Attempting a unique experiment in military/civilian/international relationships, our class, headed up by four instructors, was composed of a student group of four Air Force airmen, two nurses from a local hospital and two young women from Iran. Those ladies are standing to the right in the photo. Obviously, I will not include their names here during the Iranian government's continuing act of oppression against its own people.
To this day the image haunts me. The Iranians, obviously attired in Western clothing, came from a country then ruled by the Shah, and at that time Iran and the USA were on friendly terms. We were also training members of the Iranian Air Force.
I realize that living under the Shah of Iran wasn't exactly paradise for his people, and opposition eventually led to his overthrow and subsequent takeover by the same lunatic Islamic cattle currently desirous of blowing Israel and everything else to hell with nukes. Dedication to one's religious beliefs, even in Crazytown, can be so troublesome.
The Iranian people generally love America and miss the profitable and normal lives they once enjoyed, and it remains so difficult to realize that it took only a decade after this picture was taken before Iran became trapped under authoritarian Islamic rule, its people murdered by the hundreds of thousands when they stood up to the crazies.
The great and powerful wizard Obama himself had an opportunity to help destroy Iran's monsters when the people took an opportunity to riot in the streets, but he instead did nothing and people were again imprisoned and died horribly.
The women pictured here are likely deceased by now, if not by internal war then perhaps by old age. But I still hold out hope that the time will come when the people of Iran can reclaim some of the wealth stolen by criminal mullahs who consistently purchase armaments for war against Israel and other neighbors, and again become the great society it was before infiltration by these low-life thugs, unfortunately now with Russia's approval. The opportunity for reform has never been closer than right now, and if the people themselves can get their brutal army to see the light (as the economy falters even more and food itself becomes prohibitively expensive) and join them in removing this government of and by terror, Iran may become great again.
