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Around Town

Charm offensive

By Frank Kuznik
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 13th, 2008 issue

Suddenly, a thaw is in the air.

The travel section of this past Sunday’s New York Times featured a large spread on Iran, written by an American who went there “to learn what the country was actually like.” Tuesday’s International Herald Tribune had a front-page story headlined “Many in Iran bear the U.S. no ill will.”
And, Monday night in Prague, the Iranian Embassy hosted an impressive international gathering for its national day, commemorating the 29th anniversary of the revolution that transformed the country from a secular monarchy to an Islamic republic.
Nearly every embassy in the city throws a national day celebration, but this one was noteworthy for several reasons.
The first was the crowd, noticeably bigger than last year’s and markedly Western. Along with the usual faces from countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, there were ambassadors and attachés from Germany, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Venezuela. One Iranian staffer suggested this was the result of outreach by the head of the embassy, Majid Nili, who has been a diligent presence on the diplomatic social circuit over the past year. Or perhaps one of the Western ambassadors was closer to the mark when he confided, “I think everyone is mindful of their oil and gas.”
Another factor is the hospitality of the Iranians, who are as smooth and gracious as anyone in town. Nili and his top staff and their wives stayed in a receiving line by the door the entire night, greeting everyone as they came and went with impeccable politeness. A heated tent attached to the rear of the embassy featured two large tables filled with so much Middle Eastern food that there was some left at the end of the evening, a rarity in this town. The only thing lacking was the bar, which, in keeping with Muslim custom, had no alcohol.
A movie showing in one room touted the tourist sites of Iran, which on film looked enticing: snow-capped mountains, glittering palaces, ornately decorated mosques and lively bazaars. The subtitles were a bit off: “Snowy spook with your pod in the noose of the snare,” read one accompanying a mountain glamour shot. But the narrator, an Iranian woman in a head scarf speaking British-accented English, made it all sound sophisticated and inviting.
So did Davood Alimohammadi, the Iranian Embassy’s third secretary, who offered several times to facilitate a visit to Iran. “We arranged this for Dnes and Právo and I think Czech Television,” he said. “All their knowledge about Iran was based on propaganda. But when they came back, they changed.”
Like his colleagues, Alimohammadi blames the perception of Iran as a pariah among nations on “mass media propaganda,” and is more than happy to offer his side of the story. The British sailors that the Iranians held hostage for two weeks last March? “After seeing the GPS figures, they admitted they were in Iranian waters,” he said. How about the harassment of U.S. ships by Iranian boats in the Strait of Hormuz in January? “There were two different recordings of those voices, but finally the Americans had to acknowledge it was not Iranian voices,” he said.
None of which gets the Iranians off the hook for those incidents, or the country’s determination, in the face of global opposition, to continue its uranium enrichment program. But, Monday, the charges and counter-charges were less interesting than the Iranians’ willingness to discuss any issue, no matter how controversial or accusatory, in a gentle, reasonable manner.
It brought to mind a remark made in the Times travel story by a friendly Iranian the writer met over water pipes in an Esfahan teahouse. “Our governments are bad,” the man said. “But the people are good.”
Amen to that.

Frank Kuznik can be reached at fkuznik@praguepost.com


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