Iran Round-Up

The King of Pop is dead. But the saturation coverage of it lives on. So you may have missed these pieces of commentary and opinion about the Iran election protests:

Hope and Change in Iran. Cliff May of the Foundation in Defense of Democracies (FDD) was a foreign correspondent who was posted in Teheran 30 years ago during the first elections held after the Islamic revolution. He recalls being skeptical of the idea that Khomeini would bring openness and freedom to Iran, while many of the wiser and older veteran journalists believed that the revolution would bring sweetness and light to the country. It turns out that May and others who saw the regime for what it is were right. Under Khomeini's revolution Iran saw "more people executed, imprisoned, and driven into exile than under the shah, egregious violations of human rights, sponsorship of terrorism, Holocaust denial, and genocidal threats." In response, says May, today's Iranian demonstrators "are waging a revolution for hope that has been denied and change that, it seemed, would never come." The least that Obama could do is to lend them moral support.

Iranian Women Leading the Way. Michael Ledeen, the Iran expert at FDD and author of a number of books about Iran's nuclear ambitions, notes that women are playing a lead role in the protests against the Iranian theocracy. Women pose a threat to the regime, which is why they have been subjected to verbal attacks, violence and death. Ledeen even suggests that the targeting and killing of Neda Soltan (the now-famous young woman whose murder by the regime's authorities was captured on video) was an intentional act of intimidation and misogyny by the mullahs against all Iranian women. Ledeen also reports on what he sees as "cracks in the regime" based on reports of a major confab in Qom by some senior ayatollahs unhappy with the status quo.

The Obama Effect. Columnist Caroline Glick notes that the coverage by the media of the Iran story shows the tragic consequences of a media willing to "abandon the basic responsibilities of a free press in favor of acting as propagandists for the president." Even Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, both adored by the press, faced a healthy degree of media skepticism and resistance. The media's sycophancy isn't just reflected in the positive attention it gives the president, but also in its selective reporting on important events, like the Iran crisis. This in turn denies the public the information it needs to make informed decisions about the world. Says Glick, "It is due to the media's historic role in maintaining and cultivating an informed discussion and debate about current affairs that they became known as democracy's watchdog. When media organs fail to fulfill their basic responsibilities, they degenerate quickly into democracy's undertaker. "

The End of the Beginning. Roger Cohen writing in The New York Times asserts five reason why the fundamentalist regime in Iran is weakened if not doomed. One reason is that the once lofty Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini now has been exposed as nothing more than a "ruthless infighter" to his own people and has lost whatever prophet-like aura he had maintained. Another is that the "soft" intimidation of the Iranian people by the regime will now morph into brutal repression, which will create further anger and resistance among the people. A third reason is that post-"Neda," the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad about "truth and ethics" will ring hollow in the international community. Cohen fails to mention the utter absurdity of Barack Obama's Iran engagement policy in the wake of the post-election actions of the regime.

Obama’s Iran Policy Is a Bomb. So says Jonah Goldberg at The National Review, who-- unlike Cohen-- calls Obama out on his now-defunct Iran policy. Obama apparently clings to hope that he can still talk the mullahs out of their nukes. This will not work, says Goldberg, since even the President's staunchest supporters are repulsed by the brutal nature of the ayatollahs. If the regime prevails, says Goldberg, "anyone who shakes Ahmadinejad’s hands will have a hard time washing the blood off his own."

Let Them Eat Ice Cream. In her inimitable style Ann Coulter calls Obama spineless in his failure to support the Iranian uprising. But why try to paraphrase Ann Coulter when you can read her column right here? (Best line: "you might be a scaredy-cat if...the president of France is talking tougher than you."