I'm glued to PBS's Tehran bureau, al Jazeera and whyweprotest.net these days, waiting to see if the heady scent of jasmine-laced freedom is strong enough to bring the bloody, inhumane rule of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei crumbling down, like so many other dictatorships in the region have been lately.
For America, this would be a Gorbachev moment -- a bitter enemy transformed suddenly into a potential friend & trading partner, or at the very least, a less hateful enemy. Yet as I watch the videos and read the stories of the Green Movement's supporters being brutalized, of it's main leaders - Mousavi and Karroubi - being illegally jailed, and of a Persian diaspora hopeful, yet poorly organized, I have to wonder if the world is missing a fantastic opportunity to support the same efforts that are succeeding in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, but are failing in Iran?
I'm sorry to say I don't have any answers, just unanswered questions about why we can't find some way to support Iran's Green movement without it hindering these brave peoples' cause. I'm here in L.A., home to the largest Persian population in the world outside of Iran, yet I can't see any organized support for the weekly protests the Green Wave is mounting in the streets and on the rooftops of Tehran and across Iran. But maybe I'm missing it, as I don't speak Farsi. But I do ask that someone come up with a winning strategy that the world outside Iran can support, before Mousavi and Karroubi are executed and this unbelievable moment in history has passed.
Read More