Thread by @JohnGhazvinian

Did you know there’s an American cemetery in Iran? It’s one of the most forgotten and neglected repositories of US remains in the world. I had the chance to visit in 2009. A thread... @PresbyHistory

Just getting here is like a symbolic meditation on the state of US-Iran relations. It’s in a tiny village called Seir, that can only be accessed by a steep, narrow, boulder-strewn trail (not even a road). It takes a car almost an hour to go the couple of miles from Urmia

Once here, though, it’s an incredible sight. I counted around 50 graves, from the 1850s to early 1900s. Generations of Presbyterian missionaries who came here to convert the Assyrian Christians to a “better” form of Christianity

I climbed over the wall to get a better look

Joseph Cochran. Legendary American missionary in Iran. Established first western-style hospital in Iran. Story goes that his funeral in 1905 drew thousands of mourners. (Gravestone likely split by an earthquake)

The graves of children who never made it into adulthood

Rev Benjamin Labaree, killed by Kurdish bandits in 1904. His murder almost precipitated the first military conflict between the US and Iran (more on that in a future tweet)

The church that Cochran built, next to the graveyard. A small community of Protestants (the descendants of Assyrian Christians converted by Americans) still worships here

Inside the church

The church was renovated by local Protestants in 2008

The first American missionaries came to live in Iran in 1834-35. The mission was mostly wrapped up in 1935, as the Iranian government nationalised the education system. But the influence of American missionaries long outlived their work

For a full century, Americans built schools and clinics in Iran and engaged in what could be called the first large-scale US “soft power” enterprise in the Middle East. Its impact was complex and uneven, but generally helped to build up a reservoir of goodwill for the US in Iran

Perhaps most relevant today? In 1892, and again in 1904, when Tehran was suffering from a devastating cholera pandemic, American doctors saved thousands of lives, and earned the appreciation of locals

The end. Want to hear more? Check out my book, published by @AAKnopf in January (and next week in the UK by @OneworldNews) — America and Iran: A History, From 1720 to the Present
tinyurl.com/y78w4733