Iran observations from a Massachusetts 'hick'
Posted: Friday, September 14, 2007 1:30 PM by Jen Brown
(From Sean Reis, TODAY producer)
Producer Sean Reis, a self-professed "hick from a Massachusetts," traveled to Iran for TODAY's special coverage on Thursday. These are his observations...
Weather
When I saw the weather.com report that said it was going to be 95 every day, well, I didn’t think that was great news, especially as summer was beginning to give ground in New York, and it was cool enough to leave just your windows open at night. People always talk about it being a dry heat in Phoenix, and how that’s not exactly the case. Well, here it’s actually true. The sun’s hot, but not oppressive. 95 feels like about 85 with zero humidity. Good times. The air is another story. It’s like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. You know why? Up until only recently, cars weren’t required to have catalytic converters. It’s bad. You’re going to want to take a bath in Purell when this is over.
The City
Now, I’m a hick from Massachusetts, but this is the biggest city I’ve ever been in and ever hope to be in. The last census put the population at 12.5 million. It’s a lot more than that now. A conservative estimate is about 16 million people. Some say it’s as much as 19 million, and they are planning for something on the order of 25 million people by 2025. That breaks down like this:
- 8.5 Million people - NYC Population
- 4.5 Million People - LA Population
- 3 Million People - Chicago population
16 million total.
16 million people - Tehran population. Equal, essentially to the population of the U.S.’s 3 largest cities. Man. I’ve also been told, because of Tehran’s economic importance and that the government controls so much, that 1,000 people move here everyday. That’s an increase of a million people in just under every 3 years.
To put it in perspective, in 1900, 250,000 people lived here. In 1979, at the time of the revolution, 3 million people live here. Now, 28 years later, the city has more than quadrupled in population.
A word about size. The most recent estimate put Tehran’s size at 256 sq miles. But, as you’ll see on airport approach, no freaking way. This place is huge and goes on forever. Up in the Talborz mountains, it literally goes on as far as the eye can see. We read somewhere that the city has a radius of 19 miles. Doing the old Pr2, that came to an area of 1,133 square miles. That just seemed too big. So it is my considered opinion, that Atlanta works as an analogy, clocking in at 700 square miles. So you could say:
“Imagine the populations of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles living in an area the size of Atlanta, that’s what you’ve got here in Tehran”
That’s a lot of people.
Traffic
Man, don’t sit in the front seat of the car. Just don’t do it. You’re not that daring. You won’t believe how close you come to hitting motorcyclists, pedestrians, and other cars. It’s amazing. People allow themselves mere centimeters to escape total destruction. Some say it’s a testament to how good these people drive. I say those people are wrong. You’ll be going down a lovely 3 lane highway. By god, if they can go 5 cars abreast in that space, they are going to do it. Not of lot of stop lights, and NO cross walks. You literally take your life into your hands. I thought about having Matt (Lauer, right) try to cross the street live, but then, after doing it myself, I knew he would be killed.
Say Your Prayers, Rabbit
Friday I had the chance to go to Friday prayers at Tehran University, the home office of Anti-American Hate. This is where you’ve seen the whole “Death to America, Death to Israel” business. Usually, seen on TV, it’s enough to scare the bejeezus out of you. Well, I went and I saw. We got there early. It’s an outdoor mosque under a tin roof that covers an area of about 3 football fields. When the first Imam speaks the place starts to fill up.
There’s a VIP section up front for the Mullahs, and top government and military officials, and other muckety mucks. Then another section for top business guys and the well connected. Finally there’s a white wrought iron fence, and the rest of the rabble gets to pray behind that. Of course, there’s a separate section, outside the mosque for women.
It’s a social occasion, and a political one as well. It’s a chance to see and be seen by the top dogs, fly the flag a little. I thought I would feel completely out of place. A pilgrim in an unholy land. Not at all. The people in the press area were very welcoming and curious about my visit. The security guards made repeated jokes about my height, 6’7”. (One said, “Be careful how close you frisk him, he may pound you into the concrete”) They even gave me headphones to listen to the Sermons. Friday prayers are important, it’s the equivalent of Sunday in the Muslim world, and the Imam (prayer leader) can talk politics.
So, the first Imam finishes speaking and by god was he boring. The place is still filling up, and I SWEAR, I saw a kid in Kurt Cobain t-shirt and another kid in a University of Texas Football T-shirt. Then, it was like sort of the intermission between wrestling matches on TV. And a guy comes out with funny hair, like Kenny Rogers but dark, and the beard. And he starts riling the crowd up, the tempo change was so fast it would have given you whiplash. And then it came, in all its rich creamy goodness:
“Death to America”
“Death to Israel”
It went on about three times. (Something I found out later, the people who chant Death to America stick around and get a free meal after prayers.)
I gotta say though, I really didn’t feel threatened at all. I didn’t really feel like their hearts were into it. I mean, they said it, and they meant it. But remember on Hogan’s Heroes when Colonel Klink would give that half-hearted, sort of swishy “Heil Hitler”. It was completely like that. By that time the joint was pretty full, and the main speaker was about to begin.
We were sort of in luck, today Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani was speaking. He was president of the country from 1989 to 1997. He was in favor of normalizing relations with the West, sort of. Well, he was also massively corrupt. He was a major arms dealer, who earned the nickname “Johnny Ruff Stuff,” and who many think kept the Iran-Iraq war going to keep making some dough.
Recently, in an interesting development in internal politics, Rafsanjani was elected to be the new head of the Assembly of Experts. The closest thing we have to them is the Cabinet, except that they choose the next Supreme Leader. They are supposed to be heavily influential except they don’t publish anything, hold public hearings or anything like that. It’s thought that Rafsanjani’s election is a signal that the country is moving back into a more moderate direction.
He did say some conciliatory stuff, the greatest hit:
“If any way out is left, it is negotiation. Don’t repeat mistakes. Islamic Iran is not seeking atomic weapons and will use the technology in the service of mankind.”
For more on TODAY's special Iran coverage, click here.
