Israeli embassies abroad.
Rajai: Let’s make a distinction between terrorist acts and those people who are fighting each other. I think Palestinians and Israelis are at war.
Q.The Islamic bomb. Does Iran want nuclear weapons?
Rajai: Definitely not. We strongly fight for de-nuclearisation of the Middle East at large. We neither want or make any attempt to test it experimentally.
Q. Iran has set out on a Holy War , a Jihad, to export the Islamic revolution to the rest of the world. True or false.
Rajai: True ... and false. You cannot promote Islam by force, Islam like all cultural phenomenon it can be exported only through peaceful methods.
The Government may wish to export the Islamic revolution, but Iranians are increasingly looking for more than spiritual sustenance and political dogma.
The ski slopes north of Tehran have never been this busy in 16 years. The men and women have to ski segregated slopes but they’re united in pursuit of distraction from their daily worries.
Such worries are pervasive... even men like Ali Raskidar who remain true believers in the Islamic revolution...
Ali: Thank goodness we have food on the table although I must admit it’s getting more expensive.
At the factory where he’s an Islamic Trade Union leader, Ali promotes the Islamic spirit on the workshop floor ... and in the factory mosque.
But if 16 years is a long time for true-Islamists like Ali to maintain the spiritual struggle, many of his countrymen are quite simply - getting impatient.
After the bloodshed, after hardship that they went through and after especially that oppressive war which we had with Iraq the people want a better life.
Dr Farhad Basri is the owner of Ali’s factory.
He believes today’s Iranians want the comforts of this life, not the next - like the refrigerators, washing machines, the air conditioners for which demand far exceeds supply.
Dr Basri’s one of thousands of wealthy Iranian exiles encouraged to return to Iran by a regime desperate to regain the business acumen lost during the revolution.
Basri: Actually I felt much better when I came home than before because the kind of propoganda, the kind of information which we had back in the United States we expected a much much tougher time. Much more restriction.
Yet the Mullahs are afraid of Western influence. This year, they are trying to ban access of a million private satellite dishes which bring in everything Western from news to rock and roll.
For the children of exiles, like Dr Basri’s son, Faruz, it’s a lifeline, while for other Iranians it’s about the the only glimpse of what the outside world has to offer.
Boys talking: I’m paying you and he wants something done without being paid.
Cocooned in an international school that caters especially for the children of former exiles, Faruz and his classmates find themselves confronting issues they’ve never encountered.
Boys: You can bribe anybody anywhere. No, no that’s not true.What do you think’s easier - to bribe someone in Somalia or America. It doesn’t make a difference its still the same idea.It’s not the same idea cos people there are poor they’ll do it.You can bribe anyone anywhere.Teacher: Did you hear about the use of financial corruption in the states. Of course.There is everywhere in the world because of the lack of religious ideology.But its not always wrong.Its not the lack of ideology.So because people are bribing each other you’re going to say that’s a lack of religion.....
The boys are Iranian insiders... but their background gives them an outsider’s perspective ...
Kids: It’s obviously difficult to come back. Yep, when I first came back I thought I’d see people in ski masks holding machine guns. But, its not like that. It’s nothing like that. It’s clear why people think like that because everytime I saw on NBC or anything any pictures of Iran it was always downtown they always show rally’s of people marching and screaming and stuff and they only show terrorism on the tv.Whenever there’s any talking about terrorism the first name that comes up is Hizbollah and Iran paid for it.
The school’s given permission for us to talk to Faruz and his friends but we find ourselves straying into sensitive topics.
This is sensitive ... the school gets nervous and the headmaster calls a meeting.
Headmaster: It’s a new society and this society is new for them.
Iran is trying to build a new society... or at least resurrect the values of an old one but the Mullahs have failed to strike a balance between ancient Koran principles and the realities of the 20th century.
Iranians have accepted Islamic rule, but they also want what the West has to offer.
The Mullahs have to come to terms with that just as the West has to come to terms with them...