(Image of Damascus yesterday as Government forces attempt to crush the last rebels in the capital. Nearly 50 Iranian “pilgrims” were detained not far away. Photo USAToday and AP.)

I got some updates from the Northland yesterday, part of another of the lost weekends that characterize this lost summer. It is high summer there, and festival time in all the little vacation venues on the lakes and rivers and pine trees of Up North.

Labor Day, when it comes, always has that bitter sweet melancholy of school and September on the other side, and the closing of the pools and battening down Up North’s hatches for the chill to come. So this weekend is the one for the local art-in-the-park, and the regattas, and the car swaps and sidewalk sales.

I miss it all, the zenith of the season, and the place from which the long list of closing up the cottage for the season begins. I compensated and “went for a walk” yesterday.

Might not sound like a big deal but it was the first unaided stroll since the accident in March, and all the lunacy that came after it with the gradually decreasing dependence on the appurtenances of old age: the wheelchair, crutches and cane.

It is nice to be out and about again. You can see the demographic change in the republic right here in the Buckingham neighborhood, and adjacent high-rise Arlington that spans the east-west route of the Orange Line of the Metro.

I am more than a little irritated by the new washing machines. Not the machines themselves, but the detailed instructions for how to operate them posted prominently above them. There is at least enough Spanish to equal the English, and while that might reflect the reality of the neighborhood around us, Big Pink remains a complex that is only modestly diverse.

Of course, the Guatemalan and mezzo-American nature of the neighborhood will change over time. It was Vietnamese for a while, as we absorbed the refugees from a lost war in Asia, and will doubtless change again in the opaque future.

There is a Pakistani enclave up the street, manifested visibly in the form of the kebab shops at the old Buckingham strip mall. There was never much of an Iranian presence here, though there is a significant community of Persian-Americans in Washington.

That community includes the pretender to the Peacock throne, Reza Pahlavi, who has his mansion just across the river at Potomac, MD, and his foundation in McLean. I have talked about that over the chaotic course of the last couple days, since I find it extraordinary that an almost-neighbor could half-seriously think about going home to take the throne of a regional rogue hegemon state.

Actually, the thought is so bizarre that it boggles my mind. The Vietnamese wave arrived here after the fall of Saigon, in 1975. The Iranian wave of refugees began in 1979. Like Reza Pahlavi, some were trapped here while in college or flight training. Other refugees got out as best they could- the number of Iranians who emigrated to the US shot up 74% between 1980 and 1990.

My rug guy and my clothes guy are both Persians. I do not know if they are American citizens now, or still holding out hope of returning home. Farzan is an urbane hawker of excellent tribal-patterned carpets. He told me that in Farsi his name means “wise,” I I chuckled that he is here as a wise-guy.

My clothes guy can be counted on to grant all available discounts without request. Hamid is tall and dark, a bit stork-like with a dark trimmed beard and moustache and wild black hair. His name means “praiseworthy,” and from the discounts I get, is quite accurate.

We banter a lot, though there are some topics I stay away from, including the fact that much of my detailed knowledge of their mother country is derived from determining where the critical infrastructure nodes were located in the process of the contingency targeting plans.

During this summer of enforced confinement I have had too much time to think. The political thing here, and the future in general have been big concerns. The crazy Iranians and their efforts to get the Shia bomb are right up there with the loony proxy war on the poor residents of Syria.

We have all be discussing parts of the problem, back and forth. This morning’s news is starting to unravel the puzzle of the 47 innocent Iranian pilgrims whose bus was hi-jacked yesterday. The first thing you hear is wrong, of course, but Resistance forces claimed the bus contained Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel- or maybe al Quds Force cadre on a reconnaissance mission.

Hard to tell what is true and what is not. Syria has long welcomed Iranian pilgrims visiting the ornate gold-domed shrine of Sayeda Zeinab, one of two alleged tombs of the Prophet’s granddaughter (the other is in Cairo). The place is of significance to members of the Shia confession, since Lady Zeinab is the daughter of Iman Ali, the fourth Caliph.

The narrative of the betrayal of Ali’s family by the evil Sunnis is rooted in her narrative. She was taken captive by the army of Yazid after the massacre of her brothers Hussein and Hassan at Karbala and Najaf in Persia. Thus the atmosphere at Sayyida Zeinab is not one of quiet veneration, but one of “passionate mourning with wailing, singing, crying, and chest beating.”

Late yesterday, Fars announced that Syrian forces had freed the hostages, but cited no source. There was no confirmation from the Syrians.

Fars can only be relied upon for the party line from the Mercedes Mullahs. What you hear in the American Bazaar is the voice of reaction, just as Miami’s Cubans could for generations be counted on for anti-Castro rhetoric. In fact, There are so many Iranians of influence in Southern California that some have dubbed LA “Tehrangeles.”

I got a note from my Legal Eagle on the Left Coast. He was out to dinner with some members of the Shah’s diaspora. He sent a picture of the meal on his cell phone, I could identify the kebabs, and chelo (rice served with roasted meat), and apparently they enjoyed khoresht (stew served with basmati rice) as well.

The Iranians have a wonderful culinary heritage, though I have always thought that regional cuisine is better with American ingredients. He followed up later with an account of the table talk about what was going to happen next in the complex regional dance.

I don’t put any more credence in what his Iranian associates had to say than I believe what I hear from Fars, but it is all interesting context.

The Iranians at the table felt that at some point, “the sacrifices of the people for the sake of the nuclear program will translate into pressure on the regime to make changes that ease the sacrifices. That point is approaching. Khamenei’s call for a resistance economy is an indicator that the sanctions are having a significant impact. The measures he suggested will not support a modern economy and are unsustainable for more than a few months.”

My legal Eagle is a combat veteran from the Asian wars, and is working off some angst over what he helped set up in Cambodia after the US pull-out, and I am sympathetic to his view that the military option ought to the be last stop on the spectrum of diplomacy, and well considered before action.

He said the Iranians of Tehrangeles believe that “After Bashir Assad leaves or is executed, Syria may be partitioned in to four countries or zones, consisting of Sunni, Shia, Alawite and Kurd.  This is intended to be a sign to Ayatollah Khameni that he will be the last of the Middle East dictators, and can be brought down.”

What is more, the Pahlavis of Potomac are in the mix. According to these émigrés, the secret US policy is to encourage a group lead by the Shah of Iran’s son to be a “government in exile” for Iran.

They said a survey showed 85% of the Iranian people would welcome the Shah’s son back instead of the militant ayatollahs. Reza Pahlavi, in this story, is a true populist, and the only man who can bring together a government of unity.

I wrote him back and commented that I thought that was a little far-fetched, and sounded like Don Rumsfeld’s opinion that US troops would be greeted with roses on the way to Baghdad.

He responded cheerfully that it sounded like the “Committee to Liberate Iran” from the George Clooney movie Syriana. I muttered that I thought Clooney was a better movie star than a political thinker, but the point was taken.

In sum, my pal concluded, “this discussion suggested to me that the West’s project in Syria is to oust Bashir Assad as part of an orchestrated program to tighten the vice on Iran and its militant leadership. When Assad falls, the message to Khameni is clear that he is next to experience an “Arab Spring” type uprising supported with money and weapons by the West.

There were thousands in the street of Tehran during the theft of the last election there by the Ayatollah Khameni and that wild man Ahmadinejad.

I guess we will see. This is liable to be kind of complicated. But it would certainly be a change to have an Iranian government with a graduate of USC at the helm.

Stranger things have happened in Iran, though this would be a back-to-the-future moment. It would be a relief to not have to worry about them for a while, you know?

(Defaced Great Seal of the United States at the former Embassy in Tehran, circa 2004.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com