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Green Movement, Hijab and Ending the Death Penalty

Asal Akhavan

In all the months following the June 12 coup, Iran has been engulfed in a massive movement and while this real people’s movement has become known as the green movement, it is in fact a kaleidoscope of colors portraying all political and social movements in it, which under normal and stable political conditions would have probably been facing each other rather than standing next to each other.


The goal of this movement, as its leaders and spokespeople inside and outside Iran have said is the establishment of some democratic rights of the people, such as freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of parties, syndicates, and associations, freedom in elections, press freedom, and freedom of association. It is clear that these democratic rights are the minimum requirements for a civil life for all political and social groups which is why these minimum rights can constitute the basis of an effective political coalition, which may only be temporary.

The most recent movement of the Iranian people, while different from the 1979 revolution, carries with it three decades of bitter experience from that revolution. During the last three decades, the death penalty has been one of the most common words in the political literature of the country and the Islamic republic has created a new record in the number of political executions not only in the history of Iran but the whole Middle East. “Must be executed” was the one of the main slogans of the 1979 revolution, something that in time gradually began to include those that advocated it.

This is something that the Green Movement is aware of and has experienced. But how does a movement that has been created to build the future stay away from its bitter past and damage?

There is no doubt that this movement must succeed. But as we currently focus on winning, we must also be conscious and sensitive to possible future deviations and harm. The very fact that “must be executed” has been eliminated from the slogans of people is a hopeful sign but we need greater guarantees about the future ahead of us.

For example, the views of many individuals and groups in the movement regarding two important issues are still unclear: the death penalty, and forced Hijab.

One cannot use the battle against Ahmadinejad’s administration as an excuse to ignore these two and other important issues that concern fundamental human rights. It appears that the manner by which intellectual and political groups look at these two issues is a good criterion to see their practical commitment to human rights.

The groups in the Green movement, ranging from right to left, from new religious and liberal thinkers to national-religious groups and the Marxists must expressly respond to the question of their views regarding banning the death penalty. They must also specify their position regarding forced Hijab. Specifically, does the government have the right to impose and dictate what women must wear?

Those groups that dominate this movement have a larger duty to clarify their views, and specifically Messer Mousavi and Karoubi, and those who inside and outside Iran act as their spokespeople and have specific views in this regard must express their views categorically so that we can remain a bit calmer and more trustful, in view of past experience and events.
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No ones thinking of the FLOWERS


Lila's Notes
At the age of nine, Soghra Najafpour was sent by her family to work as a servant in a doctor's home in the northern city of Rasht (Iran).
Four years later she was accused of the murder of the eight-year-old son of the family. Soghra Najafpour reportedly confessed to the murder during interrogation; soon afterwards, however, she denied that she was involved. Nevertheless she was sentenced to death, as the judge did not believe her to be innocent. At the age
of 17, Soghra Najafpour was taken to be executed, but the family of the victim changed their mind at the last minute.
Confidential information of Soghra’s case reveal that once she began working as a maid for the family of the decedent, she was subjected to sexual abuse and was repeatedly raped by Amir’s father. On the day of the incident, Amir’s father had once again attacked Soghra and was raping the 13 year old when his 8 year old son, Amir, walked in and witnessed the crime. In an attempt to get rid of him, Amir’s father pushed the young boy away, and that is how young Amir hit his head to the wall, fell to the ground, and lost consciousness. Soghra’s employer then forced Soghra to dispose the boy’s body in a well because he could not bring himself to do so.
Soghra’s claims of sexual abuse were corroborated by the medical examiner, who, in his report to the court, stated that the young girl’s body bore countless signs of prolonged violent sexual abuse. Furthermore, the investigators had determined that Amir’s father was, in fact, the man who had subjected Soghra to years of sexual and mental abuse.
When the trial judge reviewed this evidence, he ordered Soghra to receive 100 lashes for having engaged in inappropriate sexual relations, but refused to find Amir’s father guilty of rape. The judge explained that Soghra was guilty of inappropriate sexual behavior because the medical records clearly indicated that she had engaged in sexual activity. However, no such evidence was available to prove that Amir’s father was the man who had had sex with the young girl.
And now, the man who sexually abused Soghra from the time she was 9 years old, the very man who is responsible for confining Soghra to the horrors of life in prison for the past 18 years, the man who forced a 13 year old child to take responsibility for a crime that he himself committed, seeks to take away whatever is left of Soghra and her life by ensuring that she is hanged to her death.

Note:
International law strictly prohibits the use of the death penalty against
people convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18. As a state party
to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the
CRC, Iran has undertaken not to execute child offenders. However, since 1990,
Iran has executed at least 24 child offenders. There are fears that at least two other executions may have taken place on 17 October 2007. At least 77 child offenders are currently on death row in Iran. This number may be even higher as according to yet unconfirmed reports at least a further 15 Afghan child offenders may be under death sentence
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Can Women Save the Republican Party?

From Atlantic Wire:
Pundits are predictably split lines on whether to love or fear Liz Cheney's new red-blooded, anti-Obama, neoconservative foreign policy group, Keep America Safe. But they agree that she is part of a vanguard of conservative women who are rising to lead the GOP. Here's why two prominent columnists from different ends of the political spectrum think women could help Republicans stage a comeback:

Women Will Lead GOP Out of the Wilderness Kathleen Parker declares at The Washington Post. "In the past few months, several conservative women have emerged as candidates and critics to challenge the notion that the GOP is the party of men. They're also putting to rest any thought that Sarah Palin is the female face of the party. The McCain campaign had the right idea; it just picked the wrong woman." Who is Parker talking about? Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Meghan McCain, and Liz Cheney, "Among the newer comers are two mega-businesswomen and two famous daughters, representing younger generations with divergent ideas," she writes. "Although these aren't the only Republican women rising, they offer a glimpse at what could become a surge of hormonal correction on the conservative side."
The Liz Cheney-Sarah Palin Apocalypse One pundits dream is another's nightmare. Republican women can champion the same failed policies as the men who came before them, Mauren Dowd writes in The New York Times, but they'll still be failed policies. She finds former Vice President Cheney's daughters particularly troubling.
Kristol joked to Politico’s Ben Smith that the venture might serve as a launching pad for Liz to run for office. (A Senate bid from Virginia, where she lives, or Wyoming, which she still calls home?)That raises the terrifying specter that some day we could see a Palin-Cheney ticket, promoted by Kristol. Sarah would bring her content-free crackle and gut instincts; Liz would bring facts and figures distorted by ideology. Pretty soon, we’re pre-emptively invading Iran and the good times are rolling all over again.
But at Commentary, Jennifer Rubin is unfazed by Dowd's taunts. The left, Rubin says, is simply afraid of strong Republican women. Why else, after all, would Dowd bring up Sarah Palin? "What if the Republicans come up with a conservative standard bearer who is smart, attractive, and dedicated to debunking Obama’s weakling foreign policy — and female?" Rubin writes. "The invocation of Palin is telling as well. She was the last (and not so coincidentally also female) Republican who unhinged the Left."
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I smile

The beautiful and brave people of Iran young and old rich and poor,
I Smile


as I feel my lonely heart parched from a sea of green I smile
I smile as I walk the mountain of apathy to create a tiny crack that I would tear open onlBy Fariba Safai


I smiley if I could only if I could with my saber of love draped in black and green, I declare myself look at me I need you and you need me too I smile

I smile at your incomprehension your fear your pity and your sympathy I smile
I smile knowing that you cannot see we are one of the same flesh and blood veins I smile
I smile when you walk with me and say that you care yet frustrated by the unknown I smile
I smile for I wish I could tell you that you will never know and we will die not knowing I smile

I smile as I think of those beautiful young blossoms that are perishing as I write in hopes of capturing their brave hearts I smile
I smile knowing they are kept in dungeons were tortured is inflicted to render the spirit dead and if that is not enough, hung like lambs from light posts dangling like majnoon by their necks
I smile through my tears for the human struggle for self-liberty and freedom from tyranny I smile
I smile for I know the color of freedom is not always red white and blue I smile.

I smile listing as the bay speaks to me in code beating against the dark gray boulders holding it back from me and me from it I smile
I smile oh how I wish I could wash away all the hurt and sorrows from sea to shining sea and dry it out on ropes made from laurel tolerant and evergreen I smile

I smile as I see words written clearly on a black board carved in red held up by an empty frame I smile
I smile as I hear the anthem of our struggles beating in my head wishing I could be there singing it with you I smile
I smile knowing those same words are sung for miles and miles across rooftops Ala O Akbar Ala O Akbar Ala O Akbar Ala O Akbar in the city of my childhood where houses were white and the smell of jasmine filled the air, now replaced by the stench of your weapons of tears I smile

I smile when you are hit by the bullets that pierce through your golden brown skin the same skin that every morning you covered with shirts made in china with American logos I smile
I smile as you fall to the ground holding my hand with your last breath you whisper
I am human
I am human
My religion is love
I am human I smile
I smile as I promise you will not die in vein I smile

I smile with the knowledge that even in death your mother can not speak your name or morn for your loss, that is the price she will have to pay I smile

I smile when I am told all the young prostitutes in Dubai are Persian I smile
I smile when I know of loved ones addicted to sheesheh wow sheesheh I smile

I smile knowing those who hide under turbans that they have dipped in blood and hatred for all that is alive, colorful, hopeful, lyrical and beautiful I smile
I smile at your agents of fear and pain as I scream
Islam means peace not war I smile

I smile of your attempt to rewrite history hundred and hundreds years past with pens that you use to stab through the hearts of mothers the same mothers that gave you birth in that pit of despair I Smile

I smile for I know this mooje of love you cannot stand in the way of for it is even bigger than you can ever comprehend or imagine I smile
I smile and scream shame on you for killing your children your mothers your father's shame on you for striking them with sticks that you sharply carved to insert suffering I smile

I smile as pain reels through my spine I smile for I know my pain is nothing in comparison with you burden
I feel pain
It feels good I smile
I smile for the generation of young whom only have the morsels left to them from your greed your ignorance and intolerance that they must bear, I smile

I smile and call you out for what you are a cheaters a liar a butchers with chains, chains that they must break with bare empty delicate virgin hands wounded and forgotten as to rip apart and bring down your Iron curtains of oppression I smile
I smile and write with fingers bound by ribbons of brotherhood of man remembering I was you 30 years past I smile
I smile for the soul that has forsaken itself I smile
I smile screaming Darius, Cyrus, Khayyam, Rumi, Hafez, Ferdosee, Farokhzad where are you to see your children are falling like butterfly's shot by the hands of their brothers I smile
I smile as their guns pluck the beautiful flowers of your Golestan Sadi, sacrificed in the name of God I smile

I smile and scream, what God who's God kills, let alone its own.
If the right to choose ones own destiny is so much to ask for then I reject your God and I still smile.

I smile for I see clearly as one can through water the day will come when the love worriers will join hands in celebration and songs will be heard from the streets were once red tulips laid and the nightingale will fly free once again. For we are the lions and the sun is behind us.
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Mourning Mothers join activists

A mother protecting her child isn’t anything unique. But in Iran, humanitarian activist mothers are now becoming global icons for human rights causes worldwide. In silent public protest, the ‘Mourning Mothers of Iran,’ known locally in Tehran as the ‘Mothers of Laleh,’ stand together each week, on Saturday evening vigils in Tehran’s Laleh Park.

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I Smile

The beautiful and brave people of Iran young and old rich and poor, I Smile
By Fariba Safai



I smile as I feel my lonely heart parched from a sea of green I smile
I smile as I walk the mountain of apathy to create a tiny crack that I would tear open only if I could only if I could with my saber of love draped in black and green, I declare myself look at me I need you and you need me too I smile

I smile at your incomprehension your fear your pity and your sympathy I smile
I smile knowing that you cannot see we are one of the same flesh and blood veins I smile
I smile when you walk with me and say that you care yet frustrated by the unknown I smile
I smile for I wish I could tell you that you will never know and we will die not knowing I smile

I smile as I think of those beautiful young blossoms that are perishing as I write in hopes of capturing their brave hearts I smile
I smile knowing they are kept in dungeons were tortured is inflicted to render the spirit dead and if that is not enough, hung like lambs from light posts dangling like majnoon by their necks
I smile through my tears for the human struggle for self-liberty and freedom from tyranny I smile
I smile for I know the color of freedom is not always red white and blue I smile.

I smile listing as the bay speaks to me in code beating against the dark gray boulders holding it back from me and me from it I smile
I smile oh how I wish I could wash away all the hurt and sorrows from sea to shining sea and dry it out on ropes made from laurel tolerant and evergreen I smile

I smile as I see words written clearly on a black board carved in red held up by an empty frame I smile
I smile as I hear the anthem of our struggles beating in my head wishing I could be there singing it with you I smile
I smile knowing those same words are sung for miles and miles across rooftops Ala O Akbar Ala O Akbar Ala O Akbar Ala O Akbar in the city of my childhood where houses were white and the smell of jasmine filled the air, now replaced by the stench of your weapons of tears I smile

I smile when you are hit by the bullets that pierce through your golden brown skin the same skin that every morning you covered with shirts made in china with American logos I smile
I smile as you fall to the ground holding my hand with your last breath you whisper
I am human
I am human
My religion is love
I am human I smile
I smile as I promise you will not die in vein I smile

I smile with the knowledge that even in death your mother can not speak your name or morn for your loss, that is the price she will have to pay I smile

I smile when I am told all the young prostitutes in Dubai are Persian I smile
I smile when I know of loved ones addicted to sheesheh wow sheesheh I smile

I smile knowing those who hide under turbans that they have dipped in blood and hatred for all that is alive, colorful, hopeful, lyrical and beautiful I smile
I smile at your agents of fear and pain as I scream
Islam means peace not war I smile

I smile of your attempt to rewrite history hundred and hundreds years past with pens that you use to stab through the hearts of mothers the same mothers that gave you birth in that pit of despair I Smile

I smile for I know this mooje of love you cannot stand in the way of for it is even bigger than you can ever comprehend or imagine I smile
I smile and scream shame on you for killing your children your mothers your father's shame on you for striking them with sticks that you sharply carved to insert suffering I smile

I smile as pain reels through my spine I smile for I know my pain is nothing in comparison with you burden
I feel pain
It feels good I smile
I smile for the generation of young whom only have the morsels left to them from your greed your ignorance and intolerance that they must bear, I smile

I smile and call you out for what you are a cheaters a liar a butchers with chains, chains that they must break with bare empty delicate virgin hands wounded and forgotten as to rip apart and bring down your Iron curtains of oppression I smile
I smile and write with fingers bound by ribbons of brotherhood of man remembering I was you 30 years past I smile
I smile for the soul that has forsaken itself I smile
I smile screaming Darius, Cyrus, Khayyam, Rumi, Hafez, Ferdosee, Farokhzad where are you to see your children are falling like butterfly's shot by the hands of their brothers I smile
I smile as their guns pluck the beautiful flowers of your Golestan Sadi, sacrificed in the name of God I smile

I smile and scream, what God who's God kills, let alone its own.
If the right to choose ones own destiny is so much to ask for then I reject your God and I still smile.

I smile for I see clearly as one can through water the day will come when the love worriers will join hands in celebration and songs will be heard from the streets were once red tulips laid and the nightingale will fly free once again. For we are the lions and the sun is behind us.
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Outing Iran: Marg Bar

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I wanted to make a few comments on the slogan of "death to Russia" from the Friday prayers:

1. "Death to ..." is not a correct translation for "Marg bar ..." although it is a literal translation, the real meaning is closer to "down with ..."; it is an expression of extreme dissatisfaction rather than the wishing of death. Remember "death to potatoes" from the campaign (as a sign of dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad's distribution of potatoes among likely voters)? My guess is that it originated with "Marg bar shah", which at the time probably was literally meant; it was a particularly powerful and defiant slogan at the time and that memory has perpetuated this line of sloganeering.

Please follow the article here


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36 Hostages started "DRY hunger Strike":defend the HR

Mullahs’ Intelligence Ministry: Mojahedin through an intermediary are indirectly in our custody

In contrast to an order by Iraqi Prosecutor General to all police stations that the 36 PMOI hostages must be freed immediately, the mullahs’ Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as the Iraqi Government’s godfather declares “The Iraqi Government plans to send documents and the cases concerning the offenses of these [36 abducted] people to the court in this country”

Read More AND A CHRONOLOGY OF THE INCIDENT:
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Universities start the academic year with angry demonstrations against Ahmadinejad.

By Iason Athanasiadis — Special to GlobalPost
Published: September 28, 2009 19:47 ET

LONDON, United Kingdom — Hundreds of students shouting anti-government slogans took to the streets of Tehran and other cities Monday in another sign that Iran's opposition is still active, despite arrests and allegations of state torture and rape.

These renewed domestic protests add to the international pressure mounting against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian leader is now coping with both internal and external pressure, as U.S. President Barack Obama joined with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to urge Iran to cease testing missiles and allow international inspections of Iran's nuclear program.

At the start of the academic year, university students clashed with police in the streets, reportedly prompting Ahmadinejad to cancel his attendance at a Tehran University inauguration ceremony and send Minister of Science Kamran Daneshjoo instead.

Daneshjoo was the head of Ahmadinejad’s electoral committee in the 2009 elections and strongly supported the incumbent president’s claim in the post-election fallout that vote-rigging did not occur.

“The regime has always been fearful of the universities since they are a source of organized uprising,” said Ali Mohseni, a student protester who fled Iran after being arrested and is currently in exile in Turkey. “In the past few days, members of (presidential candidate Mir-Hossein) Mousavi’s youth wing have been arrested because the regime saw that detaining the heads of the movement was not enough so now they’re going after the grassroots.”

Another student, who insisted on just being called Ali for fear of retribution was detained before the elections for his activism and who participated in all the summer demonstrations. His university friends were amazed to see him following the long summer break.

“They looked at me funny and said: ‘You’re alive? They didn’t kill you?’” Ali said.

“They (the government) are pressuring us excessively by blackmailing us,” he added. “They even use the girlfriends or boyfriends of the politicized ones to threaten them with public or private humiliation before their families should they not give up their activity.”

Mousavi youth activists were instrumental in organizing demonstrations, publishing allegations of election fraud and prison torture, and publicizing images of several freshly dug graves which they allege contain the bodies of those killed during the demonstrations.

University guards wearing ceremonial sashes over their uniforms stood at the university gates checking the faces of those entering and ensuring they were not wearing any green items of clothing, the color adopted by Iran’s opposition. Student activists reported that additional student Basij militiamen had been bussed in from the ideological Imam Sadegh University that is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.

Fearful that they would be targeted for intimidation, many students simply watched the demonstration or participated with faces covered. Under Ahmadinejad’s first presidency, dozens of university professors were fired and student activists expelled. Ahmadinejad — himself a university professor — introduced a star system that singled out politically-involved school students and banned them from attending class. Those who amassed the maximum three stars were banned from attending university.

“Our Supreme Leader is a killer, his state is illegitimate,” the protesters shouted inside the grounds of the university.

One university professor reached by GlobalPost in Tehran described how her morning class was cancelled by the authorities who told students there would be no classes tomorrow, either.

"It was getting rowdy as of 9 a.m. in front of the university library," the professor said. "About 150 student Basijis were swearing at Mousavi when suddenly it became really violent."

Academics are worried that a new purge of universities is on the way, following Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s denouncing in early September of the humanities and social sciences as a corrupting influence that causes students to doubt and question Islamic values.

He called for a revision of what is taught in a reminder of the Cultural Revolution in the early Eighties when the universities were closed for three years and faculties were ideologically purified by revolutionary committees.

Outside Tehran University, security forces beat up passers-by who shouted slogans in support of the students. Witnesses said that the police broke cellphones and attacked anyone filming or photographing. Several entrances to building were locked to control the flow of the demonstration and at least three students were arrested in a raid on the dormitories.

For the first time in several months, none of the plainclothes forces that played such a large role in repressing previous protests appeared.

“They cannot use the plainclothes police in broad daylight and at the heart of the university after the experience of the past three months because they know that instead of scaring most of the students they’re just making them more angry,” said Mahmood Delkhasteh, a London-based researcher. “They also know that clips of fighting can turn these demonstrations into headline news around the world.”

The conservative Jahan News downplayed the demonstrations, reporting that 150 pro-regime students faced off with “around 250” pro-Mousavi students. The pro-regime students shouted slogans such as “Death to the Velvet Dictator” and “We don’t want a Green Card” in reference to government claims that its violent confrontation with the post-election protesters was in anticipation of a Western-funded Velvet Revolution.

Pro-government media have described the protesters as Western pawns being manipulated in a bid to overthrow the Islamic Republic without seeking recourse to military action. The Mousavi supporters claim that they have not been in touch with Western pro-democracy groups and their movement is spontaneous.

The pro-Ahmadinejad Raja News reported that pro-Mousavi "militia" disrupted a ceremony by “swearing at the nation’s elected President”.

“The protests continued until the midday call to prayer when one group departed for the mosque and another to have lunch,” said the Jahan News article.

Iran’s revolutionary guard fired more missiles Monday in ongoing war games that began after Tehran’s surprise declaration of a mystery second enrichment site tunnelled inside a mountain close to the religious city of Qom. State television reported that the army had tested its medium-range Shahab-3 and Sajjil missiles which can fly up to 1,200 miles.

“The regime intentionally tries to heat up the atomic crisis in order to distract attention from the uprising,” said Delkhasteh.


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What Is Iran Afraid Of?

Forget sanctions; forget bombing. Tehran's worst fear is a human rights campaign.
By Anne Applebaum

It's an odd thing about Iran, but sometimes I could swear there are two of them. On the one hand, there is the Iran of the nuclear issue, the Iran analyzed by security experts, the Iran covered by the White House press corps. This is the Iran that made the news last week when President Barack Obama revealed the existence of yet another hidden Iranian nuclear reactor, the Iran that will be judged by the U.N. Security Council this Thursday.

At the same time, there is another Iran—a completely different country, as it were. This is the Iran of the democracy movement, the Iran analyzed by human rights activists, the Iran covered by the sort of journalist who takes covert photographs with a cell phone. This is the Iran that made the news last week when protesters turned a government-controlled anti-Israel march into a spontaneous anti-government demonstration.

he people who care about this second Iran are rarely much interested in the first one—and vice versa. The two groups sometimes seem almost antagonistic. When demonstrations exploded across Iran after the June 12 elections, for example, there were many well-meaning people who urged the U.S. president to distance himself from both the riots and the rioters, at least partly on the grounds that any involvement might affect his ability to deal with the nuclear issue. Indeed, that choice seemed to suit President Obama, a highly rational man who clearly dislikes fuss, mess, and emotional upheaval. At that time, the White House made a choice: It would deal with the Iran described by security experts and leave the other Iran to sort itself out. Iranian human rights issues, Iranian democracy—these were domestic matters, the president's men concluded. And they repeated their offer to meet Iran's leaders.

Nothing came of that offer, of course, because Iran is not two countries. It is one country. And the people who make decisions about Iran's nuclear program are the same people who order the arrest, torture, and murder of dissidents. Indeed, one can learn quite a lot about how these Iranian decision-makers will behave abroad by observing their behavior at home. For example, it is unlikely that a regime that publicly and repeatedly describes its opponents as American stooges and British spies is going to change its tune and cooperate with America or Britain. At the same time, a regime under immense political pressure that is losing its legitimacy is not in a good position to break any new diplomatic ground and is therefore unlikely to end its nuclear program any time soon.

If that sounds bleak, it doesn't have to. For the observation that Iran is one country also suggests that the West has some foreign-policy tools in Iran that it has not yet seriously tried to use. Many, many security experts over the last several days have again pointed out that we don't have many good options once we officially declare that Iran plans to build a nuclear bomb. There are sanctions, which probably won't work; there are bombing raids, which might not hit all of Iran's nuclear facilities, given how many appear to be secretly hidden inside mountains; and there is war, which would be a catastrophe.

Very few security experts point out that there is another option. What do Iran's rulers truly fear, after all? I'll wager it's not sanctions, and it might not be a bombing raid. An economic boycott can be circumvented, after all, with the help of Venezuela or maybe the Russian mafia, and an attack on Iranian soil might help the regime once again consolidate power. By contrast, a sustained and well-funded human rights campaign must be a truly terrifying prospect.



What if we therefore told the Iranian regime that its insistence on pursuing nuclear weapons leaves us with no choice other than to increase funding for dissident exile groups, to smuggle money into the country, to bombard the airwaves with anti-regime television programming, and above all to publicize widely the myriad crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran? What if President Obama held up a photograph of Neda, the young girl murdered by Iranian authorities, at his next press conference? What if he did that at every press conference? I bet that would unnerve President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and even the supreme leader far more than the loss of some German machine tool imports or Dutch tomatoes.

I do realize that many will roll their eyes at these suggestions and argue, as the Obama administration did this summer, that an aggressive focus on Iran's mass human rights violations would allow the regime to cry "foreign meddling" and attack its opponents as foreign spies. But so what? They do that already. Given the potential for disaster that lurks behind almost every other policy option, we certainly have nothing to lose by trying.
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