"I'm burning, I'm burning!"—Neda Agha-Soltan, in her final words after being struck down by a bullet amid protests against the stolen Iranian elections
As President Obama indicated, the whole world is indeed watching what happens. Ms. Agha-Soltan, a largely apolitical woman, from all accounts, has become a most unlikely martyr, but that’s the way things go for revolutions.
Pray that her sacrifice will not be the start of far greater bloodshed—or that the unrest sparked by the mad mullahs will be crushed.
Pray, too, that this is not the Iranian equivalent of a political false spring, the kind that came over Czechoslovakia in 1968 or China in 1989. In each of the latter cases, it took another generation and more for that nation’s citizens to live under the yoke of tyranny. (In China, they still are.)
Regime opponents in Iran might not necessarily be as pro-Western as we imagine and certainly not as secularist, but they would be a distinct advance forward from a theocracy bent on the possession of nuclear weapons and viciously anti-women. (“The Stoning of Soroya M,” an independent film opening tomorrow in 10 major U.S. markets, details one particularly hideous example of the latter.)
As President Obama indicated, the whole world is indeed watching what happens. Ms. Agha-Soltan, a largely apolitical woman, from all accounts, has become a most unlikely martyr, but that’s the way things go for revolutions.
Pray that her sacrifice will not be the start of far greater bloodshed—or that the unrest sparked by the mad mullahs will be crushed.
Pray, too, that this is not the Iranian equivalent of a political false spring, the kind that came over Czechoslovakia in 1968 or China in 1989. In each of the latter cases, it took another generation and more for that nation’s citizens to live under the yoke of tyranny. (In China, they still are.)
Regime opponents in Iran might not necessarily be as pro-Western as we imagine and certainly not as secularist, but they would be a distinct advance forward from a theocracy bent on the possession of nuclear weapons and viciously anti-women. (“The Stoning of Soroya M,” an independent film opening tomorrow in 10 major U.S. markets, details one particularly hideous example of the latter.)
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