In 1976, at 27, I reached a crossroads. After years as a struggling journalist, I wanted to get married, settle down, and have kids. There was no way I could do that, however, on the little I earned writing for magazines. So, I decided to try something new: teaching English to foreigners.
The decision turned out to be fateful.
My short-lived career as an educator began with a help-wanted ad in the LA Times. It ended two weeks later when, after much screening and training, I got summarily fired without explanation following my first day on the job. What I had learned, however, made for excellent reading both then and, I hope, now.
The gist: that Rockwell International, one of America’s largest defense contractors, had hired Berlitz International School of Languages to train officers of the Iranian Imperial Military at Rockwell’s facility in Anaheim, California. The mission: teach them English as a prelude to further training, the exact nature of which was top secret.
So cloak-and-dagger Ish, in fact, that we’d been severely sworn to silence. “When you leave here,” our boss told us, “you leave the knowledge of what goes on locked behind these walls. Secrecy. Absolute and unequivocal! We’re not kidding. Don’t tell your friend, don’t tell your mother, don’t tell your wife, don’t tell your brother. Tell nobody.”
Which guaranteed, of course, that I’d write it up for the cover of the Los Angeles Free Press, one of the country’s premier alternative newsweeklies, under the headline “Shah’s Soldiers Train in Anaheim.” Along with covert photos of Iranian military officers discretely dressed in lab coats. Thus, rebooting my journalism career with newfound vigor.
What’s fascinating, though, is why the story ended up on page one. Frankly, there was only one reason: because we hated the Shah of Iran. Who we considered one of the world’s cruelest dictators. And with whom any collaboration, in our book, constituted a crime against humanity.
Which just goes to show you how much can change in five decades.
These days, I wake up each morning hoping the Shah’s son—Reza Pahlavi—has returned to reclaim his father’s throne. And, by all indications, he’s angling towards doing that–at least for a while–perhaps sometime soon.
How I got from there to here is a path shared by many of my generation. The original Shah’s reign ended three years after my story ran when radical Muslim jihadists toppled him in a bloody coup. They quickly replaced Iran’s Western-backed monarchy with a conservative clerical Islamic republic. Harsh Sharia law was imposed and strictly enforced. And in a display of dramatically re-jiggered international alliances, they attacked the US Embassy.
Thus began an age marked by Iranian-financed terrorism aimed at Israel and the rest of the world. “[Ali] Khamenei is the Hitler of our generation,” one blogger has written of Iran’s Supreme Leader. And honestly, I can’t say I disagree.
Ah, but now major changes seem to be in the offing. Seven months ago, Israel—aided by the US—effectively knocked out Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The recent demise of several supportive despots and terrorist proxies has left the country isolated. And as Iran’s economy collapsed, thousands of protestors burned its mosques and stormed its ministries.
“I will return and together we will pave the way for the nation’s happiness and prosperity through freedom,” Pahlavi, the deposed Shah’s exiled son, declared in a broadcast.
And none other than Donald Trump himself, not prone to idle threats, loudly chimed in. “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING,” he posted last week on Truth Social. “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price…HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
That help could arrive any time. Which is good news. For there is definitely new light at the end of this exceedingly long tunnel. And I’m praying that the oppressed people of Iran—as well as the rest of us—can get to it soon.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist, author, and radio broadcaster with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
