As the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran Saturday morning, I wondered if Fred is living through this, too.
Fred was an Iranian student working at an Italian restaurant in Ocean City, where we spent a few college summers screwing up people’s pasta orders.
That wasn’t his real name. He chose it, thinking it would be easier for Americans. His real name was probably Reza, but it was a God-awful long time ago.
We lost track after two seasons at Mario’s. Even the building is now gone.
But, as the U.S. and Israel hurled missiles and bombs at Iran — and as the Islamic Republic retaliated — I wondered what Fred would say.
President Donald Trump briefly laid out the reasons for an attack Tuesday in his State of the Union address, arguing the U.S. must confront what he called imminent threats from Iran.
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Congress holds the constitutional power to declare war, even if American presidents often ignore it.
Trump, though, is the first to announce the start of one on social media.
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future,” he said in a video posted to Truth Social.
Any American president, given the opportunity, would probably shove this tottering theocracy over the cliff.
It is a more dangerous gambit than Trump’s capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. Yet we’re stuck with this president, and it might be the moment to force a change.
When I met Fred in June 1977, he talked about what a good ruler his country had in Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
“The shah is good. The shah is great.”
Of course, that wasn’t true.
The shah had ruled his country since World War II, supported by the United States and funded by oil.
That link brought Fred to the U.S., part of the largest single group of foreign exchange students at the time — 50,000 by the late 1970s.
A thousand were spread across Maryland campuses, concentrated in College Park and Baltimore.
That summer was my first home after freshman year in Virginia. I’d missed the protests in Maryland, organized by the Iranian Student Association.
I knew enough to doubt Fred.
He told us the shah made it possible for him to study in America. In fact, the shah was pressuring students’ families, working to silence protests in the U.S. and Europe.
Like all autocracies, the shah’s regime tried to crush dissent before it became a threat.
SAVAK, Iran’s secret police force, arrested journalists, intellectuals, lawyers, students and political figures. It tortured and killed. Thousands were held in prisons.
Iranian students disappeared from U.S. protests, with witnesses telling police that men in suits carried them away.
By Labor Day, the summer help at Mario’s was headed back to their campuses. Change was coming fast.
A long series of protests and repression started in Iran, culminating in the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s son. Khomeini was the fundamentalist leader of Iranian exiles, and his son may have been encouraging dissidents.
President Jimmy Carter, unbelievably for such a moral man, welcomed the shah to the White House on Nov. 15, 1977. Outside, 2,000 students marched, fists raised and shouting, “death to the shah!”
Was Fred there? I don’t know. Many Maryland exchange students later said they were.
By the time I saw him again in June 1978, Fred was transformed.
This quiet young man, dressed in the white shirt and bow tie of his restaurant uniform, held up his fist and told the American college students around him, “down with the shah.”
If you asked, he would talk about what was happening.
An Iranian government newspaper article criticized the ayatollah, and Islamic religious centers in Qom closed out of outrage. Protest spread. SAVAK imprisoned thousands.
That August was the last time I saw Fred. Weeks later, the shah declared martial law. By January 1979, the U.S.-backed ruler had fled to Egypt.
Ayatollah Khomeini came home in February, and the caretaker government fell. In November, student protesters who a year earlier were protesting the shah seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and captured its staff.
The hostage crisis lasted 441 days. It cost Carter a second term, and his mission to rescue the hostages ended in the desert with eight Americans dead.
Over the five decades since, the U.S. has been fighting Khomeini and his successors in the shadows, by proxy and in direct attacks like the one Trump and Israel launched in June to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Two million died in the 1980 Iran-Iraq War. The U.S. supported Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein with money, arms and intelligence. That turned out badly for us, in the end.
Iran trained and funded Hezbollah, the militant group that bombed a Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, killing 220 Americans.
The list goes on.
Trump was obligated to make a better case for this war. He put the nation in harm’s way at a moment when trust in his divisive and chaotic leadership is evaporating.
I hope he has a plan. I hope it works.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Vietnam and Haiti suggest it won’t.
Maybe Fred went home. If so, I imagine he’s dead.
Thousands were executed immediately after Khomeini took power in 1979, and the nation’s Republican Guards have relied on brute force ever since.
Theocracies crush dissent, just as autocracies do.
In December, protests spread across Iran. After starting as a reaction to an economy destroyed by U.S. sanctions, they became something more threatening to the regime.
Human rights watchers believe 30,000 Iranians were killed in the crackdown that followed.
If Fred stayed in the U.S., he might be part of the Iranian community in Maryland. About 16,000 live here, mostly around Rockville and Baltimore.
If you’re out there, Fred, I hope you’re well.
I hope this undeclared war is short.
Peace be with you.
Salam-o-aleykom.
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