As an Iranian-American, both sides of my split identity rejoice at a nuclear deal

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/15/iran-nuclear-deal-america-peace

Version 0 of 1.

By birthright, I would have had every reason to forsake the Islamic Republic and hope that talks to resolve the crisis over its nuclear program would fail. My family left Iran in 1979 – just after the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah – when my mother, pregnant with my sister, fled the country while several members of her huge but tight-knit family were in revolutionary prisons. I owe the Iranian government nothing, and could have easily said, Screw them.

And yet during the negotiations, I frequently thought about my maternal grandfather, Farough Farman-Farmaian, who passed away last year: he was an Iranian blue blood whose station in life helped him attain an incredible level of prosperity before the revolution (and the fortune he amassed wasn’t ill-gotten), but lost everything he had – properties, businesses – during it and fled. One of his brothers languished in Iranian prisons for more than a decade. But he cheered the successes of nuclear negotiations until his death, despite very real personal losses that a child born in 1981 could never understand.

Related: Republicans hate the Iran nuclear deal because it means we won't bomb Iran | Trevor Timm

Like my grandfather, I have spent the duration of the 20-month negotiation cheering for its successful conclusion and defending the diplomacy that went into it against conservatives here and abroad that wished to see it fail. So how is it that someone like me, exiled by the revolution that chilled relations between my homeland and my home, could so strongly support dialogue and a deal with the country that tossed his family out? The key rests in my hyphenated identity: Iranian-American. I am very much both these things.

In his early morning Tuesday remarks about the deal, President Obama said, “Put simply, no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East.” While the deal doesn’t preclude a future war and its absence didn’t guarantee one, before the negotiations, the US was undoubtably on the path to confrontation with Iran. That would have been terrible for both my countries.

I still have some family members in Iran, but not many, and though I reluctantly suffer pangs of national pride – especially for our signature dish, chelow kabob – my connection to the country isn’t particularly strong. I’ve never set hairy toe in the Islamic Republic; unlike my sister, I wasn’t even a dirty thought when my parents were last on Iranian soil together.

But as I watched as ideologues in Washington flail against the rising tide of a real alternative to war, to rage against any realistic deal, I felt like they needed to be stopped from doing to Iran what they had done to Iraq. The post-nationalist progressive in me would like to think this is just because I believe in universal values and care for all human life, but that’s a lie. Iran is important to me because I am Iranian.

Related: Iran nuclear deal: the winners and losers

But there are more reasons to support diplomacy than my Iranian roots: my Americanness calls out for peace as well. A war would have been terrible for everyone involved – for the Iranians I feel a sense of connection to, yes, but also and especially for the US, which is my home and where I plan to live the rest of my days. One of the lessons of the Iraq war (and subsequent US conflicts) is that armed conflicts are never as easy or pain-free as Washington’s Republican hawks like to tell their constituents they will be. They cost the United States more than money – though they cost plenty: the Iraq war cost some $800bn that could have been better spent on any number of things. The US also pays for its war with the blood of its own people.

No one talks seriously about invading Iran with ground troops – for now, at least. But another important lesson of Iraq (and Libya, and Yemen, and Syria, and the conflict with Isis) was that war can be difficult to predict. Who knows where a quick “surgical strike” – which would’ve likely been weeks of bombing runs – against Iranian nuclear sites would have led? Who’s to say that if, as experts universally agree they would, Iran reconstituted their nuclear program after one set of strikes, yet more strikes wouldn’t be needed? What if it came to sending in American troops?

War correspondent Nir Rosen once told me that, although he had no sympathy for their mission, he always felt empathy for the American soldiers fighting in the wars he covered. It’s hard not to see things this way: I have much more in common with US troops than with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and the thought of sending the former into harm’s way causes me to shudder. Thousands of Americans died in Iraq; to not heed the mistake of that war – namely, going into it – would be to dishonor their memories.

But with a deal inked, both sides of my (unevenly) split identity can rejoice that a 35-year cycle of hostility and recriminations has, at least for the moment, been broken. Iran and America needn’t walk further down the dangerous path they were on as recently as 2012; our past enmity needn’t define our futures. There’s hope that perhaps Iran and American, my two countries, can one day live in real peace. It’s a long way off, and there’s lot of work to be done, but the hope is there.