Nowruz at the White House

On March 11, the White House celebrated Nowruz, the spring celebration marked by Iran and others in the region, including Afghanistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. First Lady Michelle Obama introduced the event, which featured traditional festive food and music. It was, she said, a chance to reflect on the past 12 months, and to embrace the new year and all its potential for positive change and renewal.

IranWire spoke with Iran expert and US diplomat John Limbert about the White House event, which he attended. Limbert was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran and an official at the US Embassy in Tehran He was one of 52 people held hostage in the embassy for 444 days from 1979 to 1981.

We asked John Limbert about this week’s Nowruz celebrations, and about how the holiday might foster hope – including around nuclear negotiations and US-Iran dialogue.

It was very festive. I was pleased to see people from all over the country. It wasn’t just local people: there were people from the West Coast, there were people from New York, from Albany, Seattle, all over. It was remarkable – especially because of the number of countries involved, and different peoples. This isn’t just for Iran, but for the whole cultural area where Nowruz is celebrated: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Uzbekistan. The dancers were from Central Asia – Uzbekistan and Tajikistan I think.

The other thing that stood out was just how positive the contribution is that these communities make to our society. There were people there in computers, in finance, college professors, engineers, bankers. This is a very well-educated group of people who are making a huge contribution to our own society, and the event was a way of reminding us of that, a recognition. These are not communities you hear about regularly.

The food was very good. For me, the high points were, of course, the sweets, which were very good. They had a very traditional dish, which is rice with greens served with fish [sabzi polo va mahi] – which you don’t see that much, but it’s traditional at the new year in Iran. The caterers were Iranian I think.

We celebrate Nowruz of course. We try to be with our grandchildren. They enjoy it – of course they get presents, which they like – and they particularly enjoy the Haft Sin [traditional table setting for Nowruz] and the goldfish. It’s a very important time for us – especially this year. It was a very long and tough winter, so we are all happy to see the spring.

At the White House, the Haft Sin was quite an elaborate one. It was hard to get close to it, because it was behind a rope (collectively produced by White House staff with some help from their family members). There was quite a crowd there, somewhere in the range of 100-150 people.

It also brought back memories of Nowruz gatherings in Iran. It’s a very much a family occasion, and of course, here, what you’re looking at is a diaspora  community. In this diaspora community, the pull of traditions is very strong.

It was a very important holiday when we were in Iran. The Iranian calendar is a solar calendar so Nowruz always falls on the same day. But the Islamic calendar, of course, is lunar, so the special religious days rotate around the calendar. Once in a while, Nowruz would coincide with some of the deepest mourning days in Shia Islam. And the question always was: What are we going to do? Do we celebrate or do we cry? What struck me is that somehow people could always manage both. People have the psychological room to do both things: to mourn and to celebrate. Personally I find it one of the most fascinating and attractive parts of the culture. What struck me with many of my friends – and some of them were quite religious – was that they seemed to put these things into the proper compartments. In other words, they could validate multiple identities. It’s especially important now, with the government at least officially being Islamic.

I was a hostage for one Nowruz. It would have been 1980. It was not a pleasant time. Being in prison...it was a very low point.

Nuclear Negotiations

I’m always hopeful. It sort of goes with the territory. Will they reach an agreement, won’t they reach an agreement? I don’t know. They say if you want to be an Iran expert, you just say “I don’t know,” that’s the way to do it. But even if they don’t reach an agreement by the end of March, I still think if you look over a 35 to 36-year history, there has still been a very of profound change in the last year or two. You now have Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Zarif talking to each other, and talking to each other professionally. They describe their talks as productive. I mean, think about that. When was the last time any US-Iranian meeting was described as productive? You probably have to go back to 1979. Somebody – it wasn’t original to me – said it seems to be easier for Kerry to meet with Zarif than it would be for him to meet with Netanyahu. Here’s a country with which we have no relations and here’s a country with which we are great friends. The ability to talk to each other as states — not as friends, because that’s too much to ask —but at least as states with interests, is incredible. To me, that’s a huge change, a huge step forward.  Whether we get to an agreement by the end of March, or we don’t, we’ve seen in the last year and a half a big step forward. 

...And on that Republican letter

You couldn’t make that up. That comes from a bad movie. You have to just ask yourself: what are they thinking about? Are they thinking at all? It’s pretty clear to me that this is all about domestic politics. Apparently the opposition in this case will do anything to undermine the president. It’s not entirely new in our system. But this does take it a little further than most cases.

What are the rules with Iranian-US relations? One of them is that whenever you seem to be making progress, someone or something is going to come along to try to screw it up. That’s what’s happening: the idea is to undermine, to eliminate any chance of an agreement. By saying, “Look, if you reach an agreement, it may not stick.” You have to ask: what’s the purpose of doing it?

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