Basij

DAMASCUS, Syria -- After last summer's disputed presidential election, Iran's government relied largely on brute force -- beatings, arrests and show t...

The Iran issue is not about nuclear capabilities, but rather, whose finger is on the trigger. And currently, that finger belongs to a Holocaust-denying, brutal regime that kills its own people.

Yet not all of the basij adhere to the ultra-conservative elements of the Islamic Republic that have caught the world's attention in the past two months. Many are actually strong supporters of the reformists

Of the many criticisms levied against the international community's efforts to promote accountability, perhaps the most pervasive critique is a rather simple one -- the lack of consistency.

In a misguided attempt to punish Iran for a range of crimes, including its state sponsorship of terrorism, the U.S. has insisted on comprehensive sanctions and deliberately worked to cut Iran off from the rest of the world.

With regard to the Obama administration's next moves towards Iran, at the very least the utmost prudence must be exercised, and unprecedented diplomacy deployed, in order to preserve the American and Western way of life.

Today the Iranian people are gagged. Today the Iranian people are counting their dead, their wounded, and the disappeared. Today Iranians' most fundamental rights are systematically and brutally violated.

Ever since the Iranian revolution stunned the world in 1979, the Arab regimes and their allies in the West have been obsessing over Iran's "exporting of the revolution."

The conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and the Occupied Territories, which Bush et al either supported or outright committed, actually strengthened the Ahmadinejad government.

Is 101 years a bit far to go back to help us understand what's happening today? Not in Iran.

It may be the case that factions of individuals within Ahmadinejad's government have been actively working to keep Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, in the dark on a number of domestic matters.