Fatemeh Keshavarz Informed Comment
On April 24, Secretary Hegseth said the war on Iran was “a gift to the world”. If you are a member of the general public, you do not know enough details to ask “Which part? Killing the schoolgirls? Hitting Iranian universities? The price of oil, or the US make-belief negotiations to lull Iranians before attacking them?” If you knew some of this information, you’d would know they do not qualify as gifts. Clearly, he is hinting at something good, like a protective measure. Could he be referring to shielding the world from Iran’s nuclear danger? But Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and it has not attacked another country in over a hundred years. Even as an informed member of the general public, you are unlikely to know this information either.
But since “gift” is used here as a metaphor, you may ask why can Mr. Hegseth not use a metaphor of his choice? The answer is not simple, and it goes to the heart of the matter. Ill-fitted metaphors do not just misinform, and hinder conflict resolution. They go beyond that. Speaking builds our perception of the world and those who live in it. If crushing Iranians is a gift of global magnitude, in the eyes of a large modestly informed majority, the Iranians must be deserving of their ill fate. Sadly, in the case of the current war on Iran, this ill-chosen metaphor is only the tip of the iceberg. The general media misspeak bombards Americans with misrepresentations of Iran and Iranians.
Music and Community: Reflections on Hope and Home
Music and Community: Reflections on Hope and Home
The rubric “the war in Iran” is itself a misnomer strengthening the perception that countries in the middle East are locations of violence. Bad things happen IN that part of the world. Well, there are no wars IN Iran. The current war is imposed ON it from the outside—incidentally by us.
If you think small propositions are not worth the fuss, consider the phrase “Decapitation of the Iranian regime.” Leaving the word “regime” for later, let us focus on decapitation. It sounds like a modern sophisticated military strategy, a carefully devised master plan for a swift and clean operation. Well, it isn’t. Decapitation, here, refers to the mass assassination of the members of the current Iranian government’s top echelons with their families, guests, neighbors, even those passing by (sometimes an entire block). Their personal homes are hit with drones and missiles. Now multiply this incident by 50 to see the extent of what is packed into the single word decapitation. Here is a list of officials, including civilian noncombatants, killed during the 2026 war on Iran. According to international law, this is a war crime.
The celebrated writer George Orwell (1903-1950) objected to the level of “cloudiness” of the language used by the media in his time. In his now classic essay Politics and the English Language, published in 1946, Orwell grieved for the “horrendous” events of his time such as “the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan,” which the media referred to as pacification, elimination of unreliable elements or rectification of the frontiers. This cloudy language, Orwell suggested, was used because these actions had to be named “without calling up mental images” of what they really referred to. In other words, they numb you to the pain that you would otherwise feel.
Orwell felt that speaking with precision, which mattered gravely, could happen only if clear and concrete words are used, not those “cloudied” to be vague. In our time, “the war on terror,” is a good parallel. It justified the attack on Afghanistan and later Iraq, neither of which were responsible for the 9/11 killings of innocent people. In the case of Iran and Cuba, the cloudy word “Sanctions” is notable for hiding its function as a weapon of mass destruction. Sanctions, which take away people’s food, medicine, and other life-saving necessities — are usually presented as a gentle alternative to war. They are not. They are low-cost invisible weapons shielding the countries that impose them by killing quietly.
Is there a way to measure the numbing impact of cloudy language on our lives in a concrete sense? Alas, not easily. While inflicting pain makes its victim scream, causing numbness leads to inaction, if not acquiescence. Normalization of horror does not come with a bang, is creeps into life as softly as humidity fills the air. When the commander-in-chief of the largest military force in the world states “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” in reference to Iran, only this numbness will prevent us from screaming. We know civilizations do not die; human beings do — and targeting them on mass is genocide. But reactions are few and far in-between.
Photo of Iran’s Liberty Tower by Ufuk Aslan on Unsplash
The paralysis brings its own sense of helplessness, a feeling of “What difference does it make if I say something” But there are other reasons, in this case, the current perception of Iranians shaped by the language we just talked about. Iranians do not have a government but a regime; do not respect their women, and they never smile, not in the pictures that we see. Thirsting for nuclear power, they are irrational actors living in a region infested with violence. (To check out just the headlines, see Asal Rad).
If you are surprised that Iranian commercial airlines, and the Iranian Airforce have women pilots; that Tehran International Bookfair brings over a hundred publishers from across the world, and 2 million Iranian book shoppers to the capital every year; that Iran is the number 9 country in the world with regard to the volume of its annual publications, demand a fair and informative media!
We have a right to know the countries we bomb.
Fatemeh Keshavarz , born and raised in the city of Shiraz, completed her studies in Shiraz University, and University of London. She taught at Washington University in St. Louis for over twenty years where she chaired the Dept. of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from 2004 to 2011. In 2012, Keshavarz joined the University of Maryland as the Roshan Institute Chair in Persian Language and Literature, and Director of the Roshan Institute Center for Persian Studies. Keshavarz is author of award winning books including Reading Mystical Lyric: the Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi (USC Press,1998), Recite in the Name of the Red Rose (USC Press, 2006) and a book of literary analysis and social commentary titled Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran (UNC Press, 2007).
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