As we near the northern hemisphere spring equinox — Nowrooz (Persian New Year, around March 20) — there will still be the last of the winter snow on the ground in cool, smoggy Tehran.
I can recall arriving there at this time of year in 2007 and spending the next three years as New Zealand’s deputy ambassador.
It was my first posting as a Kiwi diplomat.
Fresh in my mind’s eye are the magnificent old oriental plane trees lining the arterial north-south route through the sprawling capital — Vali-Asr St, the former Pahlavi Ave. They will be on the cusp of sprouting the first green shoots of the season.
Since Israeli and American ordnance started falling, however, Tehran will be changed.
The petrichor of the dampened, ever-present dust and pollution from whatever vehicles remain on the usually chaotic roads will now be mixed with the smoke of a hundred burning buildings, the tooting of car horns replaced by air-raid sirens.
Many knew this day might come, yet most will be unprepared for it.
Some will be praying and going about their business stoically, others fearful and taking shelter where they can.
But the footage starting to leak out — somehow sneaking past internet outages and stringent firewalls — shows quiet defiance blossoming into extraordinary scenes of heroic outright rejoicing at the airstrikes targeting the hated regime’s facilities.
We have also seen Iranian expats here celebrating what they anticipate will be the impending fall of the Islamic Republic, hoping that exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi could return to lead a transitional government and holding out the possibility that lessons from Iran’s long history could be brought to bear in addressing the modern state’s needs.
Of course, they all worry about relatives back home — yet many still welcome the strikes.
This contrasts with the received wisdom in our media, and the bien-pensants who seem more concerned about upholding international law in theory than its failure in practice to save tens of thousands from torture and murder.
One reason for this stark difference in opinion lies in our unique histories. Many of those brought up steeped in Iran’s story hold up their national heritage as a higher source of legitimacy than the post-1979 republic accredited to the United Nations.
Iranians are naturally proud of their ancestors’ foundational contributions to science, culture and civilisation itself.
Ancient Persian engineers gave the world underground aqueducts, called qanats, which allowed large-scale agriculture in otherwise arid regions.
They also created windmills to ventilate houses in the oppressive summer heat and invented the pardis garden, upon which both the biblical vision of paradise and modern Islamic walled gardens are based.
In religion, arguably the first monotheistic system of belief arose as the ancient Iranian religion evolved into what we now call Zoroastrianism around 3000 years ago.
Over 2500 years ago, Cyrus the Great ordered cuneiform words stamped into clay to record his kingly whakapapa and grant religious freedom to the Babylonians he had subsumed into the Persian Empire.
Foremost among the advocates of this Cyrus Cylinder as a supposed proto-human rights charter was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran.
While some scholars argue the late Shah’s royal championing of his distant predecessor’s achievement was more modern political propaganda than evidence of ancient progressivism, we should bear in mind this is the same Cyrus who freed the Jews from captivity.
As former director of the British Museum Neil MacGregor points out, Cyrus’ approach represented humanity’s first attempt at "running a society, a state with different nationalities and faiths". To put it into perspective, this document is three times as ancient as Magna Carta and over 10 times older than the Treaty of Waitangi.
Cyrus also created the world’s first postal system.
Herodotus recounted that it could relay government dispatches 2700km across the empire in nine days. The later Roman road and mail network, the cursus publicus, is thought to have been inspired by this early communications system.
NZ Post — which is proposing to shut around 50 outlets in the South Island — could learn a few things from the posties of antiquity.
Tragically, this exceptional inheritance has been utterly laid waste by the administration of the successive grand ayatollahs, Khomeini and Khamenei, since 1979. They subscribed to the theory of faqih: the supremacy of Islamic jurisprudence over all functions of public life.
As a result, Iranians have suffered nearly 50 years under one of the most cruel and tyrannical apparatuses of oppression in modern history.
The ayatollahs enforced an ultra-conservative view of Shia morality through mass public executions, state-sanctioned amputations and blindings, and the systematic persecution of women and any minority or group that the famously thin-skinned magisterium of mullahs (Shi’a clerics) regarded as even moderately critical.
Most sensible commentators assess that Iran had been refining uranium to weapons grade, at great expense and in contradiction of its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, threatening international security.
There is no doubt that regime fanatics the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and their Quds Force had been fuelling terror across the world, especially in regional countries like Lebanon and Yemen.
The ayatollahs also presided over a perverse and unenlightened implementation of sharia law. For instance, while the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia — who are now defending themselves from Iranian regime drones and missiles — have ages of consent around 18 years, girls as young as 13 can legally be forced into marriage in Iran.
At the embassy, I heard anecdotal accounts of girls in the provinces who were younger still coerced into state-sanctioned abusive relationships.
Most Iranians, rightly, consider such behaviour degenerate and abhorrent — but they lacked any power to change these rules, until now.
The ultimate crime in the Islamic Republic is moharebeh, literally being "an enemy of God". This offence blends concepts of political rebellion and blasphemy — where opposing state policy is sacrilege and religious dissent an act of high treason.
The death penalty is mandatory in such cases, as it remains for witchcraft and apostasy.
So perhaps it is unsurprising that, regardless of what Western media, legal theoreticians, and retired politicians like Helen Clark think, Iranian expat communities are excited for the prospect of change.
They are less concerned with US or Israeli breaches of an international law which the regime routinely defied and which shamefully offered so little protection to people from the depredations of their rulers.
My sympathies are with the ordinary citizens who have suffered so much for decades.
I share the ambitions of New Zealand’s Iranian community too: that their homeland can return to its rightful place as a crucial geo-strategic player and regional linchpin — proud of its history and culture, and a land where future generations can enjoy lives that are more peaceful and free.
• Paul Foster-Bell is a former National list MP and diplomat who served several postings in the Middle East. He now works for the University of Otago, where he also researches international relations. All views expressed are solely his own.
