Defying the false narrative rehashed by the Islamic Republic that women are more vulnerable to abuse in Western states where Sharia law doesn’t exist, there is no member state of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development among the top 40 countries on the UN ranking for the prevalence of gender violence.
In all the expressions of apathy, excitement, sorrow, and shock that sum up the response by the Los Angeles Persians to the rare environmental calamity in Southern California, a key feature of the Iranian-American diasporic culture is on full display: division.
In response to the Islamic Republic's support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expelled Iranian students, introduced sanctions and categorized Iran as part of a "coalition of criminals." Despite a majority of Iranians opposing Russia's adventure, Zelenskyy's reactions eroded the pro-Ukraine sentiments of a people living under a rigid anti-West autocracy.
After the arbitrary detention of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala while reporting from Iran, journalists encouraged to visit the country after the election of the centrist President Masoud Pezeshkian may reconsider their plans. Still, it's impossible to understand a complicated story like the evolution of Iran without independent foreign correspondents.
If many overseas Iranians agree that the ayatollahs must go, why have they utterly failed to accelerate the ousting of the clerics in Tehran? The answer partly lies in their own internal divisions. For if the expats are united in loathing the Islamic Republic, they violently disagree on what should come next.
For years, the Islamic Republic radicals have kept saying that Mohammad Khatami, Iran's pro-West president, weakened the regime by giving concessions to the United States, and in return, he earned the nation a libelous place in the Axis of Evil. To rationalize their enmity with the outside world, they still invoke George W. Bush's January 29, 2002, State of the Union speech.
Removing media oversight from an ambitious authoritarian power is a recipe for disaster. To protect those journalists instituting the oversight, diplomatic leverage is required. To ensure the leverage exists, countries need to make a decision.
