"It's the nature of the house churches that worries Iran. It's all about possible converts."

"It's a very specific and pinpoint strike by Iran."

"It’s not a matter of luxury, it’s a matter of loss of identity, loss of connections…"

"... and all the time seeing something really unusual and strange, which was the religious theocracy unfolding inside the country."

The suicide of Alireza Pahlavi, the youngest son of the Shah of Iran...

"I can only imagine [the trauma felt by] someone who had lived at a level of near adoration by those around him, and seen the grandeur with which his father was treated,” said Ms. Afkhami, who now also lives in exile in the US.

“And then to suddenly, really quite suddenly, be dislocated, separated from his parents and also when he was with them to witness his father, whom all heads of state almost universally had courted and admired and flattered, was suddenly a pariah, there was no place for him."

Is Obama waging cyberwar against Iran?

"[T]he worm appears to be a case of outright industrial sabotage or cyber warfare, created and unleashed not by rogue hackers but by a state.... [T]he time stamp on the Stuxnet virus reveals that it was created in January, 2010, meaning that if the United States is behind it, it’s Obama’s doing, not Bush’s. If so, and if the United States is behind it, then Obama is already at war with Iran."

Percentage of Americans who think the U.S. should apologize to Japan for using nuclear bombs in WWII: 20.

Percentage of Americans who think the U.S. did the decision to drop the bombs was good: 59.

***

Meanwhile, in the Middle East....

What is ... likely, then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft....

In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission.

"The answer is quite simple, it's because I'm a woman, it's because they think they can do anything to women in this country."

The woman is Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. The country, Iran.

"It's because for them adultery is worse than murder – but not all kinds of adultery: an adulterous man might not even be imprisoned but an adulterous women is the end of the world for them. It's because I'm in a country where its women do not have the right to divorce their husbands and are deprived of their basic rights."...

"When the judge handed down my sentence, I even didn't realise I'm supposed to be stoned to death because I didn't know what 'rajam' means. They asked me to sign my sentence which I did, then I went back to the prison and my cellmates told me that I was going to be stoned to death and I instantly fainted."...

"They wanted to get rid of my lawyer so that they can easily accuse me of whatever they want without having him to speak out. If it was not for his attempts, I would have been stoned to death by now."

"Despite protests from the West, her sentence will be carried out if the judiciary decides to carry it out..."

Iran relents in spite of/because of our objections.

As long as women are required to wear headscarves...

... isn't it best to restrict men's haircuts too? 

This question is designed to test the importance of the principle of equality.

"She will be buried up to her chest, deeper than a man would be..."

"... and the stones that will be hurled at her will be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately..."

Death by stoning in Iran. The crime is adultery. The evidence was a confession obtained after 99 lashes.

"Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing."

Christopher Hitchens explains his drinking habit in detail that would not be possible if he were "what the English so bluntly call a 'piss-artist.'"

The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime....

He offers some rules for drinking:

Don't drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don't drink if you have the blues: it's a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It's not true that you shouldn't drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can't properly remember last night.... Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it.

Speaking ill of women is another one of Hitchens's habits, but it might be true for some reason that it's worse for women to get drunk. I'm just thinking about sex in that regard. Women, drunk, could be raped. Drunk men lose their ability to perform. So I've heard, at least. But I don't mean to be dreary. Be cheerful, and you will fall within Hitch's drink when you are in a good mood rule.

"Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women..."

"... handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged 'immodest.'"

The leaked Gates memo: We have no plan for dealing with nuclear Iran.

If diplomacy fails...

Why was this leaked now? The memo was written in January but only today are “government officials” finally whispering about it to the Times. Normally I’d assume that it was leaked by the White House itself in yet another naive attempt to pressure allied powers about the severity of the threat, but the story’s simply too embarrassing to Obama. Presumably the leakers are insiders who are worried that, three months later, we’re still not taking the prospect of an Iranian bomb seriously enough.

"President Obama must also reaffirm that — should diplomacy fail — all options remain on the table."

The Iran sanctions bill.

"I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death."

"In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a 'wedding' ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her 'husband.' 'I regret that, even though the marriages were legal,' he said. Why the regret, if the marriages were 'legal?' 'Because,' he went on, 'I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their "wedding" night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. 'I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over' he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.'"

After the protests...

... melancholy.

"Althouse of the lily pond."

A Chip Ahoy photoshop:

No, I am not annoyed the death of Michael Jackson has overshadowed the protests in Iran because in my world the life and death of Jackson are more immediate and important than the political life of that nation of wankers who brought that despicable government upon themselves and in so doing inflicted it upon all the rest of us. I care not at all their access to technology is being denied by that same government because it was they who rejected the pace of modernization to begin with and demonized our culture in the process, a state of affairs in which they, as a whole, persist. So bite me....

To celebrate my lack of annoyance I've Photoshopped Althouse of the lily pond by way of distraction.

Are you annoyed at the way the death of Michael Jackson has overshadowed the protests in Iran?

This may help.

IN THE COMMENTS: Titus says:

I am annoyed the way Michael Jackson's death overshadowed Mark Sanford.

I want more Mark Sanford.

I want more previous video clips of Mark Sanford moralizing and passing judgment on others. I want 24 hour Mark Sanford and I want it now....

I want to hear Mark Sanford bitching about not taking stimulus money but than using tax payer money to fuck in Argentina... with someone other than his wife.

"I have added her to the list of my daughters."

Reza Pahlavi — son of the Shah — carries a picture of Neda, "The Angel of Iran."

Neda, the martyr, inspiring the revolution through YouTube.

"Like most of the information coming out of Tehran, it is impossible to verify her name, Neda, or the circumstances of her apparent death, captured close-up on a bystander's camera."

***

Here's the Twitter feed on "Neda."

Here's the iconic video of Neda's death. Apparent death.

"I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on."

Writes Roger Cohen in a vivid NYT op-ed:

I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “We want liberty!” accompanied her....

“Can’t the United Nations help us?” one woman asked me. I said I doubted that very much. “So,” she said, “we are on our own.”

"The usually loquacious Obama has remained tongue-tied during this crisis in Iran..."

"... what surely represents one of its brightest and bravest moments in a generation. His reticence suggests two things about his administration. First, the Obama White House fails to grasp the enduring importance, and appeal, of America's democratic example. They are caught up in self-serving polling data about global anti-Americanism. Stop believing in America as the 'last best hope' of democratic reformers and you stop lending them moral and political support."