A Hero in Both America and Iran

["Brad Hernlem" <alihernlem@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

A Hero in Both America and Iran
Ron Howell. STAFF WRITER


12/30/2001 Newsday

QUEENS
G04
(Copyright Newsday Inc., 2001)



TWO MONTHS ago, Newsday told the story of Shahram Hashemi, a LaGuardia 
Community College student who escorted more than a dozen people to safety as 
they fled the falling towers of the World Trade Center.
Since then Hashemi has been - literally - embraced by Iranian leaders, who 
have praised him as a symbol of an emerging friendship between the United 
States and Iran.


The president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, invited Hashemi to a gathering at 
the United Nations on Nov. 10 and gave him a warm hug of appreciation for 
his actions on Sept. 11.
And on Dec. 17, Hashemi, a resident of Woodside, was a featured speaker at 
an American Iranian Council symposium of scholars and former diplomats.

"I gave a five-minute speech and then [former U.S. Secretary of State] 
Madeleine Albright, she gave me a hug and she held my hand and she mentioned 
me in her speech," Hashemi recalled.

Hashemi exited from the subway station in lower Manhattan on the morning of 
Sept. 11, on his way to his job as an accounting intern at the Bank of New 
York.

At the AIC conference, he described how he suddenly found himself "in the 
middle of chaos and death," with people "crying, frozen with fear, and 
covered with dust."

One by one, he said, he led about 15 people to safety at the nearby Bank of 
New York, and then later helped firefighters put out flames.

His supervisor at the bank has said Hashemi acted "without any regard to the 
dangers to his own life." LaGuardia Community College administrator Mohammad 
Reza Fakhari has called Hashemi an inspiration to the hundreds of Muslim 
students at the school, where Hashemi expects to graduate in the spring with 
an associate of arts degree in business. Hashemi hopes to eventually go to 
law school.

Like most other young, liberal Iranians, Hashemi hopes the the United States 
decides soon to restore diplo matic relations with Iran.

The ties were dramatically ruptured Nov. 4, 1979, when 500 anti- American 
militants in Tehran stormed the U.S. embassy, taking scores of employees and 
other Americans hostage and holding them for more than a year.

"Not just me, but 75 percent of the Iranian population was less than 10 
years old. After 22 years we have to sit and talk," Hashemi said referring 
to the United States and Iran.

Asked about the Muslim clerics who still hold a strong measure of power in 
Iran today, Hashemi said, "I prefer not to make a comment on that."

But he perked up when the topic turned to his country's president, Khatami, 
who condemned the Sept. 11 attacks in a speech before the United Nations.

Hashemi thinks Khatami will lead his country back into the fold of U.S. 
allies.

Iran is a largely Shiite Muslim country that has been at odds with the 
militant Sunni Muslims who made up the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Some say Iran deserves credit for helping to topple the Taliban. According 
to Hooshang Amirahmadi, president of the American Iranian Council, Iran has 
been on the U.S. side in the war against the Taliban.

"Iran made America know that if for any reason American soldiers or pilots 
or planes were in danger and needed space in the sky or on the ground, they 
would be welcomed" in Iran, said Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American and a 
professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University.

In the American foreign policy community, there has been a fierce ongoing 
debate about whether Iran can shed its Muslim fundamentalist past and become 
a lasting American ally.

Amirahmadi said that having people like Hashemi around can only help smooth 
the path to normalization.

"Shahram, thank God, he was in the place and did what we all wished to do: 
to rush to the scene and help with the rescue effort," Amirahmadi said.

"I think this young man represents the best of us."


Caption: Newsday Photo / Julia Gaines - Shahram Hashemi with the Newsweek 
photo of himself on Sept. 11.



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