“My parents still live there so I know exactly how it is. I wouldn't think if Iran is bombed it would make things better for anybody–for Iran, the region or the world. We already have Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. We don't want this other, bigger country to fall apart.''
–Touraj Daryaee, a UC Irvine history professor who specializes in Iran and spent his formative years there before emigrating to the United States, who believes the alternative to the Iran nuclear deal is war.
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Daryaee, speaking with City News Service, said he had been watching TV media reports all day and was astonished at the pessimism. “It is very 'this has been a bad deal, we've been tricked, we just caved,' and that's not the case.”
He called it “a major shift in U.S. policy” and, with his “ties to both countries” he felt “really happy” to see detente in the long-contentious relationship between the U.S. and Iran. Who knows? The agreement could lead to better diplomatic relations that allows U.S. citizens to visit Iran more often and change how Americans view the country, Daryaee said.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.