Free Republic

International diplomacy has failed to end Iran's nuclear program, halt its support for terrorist groups, or force the regime to respect basic human rights. But a new strategy is at hand: In a four-part National Post series, presented in partnership with the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, prominent writers explain how the world can apply pressure on Iran. In today's instalment, Canadian human-rights activist Nazanin Afshin- Jam explains how Iran's persecution of its own citizens is feeding the nation's appetite for reform.

-snip- The opposition website Rooz Online carried what it said was an interview with a man the government had shipped in to Tehran to quell the demonstrations. He said he was being paid 2m rial (£122) per day to assault protesters with a heavy wooden stave, and that other volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces, were being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran. With the independent media banned from covering street protests, the reports could not be verified. There were also unconfirmed reports tonight that Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, had been...

Many Americans seem to entertain the illusion that Iranians are Arabs. This may be due to the fact that many people in both communities practise Islam, which I'll mention below. Another coincidence that may have contributed to this confusion is the apparent similarity of the names Iran and Iraq. It is true that the Persian language and the Arabic share the same alphabet, namely the Arabic alphabet, which was imposed upon the Iranians centuries ago. But originally Persian had its own alphabet. Anyway, in Arabic script the names of the countries are entirely different, 'Iraq' beginning with the letter 'ain'...

FEW Americans have heard of Howard Conklin Baskerville, but most Iranians know his name. A native of Nebraska, Baskerville graduated from the Princeton Theological Seminary and moved to Iran as a Presbyterian missionary. He was 23. The year was 1907. Baskerville was an idealist at a time of idealism in Iran. The year before Baskerville’s arrival, the ailing king of Iran, Mozaffar ud-Din Shah, had bowed to popular demands for a constitutional monarchy and Iranians had drafted the first Constitution of their 25-century-long history. A parliament, the Majlis, was established and each city elected an assembly, or Anjoman. Tabriz —...

"In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group's George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski. Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalistic Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead 'case officers' in the new CIA-led coup against the man their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier. Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British...

At Palestine Square, opposite a mosque called Al-Aqsa, is a synagogue where Jews of this ancient city gather at dawn. Over the entrance is a banner saying: “Congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution from the Jewish community of Esfahan.” The Jews of Iran remove their shoes, wind leather straps around their arms to attach phylacteries and take their places. Soon the sinuous murmur of Hebrew prayer courses through the cluttered synagogue with its lovely rugs and unhappy plants. Soleiman Sedighpoor, an antiques dealer with a store full of treasures, leads the service from a podium under a...

Ending weeks of speculation, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami announced Sunday that he will run against the hardline incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Iranian media reports. "I declare that I will stand for the next elections," Khatami told reporters on Sunday, according to Iran's state-run news agency, IRNA. Khatami, a leading reformist, had indicated for weeks that he intended to run in the June elections. Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency also reported that Khatami formally declared his candidacy on Sunday.

Early in 2007, as the American presidential campaign started to gather momentum, critics of Pres. George W. Bush’s War on Terror invented a scheme that allowed them to oppose the administration’s strategy while dodging charges of appeasement. Under that scheme, Iraq was presented as “the bad war” or, according to Sen. Barack Obama, “the wrong war, at the wrong time, and in the wrong place.” In contrast, Afghanistan was presented as “the good war,” the “just war,” or even “the necessary war.” The argument was that the war in Iraq was wrong because it had not been explicitly approved by...

Far removed from Tehran's bustling tin-roofed teashops and Isfahan's verdant pomegranate gardens, the deserts known as Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut meet at the city of Yazd,once the heart of the Persian Empire. Walking across the wind-whipped plains of the forgotten city, a young Iranian woman dressed in colorful floral garbs points out a sand-dusted tower hovering in the distance like a dormant volcano under a relentless sun. "This is where we put tens of thousands of corpses over the years," she explains with a congenial smile. The funerary tower is part of the ancient burial practice of Zoroastrianism, the...

The head of the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Office has announced that the tomb of Esther and Mordecai has been added to the country's list of national monuments. Asadollah Bayat told the Iranian news service that the ancient tomb is an important Jewish shrine and one of the most historically important buildings in the Hamedan province of Iran. The monument bears Hebrew inscriptions, both on the plaster wall of the main hall as well as on the finely worked wooden tomb boxes. Bayat stressed the monument's importance to the Jewish community, adding that "Jews gather here in the...

The ancient town of Parsa has begun to emerge from the shadows of Persepolis. An Iranian-Italian joint archaeological team has brought to light the first remains of the town of Parsa, which was the residential area of commoners just outside the palaces of Persepolis... Professor Callieri said the team, in collaboration with the Parsa-Pasargadae Research Foundation, is also studying the possibility of setting up a centralized data base compiling all the information on Persepolis and the surrounding area, which may also be put online on a web site. Asked if the excavation provided further evidence of the fact that Persepolis...

It's what you think...

The US plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years as part of a remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush. The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section - a halfway house to setting up a full embassy. The move will see US diplomats stationed in the country. ~ snip ~

A 2500 year old Persian treasure dubbed the world's 'first bill of human rights' has been branded a piece of shameless 'propaganda' by German historians. The Cyrus cylinder, which is held by the British Museum, is a legacy of Cyrus the Great - the Persian emperor famed for freeing the Jews of ancient Babylon after conquering the city in 539 BC. A copy of the cylinder, which is covered in cuneiform script supposed to detail the ancient charter of rights, also hangs next to the Security Council Chamber in the United Nations headquarters in New York, where it is held...

PERSEPOLIS, once the capital of the Persian empire, and the massive mud-brick Bam citadel are among the nine listed World Heritage Sites in Iran. Yet leading archaeologists are urging colleagues to refuse any military requests to draw up a list of Iranian sites that should be exempted from air strikes. "Such advice would provide cultural credibility and respectability to the military action," said a resolution agreed by the World Archaeological Congress in Dublin, Ireland, last week. Instead, delegates were advised to emphasise the harm that any military action would do to Iran's people and heritage.

A Monument to an American's Selflessness in Iran by Davar Iran Ardalan Weekend Edition Saturday, June 7, 2008 · Imagine finding out that a nomadic tribe has named a mountain after your grandmother. My mother and I learned just that when a relative phoned to say the storied Bakhtiari tribe had so honored my grandmother, Helen Jeffreys Bakhtiar, to commemorate her public health work there in the 1950s. It's quite a legacy for a woman born in Weiser, Idaho, at the beginning of the 20th century. Located in the central Zagros Mountains of Iran, near the ancient city of Isfahan,...

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey and Iran have been carrying out coordinated strikes on Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, a top Turkish general said Thursday in the first military confirmation of Iranian-Turkish cooperation in the fight against separatists there. Gen. Ilker Basbug, Turkey's land forces commander, said the two countries have been sharing intelligence and planned more coordinated attacks in the future against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and PEJAK, the group's Iranian wing.

Zoroastrian texts such as the Avesta clearly define the status of Persian women and reveal that at a time when many women in the world were deprived of their basic rights, Persian women enjoyed social and legal freedom and were treated with great respect. Avestan texts mention both genders asking them to share responsibility and make decisions together. They are equally praised for their good deeds rather than their gender, wealth or power. “Whoever, man or woman, does what Thou, O Ahura Mazda, knowest to be the best in Life. Whoever does right for the sake of Right; Whoever in...

Your change in approach is now stunning for many Iranians. It is not that we want our country to be bombed, but the point is, why did you so suddenly and without explanation go from that extreme to the extreme of “unconditional dialogue”? Senator, since 1979 the Mullahs of Iran have killed upwards of one million Iranians, not to mention the nearly one million sacrificed to the 8-year-long Iran/Iraq war. And what the Iranian people have withstood in terms of outrageous human rights violations is shocking; public hangings, stoning, flogging, cutting off limbs, tongues and plucking out eyeballs are an...

Zoroastrian texts such as the Avesta clearly define the status of Persian women and reveal that at a time when many women in the world were deprived of their basic rights, Persian women enjoyed social and legal freedom and were treated with great respect. Avestan texts mention both genders asking them to share responsibility and make decisions together. They are equally praised for their good deeds rather than their gender, wealth or power. “Whoever, man or woman, does what Thou, O Ahura Mazda, knowest to be the best in Life. Whoever does right for the sake of Right; Whoever in...