It took me many years, long after my mother and I arrived in the United States in 1985, to embrace the American Jewish community. What held me back was the profound obliviousness that American Jews had about my native Iran and its significance in Jewish history. Even as I locked fingers with fellow Jewish teenagers at a dance, one, identifying me as a non-American through my strange accent, asked where I was from. Hearing my answer, she responded in surprise: "Are there Jews in Iran?" Not so much in a tone of discovery but in suspicion about my authenticity as a real through-and-through Jew.

Nearly 20 years, thousands of articles, millions of headlines and hours of punditry later, Iran still remains obscure to the West, especially to the Jewish community, which has yet to find the right words, even the right context, in which to think and talk about Iran. In trying to understand Iran and the state of its Jewry, we keep referring to the one experience we think we understand: that of the Holocaust, and Hitler, in order to make President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad tangible for ourselves.

But Iran is hardly the pre-war Germany of the mid-1930's. The wave of ideological fervor that swept Germany into a state of frenzy can be compared to the one that overcame Iran in 1979. But that fervor had calmed by 1983, when the war with Iraq blanketed the country in perfect gloom. The spirit of popular radicalism died in Iran in 1989, when the embodiment of radicalism, Ayatollah Khomeini, was buried. If there is no revolution in Iran, despite the great number of disenchanted youths and deep anti-regime feelings among the general public, it is, in great part, because Iranians are still reeling from the radicalism they exercised in 1979. They don't want another fiery upheaval or bloody transformation. Every reporter traveling to Iran writes of the great desire of Iranians for change. But they equally want peace. As a way of protesting against their regime, they choose moderation to spite their leaders' extremism. Hitler would never have never been able to lure a nation that longed for moderation into World War II.

Hyperbolic comparisons between Iran and Germany of the 1930's do nothing but insult the memory of the Holocaust and misguide us all by their profound inaccuracy. The sooner we see Iran as a unique case, demanding a unique assessment, the better off we are. To cast Iran as just another nation in the Middle East, another Arab country with the usual contempt for Jews and desire to destroy Israel is wrong-and more. Iranians have long prided themselves on their heritage as Persians and have historically held onto their non-Arab identity, language and culture, even when it meant, for instance, taking a stance against the Ayatollah in the early 1980's, when he demanded that the nation do away with New Year's celebrations. The holiday, marking the first day of spring, is a pre-Islamic tradition.

What makes Iran critically important to the Jewish community today is not only the threat that the leadership of Iran poses to Israel, but also the hope that the Iranian public holds for a potential turning of the public opinion in favor of Israel in the region. Unlike some of their neighbors in Pakistan, Iraq or Afghanistan, Iranians no longer have any dreams of having their clergy run their country, while opposition leaders in and outside the country have repeatedly called for a referendum, with this question on the ballot: the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Republic of Iran? They are exhausted by the promises that their religious leaders made but have not kept since 1979. Disenchantment with the regime runs deep and suspicion about its propaganda high. That is why in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Iranians opposed their government's support of Hezbollah. The average person on the street told a New York Times reporter in Tehran that the Palestinian cause was not his and that the Iranian economy could use all the funds that were being directed to southern Lebanon.

Following the establishment of Israel, Iran was an ally of Israel, and Tehran's Mehrabad Airport was among the rare stops El Al made in the region. This is not to say that Iranians do not suffer from their own share of antisemitic sentiments. But only so much of that blame can fall on the shoulders of a generation that has had no access to reliable information on Jewish history. Whereas the Iranian government spends millions generating misinformation, Israel does very little to create an alternative source of information for curious Iranians whose numbers are growing by the day.

In opposing Tehran's regime, Israel must take care not to alienate the potential ally that the Iranian public can be. They are the first victims of their regime's crimes. Secular Iranians in Iran and in the Diaspora were targets of the regime's assassination operations long before the regime turned its attention to others. That the Iranian government exercises terrorism needs no United Nations body or special inspection to be proven. It is Iran's terrorist behavior within and outside of its borders, through torture and execution of dissidents, that should be the focus of the demand for change in Iran. It happens to also be an issue over which Israelis and Iranians can unite.

If Jewish leaders fail to recognize Iranians as their allies in the war against Ahmadinezhad and forget the historic magnanimity of Persians toward Jews, they will lose a great opportunity in the Middle East. After all, it was the Persian king Cyrus who provided protection to Jewish refugees after the fall of the First Temple, and his impassioned defense of them became the blueprint of the modern-day Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Just last month, on Purim, Jews read in the Book of Esther how Mordechai found a way of circumventing Haman, rather than urging his tribe to exit. There is a reason he did this. Esther's faith was entwined with the crown and the lives of all Persians. In addressing the root of Jewish suffering in her own time, she rid Persia of a corrupt politician at whose hands all Persians were suffering. In choosing the existential option, she assured the continuity of her community by including Jews in the pursuit of a greater truth and justice.

Posted on 29 March 2008 - World Jewish Digest