Anti-Iranian sentiment
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Anti-Iranian sentiment (Persian: احساسات ضدایرانی) is feelings and expression of hostility, hatred, discrimination, or prejudice towards Iran and its culture, and towards persons based on their association with Iran and Iranian culture. Its opposite is Iranophilia.
Historically, prejudice against Iranians particularly on the part of Arabs following theIslamic conquest of Persia. More recently, anti-Iranian sentiment has been prominent also in the Western world and in international media.
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[hide]In the United States[edit source]
See also: Iranian American and United States-Iran relations
According to the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA), nearly half of Iranian Americans surveyed in 2008 by Zogby International have themselves experienced or personally know another Iranian American who has experienced discrimination because of their ethnicity or country of origin. The most common types of discrimination reported are airport security, social discrimination, employment or business discrimination, racial profiling and discrimination at the hands of immigration officials.[1]
The Iranian hostage crisis of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979 precipitated a wave of anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States, directed both against the new Islamic regime and Iranian nationals and immigrants. Even though such sentiments gradually declined after the release of the hostages at the start of 1981, they sometimes flare up.[citation needed] In response, some Iranian immigrants to the U.S. have distanced themselves from their nationality and instead identify primarily on the basis of their ethnic or religious affiliations.[2]
Litigation[edit source]
- In 2009 Merrill Lynch & Co. agreed to pay $1.55 million to resolve a U.S. government lawsuit accusing the securities firm of discriminating against an Iranian employee. The government accused the firm of refusing to promote Majid Borumand and later firing him on the basis of his national origin and religion.[3]
Apple[edit source]
In 2012, an Apple store in Georgia refused to sell an iPad to an American citizen of Iranian background after hearing her speaking Persian to a relative. An Apple store manager cited the U.S. trade sanctions which prohibits the sale of goods to Iran, however, in this case, the Apple store did not know anything besides her ethnicity. Another Iranian-American from Virginia reported similar treatment by the Apple store after trying to help an Iranian student purchase an iPhone.[4]
In the media, think tanks, or government[edit source]
Politically conservative commentator Ann Coulter has referred to Iranians as "ragheads" (though she later on clarified that she was referring to the government figures, she would later come out in support of Green Revolution protesters in 2009)[6] and Brent Scowcroft has called the Iranian people "rug merchants". Additionally, the Columbus Dispatch recently ran a cartoon that portrayed Iran as a sewer with cockroachescrawling out of it.[7]
In May 2005, Fox News broadcast a special program called Iran: The Nuclear Threat, hosted by Chris Wallace. Kaveh Afrasiab, an analyst and expert on Iran who once worked with Wallace at ABC, noted that the program "lacked the minutest evidence of objectivity, displaying instead piles of prejudice on top of prejudice reminding one of the Iraq weapons of mass destruction threat played up by the right-wing, sensationalist network during 2002 and early 2003, duping millions of American viewers about the authenticity of the Bush administration's allegations against the regime of Saddam Hussein".[8] Other examples of stereotyping Iranians as terrorists and anti-West is found in comic books. Dennis O'Neil, a comic book writer and editor, notes in the postscript of Batman: A Death in the Family:
| “ | "these sagas (comic books) are more than just entertainments, at least to many readers; they are the post-industrial equivalent of folk tales and as such, they have gone pretty deeply into a lot of psyches." | ” |
In the aforementioned story, Batman's nemesis, the Joker tries to sell Lebanese extremists a nuclear weapon before fleeing to Iran. The Joker then meets Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who appoints him as the formal ambassador to the United Nations. In this function, the Joker addresses the United Nations General Assembly, saying he and the "country's current leaders...have a lot in common", before lethally gassing the assembly.[5] The mentioning of Iran was later retconned to the fictional Middle Eastern state of Qurac and panel with the image of the Ayatollah removed. Colonel Abdul al-Rahman first appeared in the comic book "Ultimates" as a 17-year-old Muslim boy from Iranian Azerbaijan (as stated in The Ultimates v2 #12) who witnesses Captain America's led invasion of his country. Outraged, he becomes the Middle East counterpart to Captain America before he is finally killed by Captain America.
In October 2007, Debra Cagan, a senior official at The Pentagon, shocked several British MPs when she declared "I hate all Iranians".[9]
In 2009 Martin Kramer, a Harvard professor, warned about the dangers of allowing Iranian Americans to get too close to power during the 2009American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference:[10]
| “ | Iran can have behind the scenes leverage over Iranian Americans, many of whom occupy key positions in the think tanks and are even being brought now into the administration...What this means is that we have to be extremely cautious about what we take away from Iranian diaspora communities when it comes to understanding Iran. |
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