Tea and Death

Does David Blair really think that Iran is becoming more pro-western simply because Iranian young people are adopting western fashions, drinking Coca-Cola and ignoring the Koran?

Any visitor to Tehran is struck by how young Iranians have embraced Western – and specifically American – popular culture. This does not simply extend to fashion, films, music and the regime's famously futile attempts to ban satellite dishes. What struck me on my last visit was how the bookshops outside Tehran University sell dictionaries of American idiom and helpful guides on how to adopt an American accent.

So what, I say? Even if you approve of American culture - and I don't - it won't stop the Iranians from hating us (wether or not you even believe there is a meaningful "us" left for them to hate).

Why? Because this sort of "culture" has very little to do with anything! The worst wars ever fought have been between enemies that were culturally almost indistinguishable. For me the most startling pictures from modern histories of the Second World War aren’t the shots of death-camps and mass graves. They're the photos and bits of film footage of Hitler and his cabinet at the Berghof, dressed up in tweeds with their hair neatly parted, having afternoon tea. One can almost hear Gilbert & Sullivan playing on the gramophone. A year or so later Hitler was ordering the bombing of Britain – which, after Germany, was his favourite country. “Culture” had absolutely nothing to do with it, and trying to pretend that the current “Long War” is about culture (rather than about what every war is about – i.e. politics) is seriously to misapprehend our enemies.