In Tehran, the 444 days of the Iran Hostage Crisis was the first world event in which you could literally have live events beamed into your living room. Now, every world event plays out on its own, and as a media event.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I still remember, as a kid, tying a yellow ribbon around a tree in front of my house during the 444 days that Iran held 52 Americans hostage. Iran is not a place we should be doing business with.
Like the assassination of JFK, everybody alive then can remember where they were that Doomsday Week of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. That Saturday, 27 October, was, and remains, the closest the world has come to nuclear holocaust - the blackest day of a horrendous week.
Outside events can change a presidential campaign, a president, and the history of the nation: the Iranian hostage crisis, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the downing of the helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Then came the hostage crisis during which Carter did nothing to rattle the ayatollahs who hung tough until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, when they suddenly backed down.
The stories from Iran's present and past are reminders that freedom, democracy and human rights, or fundamentalism, fascism and terrorism are not geographically and culturally determined, but universal.
The idea that the rest of the world was somehow being held hostage by the Arab-Israeli conflict once had a minimal basis in reality. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, every Arab country was in an active state of war with the Jewish state.
My family fled Iran in October 1978 as a result of the coming revolution when I was two years old. In the early days, my entire family lived together in a very crowded house, where I shared a room with my sister, cousin, and grandmother, and we would all listen to my grandmother tell stories before bedtime.
The English press treated the world premiere of my first talking picture as a major event.
One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.
Perhaps September 11 could be called the first historic world event in the strictest sense: the impact, the explosion, the slow collapse - a gruesome reality literally took place in front of a global public.