A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

It's difficult to find words to describe the terrible impact of the political crackdown we are seeing take place in Iran. Most of the time, the best I can do is to link to stories like this one and let those stories speak for themselves:

Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years, with the government focusing on labor leaders, universities, the press, women's rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator and Iranian-Americans, three of whom have been in prison for more than six weeks.

The shift is occurring against the backdrop of an economy so stressed that although Iran is the world's second-largest oil exporter, it is on the verge of rationing gasoline. At the same time, the nuclear standoff with the West threatens to bring new sanctions.

The hard-line administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, analysts say, faces rising pressure for failing to deliver on promises of greater prosperity from soaring oil revenue. It has been using American support for a change in government as well as a possible military attack as a pretext to hound his opposition and its sympathizers.

Some analysts describe it as a "cultural revolution," an attempt to roll back the clock to the time of the 1979 revolution, when the newly formed Islamic Republic combined religious zeal and anti-imperialist rhetoric to try to assert itself as a regional leader.

Equally noteworthy is how little has been permitted to be discussed in the Iranian news media. Instead, attention has been strategically focused on Mr. Ahmadinejad's political enemies, like the former president, Mohammad Khatami, and the controversy over whether he violated Islamic morals by deliberately shaking hands with an unfamiliar woman after he gave a speech in Rome.

Mr. Khatami, the lost hope of Iran's reform movement, felt compelled to rebut the accusation because such a handshake is religiously suspect, but contended that the crowd seeking to congratulate him for his speech was so tumultuous that he could not distinguish between the hands of men and women. Naturally a video clip emerged, showing the cleric in his typical gregarious style bounding over to the first woman who addressed him on the orderly sidewalk, shaking her hand and chatting amicably.

The dispute over the handshake occurred during a particularly fierce round of the factional fighting that has hamstrung the country since the 1979 revolution. Far more harsh examples abound.

The country's police chief boasted that 150,000 people -- a number far larger than usual -- were detained in the annual spring sweep against any clothing considered not Islamic. More than 30 women's rights advocates were arrested in one day in March, according to Human Rights Watch, five of whom have since been sentenced to prison terms of up to four years. They were charged with endangering national security for organizing an Internet campaign to collect more than a million signatures supporting the removal of all laws that discriminate against women.

Eight student leaders at Tehran's Amir Kabir University, the site of one of the few public protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad, disappeared into Evin Prison starting in early May. Student newspapers had published articles suggesting that no humans were infallible, including the Prophet Muhammad and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The National Security Council sent a stern three-page warning to all the country's newspaper editors detailing banned topics, including the rise in gasoline prices or other economic woes like possible new international sanctions, negotiations with the United States over the future of Iraq, civil society movements and the Iranian-American arrests.

The entire campaign is "a strong message by Ahmadinejad's government, security and intelligence forces that they are in control of the domestic situation," said Hadi Ghaemi, an Iran analyst for Human Rights Watch. "But it's really a sign of weakness and insecurity."

One would hope, of course, that the regime weakens soon, but in the meantime, more people than we can possibly imagine will see their liberties--and perhaps their lives--lost if they are suspected in the slightest of having engaged in any kind of dissenting activity whatsoever.

A new meme--and one that only serves to utterly and completely distract people from the issues at hand--is to blame the United States for the new crackdown we are seeing in Iran. If only the Americans would not talk about regime change and would not offer financial and material support to the opposition, Iran's government would not have to engage in this crackdown, or so the theory goes.

Of course, this is absurd, as it does nothing whatsoever to excuse the nature of the human rights abuses the Islamic regime is responsible for. Consider the case of Haleh Esfandiari, for the moment. If she is indeed the spy that the Islamic regime accuses her of being and if the case against her is as airtight as the regime makes it out to be, why is it then that the regime does not allow her lawyer, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, to see her client? The answer is obvious: The case against Esfandiari is anything but airtight and the regime wants to stack the deck against the accused. That's is the regime's way and it would act this way even if the United States government took an attitude of benign neglect towards the regime.

I have argued in the past that the Helsinki Accords provide the best model for dealing with Iran and part of that model is insisting that the Islamic regime respect human rights and political liberties. I see no reason to back away from that model. I realize, of course, that people--some well-meaning, others not--will continue to argue that this stance and others like it would only serve to agitate the regime against political dissidents. But no matter what happens, the regime will be agitated against political dissidents. The only question remaining is whether they will be allowed the time and the space to deprive dissidents of any hope whatsoever that positive change will eventually come to Iran.