The sharp edge of American racism is now pointed at us—Iranians and Arabs in America today—making it no easy task to live here. Each year, millions of Arab and Iranian Americans endure the horrors that the United States and Israel have brought us. We still demand, however, to be treated as human beings with our own individual liberties.
By speaking up and telling our stories we’ve managed to divert the wrath of U.S./Israeli military attack. Both the United States and Israel have continuously talked about attacking Iran, yet neither has found the international climate optimal for actually committing the crime.
The Iranian people have tried, against all odds, to establish people’s rule in their country for over 100 years, but military intervention, coups and assassinations by the United States and Israel have always stood in the way.
The sanctions against Iran and various attacks during the Iranian Revolution of 1979 have brought Iran to where it stands today. Many Iranians still imagine what their revolution could have achieved had they been left alone to build their country as they see fit. But U.S. harassment and abuse intensified after the Shah was forced to leave Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
The young, revolutionary Iran now not only had to deal with strict U.S. sanctions, but an eight-year war with the United States as well. These eight years damaged both the Iranians and Iraqis tremendously. Over a million people died in this war, and many more were left severely impaired or in need of lifelong medical attention. These are the harsh prices that Iranians have had to pay and now continue to pay because of their rejection to foreign intervention and humiliation. The chief objective of the Iranian people in their fight against oppression is an end to foreign intervention in Iraq as a whole.
The most immediate effect of U.S. government sanctions is an increase in child mortality. The United Nations states that, “As many as 576,000 Iraqi children may have died since the end of the Persian Gulf War because of economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council.”
The United States has committed genocide against the Iraqi people by killing half a million of their children through sanctions before the War on Iraq even began. Now Mr. Obama and his Zionist friends are cooking up another plot to commit more crimes in the Middle East, but this time against millions of Iranian children.
Stop harassing Iran and Iranians. No more sanctions, interventions, assassinations or funding for terrorist groups to terrorize the people of Iran.
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani is a student in the School of Public Health.