Thanks to the NY Times & the AP.
With so much happening in the world today, it is easy for us at US Democrazy to overlook a few things (like our utility bill…it’s surprisingly tough to blog without electricity).
Take Iran for example…
Remember over a month ago when thousands of Iranians filled the streets in protests over contested presidential elections? ( here’s what we wrote back then).
Well guess what? Those same protesters are still, well, PROTESTING.
Check out Karim Sadjadpour’s overview of the situation now.
In fact yesterday, protesters piled onto the streets BIG TIME.
Why “yesterday”, you might ask (unless you read the above article)? Yesterday marked a bloody anniversary. 40 days ago a number of protesters were killed in a bloody crackdown by government thugs (including Neda Agha-Soltan whose videoed death circulated the web).
These 40th day anniversary street protests were not received peacefully by the Iranian government.
All this turmoil in Iran has the US government in a tricky situation.
The US wants to engage Iran on the thorny issue of nuclear weapons. But talks between the two countries on this issue have stalled. Hillary Clinton tied this lack of conversation to Iran’s internal tensions “Iran does not have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now”.
Trita Parsi, writing for Foreign Policy, agrees with US silence saying
Pushing for talks now simply because he decided on a timetable before the elections could undermine the chances for diplomacy to succeed. Paradoxically, the best way to enhance prospects for diplomacy might actually be not to pursue diplomacy for now.
Karim concurs but also thinks that the US needs to
Condemn human rights abuses by the Iranian government. Recent history has shown that outside pressure and condemnation works, as the regime incurs no costs for its egregious human rights abuses when the world remains silent.
What going to happen next? We have to agree with Hossain Guilak, editor of Persian Heritage, that
No one predicted this uprising, and nobody can imagine what the future’s going to look like.
So keep an eye on Iran and post interesting things you find out below.
