A Nation of Nose Jobs, Not Nuclear War ; Peter Hitchens Is the First Western Journalist to Go Into Iran Since the Hostage Crisis. What He Discovered Surprised Him and Should Make Everyone Think Again

Summary

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For years we in the West have been looking for a new Evil Empire to fill the gap left when Russia a genuine threat retired from the job and deprived us of an enemy. What were all those spies to do? How could we justify those missiles and bombs? What should we be scared of now?

At one stage we were reduced to pretending that Panama's General Noriega was a menace to our way of life. Then it was Slobodan Milosevic. Finally, we inflated the piffling Saddam Hussein into a looming Hitler.

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Extract

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A Nation of Nose Jobs, Not Nuclear War ; Peter Hitchens Is the First Western Journalist to Go Into Iran Since the Hostage Crisis. What He Discovered Surprised Him and Should Make Everyone Think Again

Now the same experts think they have found something to be afraid of in Iran. It is tempting to believe them. This is the land of the glowering ayatollahs, the book-burning mobs, the fatwas of death and the black chador.

And Iran has just become even more frightening because in its secret vaults Islamic scientists are fumbling with atoms and testing long-range rockets.

Such is our terror of this mysterious land that Navy bluejackets and Royal Marines seem to have thought they were in the hands of cannibal dervishes when they were captured by them, quailing at the thought of rape, torture and death. Even now, having been subtly humiliated instead of butchered, they do not seem to have grasped that things might not be as they seem. Nor have many of us.

When I told my friends and family I was going to Tehran, they looked at me as if I were taking a short break in Mordor, and expected that the next time they saw me I would be being paraded by Revolutionary Guards after confessing to espionage, and then publicly hanged from a large crane at a busy traffic intersection.

Well, not quite. The people of Iran are probably the most pro- Western in the world, though that will not stop them fighting like hell if we...

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