It’s difficult for those of us in the United States to fully understand what’s going on in Iran. Just over a year ago, we had a major presidential candidate singing “bomb Iran” to the delight of his chuckling partisans, as if the death of Iranian civilians would actually make things better in the Middle East.

There has been almost three decades of bad blood between the U.S. and Iran. During this time, our respective governments have used each other as convenient boogie men, leading up to our current (and very dangerous) confrontation over Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Though almost half a million Iranians now live in the United States, our people don’t know each other very well.

Which makes the events of the past week all that much more surprising to Americans. We’ve been shocked and humbled at the sight of hundreds of thousands of young, disciplined, courageous Iranians marching through the streets of Tehran in protest of an obviously farcical election. Despite widespread press censorship, we’ve heard their voices and recognized our own faces in theirs.

While the present demonstrations are limited in their scope — the presidential elections were, after all, a contest of relatve conservatives — something is changing in Iran, and it’s being changed by the Iranians themselves. That’s a hopeful sign for the future, as is this campaign video. It was produced on behalf of Mehdi Karroubi, founder of the reformist Etemad-e Melli Party. He nearly defeated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 election, and has attended this week’s opposition rallies alongside Mir-Hossein Moussavi.

Good luck, Iranians: It’s your fight and your nation. But it’s our joint future.

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