Source: Columbia Tribune
The presence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on U.S. soil is too much for some Iranians living in exile in Missouri.
"We’re going to express our objection today," said Iranian-American Azam Shahriary this morning from a taxicab en route to the United Nations building in New York. Shahriary left Iran in 1978 when her husband was accepted into Lincoln University in Jefferson City. The couple lived in Jefferson City and Columbia before recently moving to St. Louis, where their two U.S.-born sons attend college.
"I am honored to live here because I cannot go back. I have not seen my family in 28 years," Shahriary said tearfully in a telephone interview before departing Missouri.
"Nobody is safe in Iran today. The woman has no rights," Shahriary said. "The terrorist regime should not have any place in the international community."
Shahriary, like many Iranian-Americans whose families were imprisoned, tortured and even killed during the Iranian revolution in 1979, traveled to New York to demonstrate their opposition to the Iranian government and what they call a "policy of appeasement" that has allowed Iran to "buy time" with the international community to develop atomic weapons.
"I have three cousins that have been executed, aged 19, 16 and 21 years old," said Shahriary, 50, who said her family in Iran remains under surveillance. "These people are not political; they are too young."
"I am Muslim, but … there is nothing to encourage you to kill other people and go to heaven. This is for money and for power."
Exiled Iranians in Missouri preserve their love of their homeland and resistance to the current regime in part through the work of the St. Louis-based Iranian American Cultural Association of Missouri.
Kasra Nejat, the group’s president, also in New York today, has written letters to Congress urging the United States to take a more forceful – but not military – position against Iran.
"As long as Ahmadinejad is in Iran, there is no chance of peace, stability and political progress," said Nejat, who first came to Missouri in 1979 to attend the University of Missouri-Rolla. Nejat explained that many exiled Iranians support a forceful approach that includes boycotts, sanctions, cutting off relations with the government – there is now no U.S. diplomatic presence in Iran – and refusing to purchase Iranian oil.
Nejat also criticized European countries such as France that have oil and gas production contracts in Iran.
France’s position might be changing, though. In a recent interview with the New York Times, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would support the U.S.-led push for a third U.N. sanctions resolution against Iran. He also said he was asking French companies to "refrain from going to Iran." Nonetheless, France’s Total signed a $2 billion contract with Iran earlier this year to expand production of natural gas to about 15 percent of current world output.
Both Nejat and Shahriary have also called upon members of Congress to support a 500-member international parliament of Iranians in exile known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
The Iranian American Cultural Association of Missouri has been successful in stirring support from local congressmen, including a bill now before Congress to toughen sanctions and letters of support from U.S. Reps. Lacy Clay and Sam Graves, who support the protest of Ahmadinejad’s presence and commend the work of Rajavi. U.S. Sen. Kit Bond has also expressed his support in the past.
"The only solution is regime change in Iran. It’s the only thing the Iranian people want," Shahriary said. "Hopefully, someone will hear us."