____________________________________________ 10 IICC Perspectives The Persian language is rich, poetic and soft, woven with dozens of elusive terms meant to flatter and all lost in translation. Every other sentence begins with ghorban shouma, I will sacrifice myself for you.” Don’t take it seriously, he has no intention of sacrificing himself for you. Patience, submission and endurance The Iranians are a people of carpet weavers, investing years of work with no return before seeing a result. Patience is one of the Iranian people’s defining traits, mixed with an outward suffering which is one of Shi’a’s primary symbols. The Iran-Iraq War demonstrated the nation’s endurance as it absorbed terrible losses over eight years of war, the people gritted their teeth and continued, even though they could have ended the war after a year when Iran pushed Saddam’s forces back to the pre-war border lines, instead of invading Iraq. It was the clearest proof of Iran’s willingness to endure pain and heavy sacrifice in the name of justice, according to Shi’ite belief. When Khomeini was forced to sign the ceasefire with Iraq, he said, “I sign and drink the cup of poison…” Patience to the point of submission is the result of generations of tyrannical rulers and occupiers. It enables the Iranian man in the street to endure oppression until the storm passes, hoping the next ruler will be better. That same patience was most likely used by the nuclear negotiators. They exhausted the other side, and at the brink of a blowup they would halt the talks, only to be “ready to return” after some time and start all over again, however, not before they had used aggressive psychological warfare to set the price tag for taking action against them. The threats were an inseparable part of the negotiations. Iranian family from the Kurdish region, 1975 (Courtesy of the painter Itzik Barzilai)
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