Wife of jailed Canadian was also prisoner of Tehran

Antonella Mega in New York, 2010: plea for mercy never reached Iran's president. Toronto Star photo.

 

It was one of those days at the 2010 UN annual summit. Canada had just lost its bid for a Security Council seat. Numerous world leaders and foreign ministers were lining up to make their pitches to international ears. Editors were calling for copy.

But the woman on the other end of my cell phone was insistent: “my friend is desperate,” she said. “She’s in New York and has to meet you. Her husband is in jail in Iran.”

Reluctantly, I gave in. And shortly sat across a Midtown Starbucks table from a weary, 40-something woman whose face was a portrait of anguish.

It was my first meeting with Antonella Mega, a woman whose courage and steely determination I came to admire over the next three horrifically turbulent years.

Antonella was in New York to deliver a plea to Iran’s then hard line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A man more given to murderous edicts than mercy. But she was making a last ditch effort to reach the authorities who had so unaccountably thrown her Canadian-Iranian husband Hamid Ghassemi-Shall in jail in Tehran while he was visiting his widowed, ailing mother in 2008.

Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, was enjoying the “peace and tranquility” of the local Hilton across the street from the UN, protected, ironically, by well-armed, burly American security men. Antonella was no match for their brawn.

But she did not give up. Travelling back and forth to Ottawa she tirelessly bid for the  government’s attention. She pleaded for meetings with Iranian embassy officials who rebuffed her efforts to get a visa for Tehran.

 Meanwhile, Hamid was condemned to death by a kangaroo court on espionage charges and put on death row. Apparently the result of a vendetta against his brother, a retired naval officer who may have fallen afoul of someone in a position of power in the labyrinthine clerical regime.

Hope for a diplomatic solution plummeted when Canada closed its Iranian embassy, and Iran’s envoys packed up their Ottawa office. Antonella soldiered on, appealing for help to the Italians who took over Canada’s diplomatic duties in Tehran.

She appeared at rallies and Amnesty meetings to keep Hamid’s name in public view. She learned rudimentary Farsi to communicate with his relatives. She wrote letters and wore out her keyboard with messages pleading for support. It was, she admitted, “a full time job” that sapped her health and strength. The prison bars that confined Hamid cast dark shadows over her life. 

Now, exactly three years later, her heroic efforts – and those of back channel diplomacy --  have paid off. Astonishingly, Hamid is free. And in New York, a new Iranian president has made his UN debut, promising a new era in international co-operation. For Antonella, the vicious circle is broken. Against all odds, the circle is squared.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East and South Asia.

 

  

Military action in Syria: the Pinocchio effect

 President Barack Obama left for the G20 Summit after winning backing of key figures in the U.S. Congress for limited U.S. strikes on Syria.  So far American public opinion has not followed his lead. Photo: Reuters/Joshua Roberts.

British Prime Minister David Cameron climbed down from his war horse after losing a House of Commons vote on military intervention in Syria.

Meanwhile public opinion put three-quarters of Brits on the no-go side, according to a BBC poll.

Before France’s President Francois Hollande had a chance to saddle up, polls were running 59 per cent against military action.

And in the U.S., where President Barack Obama won backing from key members of Congress when he called for limited military strikes -- and hopes for a positive vote in the House and Senate -- some 59 per cent of Americans said they won’t answer the call.

 There are a variety of complicated arguments for staying out of a conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people, led to the torture, rape and detention of thousands of others and sent 2 million into exile as refugees.

But the current casus belli – the Assad regime’s apparent use of chemical weapons to paralyse and suffocate hundreds of his “enemies” including children – has been met with more cynicism than sizzling rage.

It’s the Pinocchio effect.

The more Obama protests, the longer his metaphorical nose, in the minds of a public that was force-fed too much WMD truthiness by George W. Bush.

Iraq, Bush insisted, was awash in the stuff. And no American could sleep easily in his/her bed while Saddam Hussein was plotting a sneaky nuclear, chemical or biological attack. Voices to the contrary were quickly silenced and whistleblowers throttled.

Now a broker, more battered America is backing away from WMD claims, even ones far more credible than Bush could muster. Obama’s Red Line means little to those whose lives were flat lined by the economic crash and the massive debts of two recent wars.

But American doubt and cynicism goes back much farther: to the multi-fronted war on communism, to the 1953 overthrow of Iran’s leader Mohammad Mossadegh (which eventually gave us the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Republic) to Vietnam and Laos, to the American-funded Central American death squads to the Iran-Contra scandal. And so it went.

Now Americans and other Westerners are drawing their own lines in spite of their political leaders. It’s exactly the kind of scenario that Bush’s foes warned of when he was touting the false “evidence” for the Iraq invasion. Whatever the evidence, for better or worse, weary Americans are saying they want the country's nose out of other nations' wars.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East and South Asia. She worked with director Shelley Saywell on the film Generation of Hate, on Iraq on the eve of the American invasion.

 

Has military suppression of political Islam ever worked?

A friend shouts "Allah is the greatest" during a burial service for Ammar Badie in Cairo on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2013.(AP Photo/Manu Brabo)

As the death toll in the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown nears 1,000, aside from any criticisms of human rights violations and the crushing of civil liberties, questions are being raised on a more pragmatic level: Has military suppression of political Islam ever worked?

That’s the provocative issue raised by Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, whose Informed Consent blog is one of the most widely read Internet sources for comment and insight on the Middle East.

“It doesn’t work in the long run,” Cole concludes.

He notes that Saddam Hussein in Iraq attempted to crush Shiite religous parties such as the Islamic Call (Da’wa) Party, including making membership in the party punishable by death and executing thousands. Now the prime minister is from Da’wa and he in turn is fighting a bloody resurgence of  Sunni fundamentalists. 

In Tunisia, dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali tried to crush the Renaissance (al-Nahda) Party but it surged to power in the 2011 elections.

The Baath Party in Syria tried to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood back in the 1980s – but now, a civil war in that country sees radical Islamists tightening their grip in the parts of the country.

In Iran, Cole points the despotic Shah for decades tried to repress political Islam  -- but the Ayatollah came to power in 1979 and his followers still rule.

In Turkey too despite attempts to “forcibly secularize” the country, what Cole describes as the “Islamically tinged” Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002 and has ruled ever since. 

“Algeria’s generals did in the 1990s to The Islamic Salvation Front exactly what [Egypt’s] Gen al-Sisi plans to do to the Muslim Brotherhood. 150,000 or more died, and the generals largely prevailed,” Cole says – but Islamist forces remain present, as recent terror attacks have shown.

Of course, in Egypt itself, the government banned the Muslim Brotherhood in 1948. But despite decades of jailings, repression and assassinations, “it always came back.”

“It seems to me that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that religiously based political movements are almost impossible to eradicate by force,” Cole writes. 

“So the Egyptian generals are likely trying something that can’t be done in the long term, and can only be accomplished in the short term by genocidal techniques.”

___________

Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigatuive reporter with the Star and can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @juliansher.

Iran's new era? Human rights may hold the key

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with President-elect Hassan Rohani in Tehran June 16, 2013. Picture taken June 16, 2013. Photo: Handout via Reuters

 

The good news for Iran-watchers is that they no longer have to gaze at images of ferrety former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ranting against his enemies (almost everyone.)

The bad news?

Newly-inaugurated President Hassan Rohani may not give them much good news anytime soon.

Or will he?

Executions in Iran have continued at an alarming rate according to Human Rights Watch and others who monitor the appalling body count. Since the June presidential vote that swept Rohani to power on the reform ticket (more or less), at least 71 more prisoners have been hanged.

“The Iranian regime has a clear choice to make,” said Foreign Minister John Baird. “It can either march Iran down its current path toward continued isolation and economic disparity..or it can let President Rohani change the regime’s nuclear policies, its wanton disregard for human rights and its destructive meddling in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the wider region.”

That’s a broad agenda.

But one small – but significant – step would be sending home Saeed Malekpour and Hamid Ghassemi-Shall to Canada, where Ghassemi-Shall is a citizen, and Malekpour a permanent resident.  

Both have been sentenced to death after widely-decried trials. Canadian Hossein Derakhshan is also serving a nearly 20-year sentence.

They are being held at the behest of the powerful Revolutionary Guard, with whom Rohani has sway as a former air force commander during the Iran-Iraq war.

He is also close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who gave a speech of unambiguous support at the inauguration, saying “I want everyone to help the government and president to realize people’s expectations.”  In spite of Iran’s fragmented political system, it was a sign that the bitterly divisive era of Ahmadinejad could be at a close.
 
Many in Iran hope – if not expect – things to get better under Rohani. The release of  political prisoners from Canada, and the thousands of Iranians also jailed for no crime but dissent, could only reassure them that a new era has begun.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards. 

Home truths: Canadian diplomacy gets to grips

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande at EU summit in Brussels in May. Bertrand Langlois/Getty Images

 Who says Canada isn’t a world leader in international relations?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s rating of Russia as a minus one on the G8 scale was refreshing. After all, since Moscow elbowed its way into the hallowed hallways of developed, and supposedly like-minded G7 nations in 1997, nobody had dared to say the unsayable – that it was maybe a titch premature.

As for Iran, leader-elect Hassan Rowhani hadn’t even warmed up the presidential chair before Foreign Minister John Baird was declaring him a “puppet” and the whole election thing a sham. Turns out the Ayatollah Khamenei is still in charge. And – why pussyfoot -- everyone knows it.

So much for Canada’s bland-and-boring image. A new era of exciting bare-knuckle diplomacy, Ottawa-style, is long overdue, and as fresh as a splash of whatever fills Lake Ontario these days.

Take German President Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.  A match made in the European Union but definitely not in heaven.

Merkel: Ach!  So there you are, you little socialist salamander, ready to hand out more of the taxpayer’s euros to those lazy, quiche-nibbling slackers and running the economy into the ground so decent hard-working Germans can pick up the tab…

Hollande: Enough with your arrogant Teutonic lectures. Je m’en fous. Take some time off, mon ange. Spend a weekend at a spa in Vichy. There’s a special on fiscal relaxation.

The next meeting between President Barack Obama and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai could be more down to earth and candid too.

Karzai: welcome to our country. Not your country. That place next to Pakistan, which we don’t like very much either. And when you reach the door just leave the cheque on the table.

Obama: so you can hand it out to your relatives?  I don’t think so. We’ve spent at least $1 trillion on this country and we want results.  How much more do we have to put out to get freedom and democracy around here? Cough up or we’re putting the Taliban on the payroll.

Why should the southern hemisphere preserve the niceties of old-fashioned diplomacy?  It’s no secret that South African President Jacob Zuma and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe are not best friends, in spite of old freedom-fighting ties.

Zuma: another year, another election fraud. Didn’t I tell you to get those political reforms in order before you ordered the poll? You may have had a lot of surgery, but let’s face it, you’re 89. How long do you expect to go on here?

Mugabe:  as long as the botox holds out, sweetie. And if I were you I wouldn’t go strutting around telling the neighbors what to do. You’re just another white man in a black man’s skin. And frankly, it doesn’t look so good on you. I can give you a number of someone to  fix that.

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
- Zhou Enlai.

Olivia Ward has covered conflict, politics and international diplomacy at the UN, the former Soviet Union, Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.

Canadian diplomat involved in Argo skeptical about Iran's new moderate president

A U.S. hostage is paraded by his captors in the compound of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, in November 1979. (AFP/Getty images)

In the weeks before six American diplomats were snuck out of Iran on Jan. 28, 1980, using fake Canadian passports, fake identities had to be created, documents had to be forged, and nerves needed to be calmed.

The matter of teaching the Americans how to "talk Canadian" fell to Roger Lucy, ambassador Ken Taylor's political officer in Tehran.

"We covered everything from 'eh' to 'zed," Lucy said in an interview. "We were a bit lucky because all of the Americans came from the northern U.S. and their accents weren't that different from ours, with the exception of one woman who was from Virginia.

"We basically kept going over their cover identities, where they were from, where their visas were issued, stuff like that," Lucy said.

By now, the event that inspired the Oscar-winning movie Argo are well-known.

On Nov. 4, militants in Tehran broke into the U.S. embassy and six American diplomats escaped and sought shelter with the Canadians. The U.S. rescue mission, "Operation Eagle Claw," saw the Americans create a bold cover story in which their diplomats were given new identities as Canadian filmmakers scouting for a location for a new sci-fi movie.

Until they left the country two months later, the Americans were hidden by Taylor and his Canadian colleagues.

It's worth re-reading Jim Coyle's interview with Taylor about Argo's shortcomings and it's also worth noting that Argo director Ben Affleck didn't only offend Canadians with his Hollywood treatment.

Lucy was among the Canadian diplomats who spoke Farsi in Iran at the time. He spotted a mistake on the Americans' forged visas that could have been disastrous.

The Iranian new year begins with the spring equinox, meaning that while the western world considers June the sixth month of the year, it's usually considered the third month on the Persian calendar, Lucy said.

"It could have been a big problem for them at the airport," he said.

Lucy, now 65, is retired and living in Ottawa. After retiring from his government job in 2004, Lucy spends his time traveling and writing trade books primarily on old Canadian military vehicles.

"The one I'm working on now is on the Ram tank, a Canadian designed and made tank that went from inspiration in 1941 to production in 10 months," Lucy said. "It wasn't designed as a combat tank, but was a great armed personnel carrier and munitions carrier."

It's hard to imagine that there aren't many days when Lucy isn't asked about Tehran.

"The Americans left at about 7:30 in the morning and we found out later that morning that they had made it out okay, even though their plane had been delayed a bit," Lucy said. "The Iranians called me later that morning and asked if we could have a discussion about air negotiations since they were no longer allowed to fly to the U.S.

"I said I would love to but I was leaving on holiday to Europe and asked to re-book for the next week," he said. "We destroyed our cypher machines, met with a few other western diplomats who were in the know and left Tehran at about 4 p.m. the same day."

Lucy says it wouldn't "be prudent" for him to return to Iran but he still watches political developments there closely.

"I'm guardedly skeptical about its future," he says.

While Iran's newly elected president Hasan Rowhani has pledged a more moderate approach towards the west, Lucy said he's heard that message before.

"The real power there lies with the supreme leader and the security forces with the revolutionary guard," he said. "Frankly, I'm skeptical that we'll see real change."

Lucy said he thinks most Iranians support the government's pursuit of a nuclear program, in the same way most Indians supported that country's efforts in the 1970s.

"It's worth remembering during the Iran-Iraq war that Iran suffered from attacks from weapons of mass destruction to which they could not respond," he said.

Lucy is scheduled to give a speech on his diplomatic career on Thursday night at 8 p.m. at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

 

Iran's June surprise: the moderate candidate wins

Caption: Hassan Rohani's supporters celebrate his victory in Iran's presidential election in Tehran Saturday, scoring a surprising landslide victory without a second round run-off. Reuters/Fars News/Sina Shiri 

In an unexpected first round win, cleric Hassan Rouhani is set to become Iran’s next president, a national nose-thumbing at hardliners and inflammatory departing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A stocky 65-year-old, Rouhani had a slow start among eight officially-approved runners  but moved up quickly as the reformist favourite when the likely reform candidate bowed out and two moderate former presidents gave him a public boost.

So what’s the outlook for Iran and the new president elect?

Q: How moderate is Rouhani?
A: He’s a late bloomer. He started political life as an anti-shah revolutionary, went into exile in Scotland and returned when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenini took power.

After hard time as a top commander during the Iran-Iraq war, he moved to the centre as an ally of presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. As a nuclear negotiator he forged a deal to freeze Iran’s uranium enrichment program. In the recent campaign he took a big public step away from Ahmadinejad’s confrontational policies, blamed him for sanctions and economic ruin and promised hope and change.

Q:  Did his victory put the boots to the conservatives?
A: The results say so. But it's also a win-win-win.
Although Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his conservative clique favored some losing hardliners, he also backed off in the face of major public opposition.

The reformers get a surprise goal without a perilous protest. The conservatives get a pragmatic cleric with a good track record and no real power to make radical changes.  Khamenei is counting on renewed legitimacy from a bloodless election that gives him democratic points for restraint in a skewed system he largely controls.

Q: So the reformers are happy?
A: The celebrations are on -- for now. But few trust the current politicians and many want the kind of root-and-branch reform that won’t happen without a re-set of the system – with a new constitution that upholds democracy and human rights.

Q: So nothing much will change in Iran?
A: Remains to be seen. Iran’s political landscape was fractured under Ahmadinejad, who had a notorious split with Khamenei. If Rouhani can get the establishment behind economic and social reforms beleaguered Iranians could breathe easier -- as long as Khamenei takes the disenchanted mood of the public seriously. But it also depends on lifting of the crushing international sanctions, which have flattened the once-thriving oil economy and the futures of Iranians.

Q: And the prospects for a new nuclear deal?
A: Better than zero – the outlook under Ahmedinejad. Rouhani was the West’s most liked Iranian nuclear negotiator, and he understands how to deal. But since then the Supreme Leader’s line has hardened, and he still has the final say. The election is a signal to the West that a deal could be done. Or that a smilier public face will be at the table for the next nuclear talks.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights in the former Sovier Union, Europe, South Asia and the Middle East.  Most recently she wrote a guide to Iran's election.

 

A vote for Zahra is a (protest) vote for peace and democracy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Courtesy vote4zahra.org)

 

Iranians go to the polls tomorrow to vote for a president and in a sea of grey, dour male candidates, Zahra's feisty campaign jumps out. 

Built on ideals of democracy and justice, she is not afraid to criticize the establishment, blaming them for mismanaging the economy, executing teenagers and throwing into prison anyone who disagrees.

As a mother whose son Mehdi disappeared in the Islamic republic’s prisons while protesting during the last rigged elections in 2009, her pain resonates with millions of ordinary people who tried to stand up to their government in 2009 but were punished severely. 

Unfortunately Zahra is a fictional character. She is the protagonist of an online, popular graphic novel called Zahra’s Paradise written by two American-Iranians, Amir and Khalil.

The title itself is a subtle criticism of the current situation in Iran – it refers to a large cemetery outside the capital Tehran where many opponents of the regime are buried, including Neda Agha Soltan.  

The virtual candidate's attempt at running for president is a form of protesting tomorrow's vote at a time when the violent crackdown on the 2009 post-election protests are still fresh in people's minds . 

Amnesty International said on Wednesday that in the run up to this year's elections authorities have arrested dozens of activists and journalists. Dozens of political prisoners remain in jail since 2009, the organization said. 


“The surge in recent violations underlines Iran’s continued and brazen flouting of human rights standards through its persecution of political dissidents and betrays the glaring absence of a meaningful human rights discourse in the election campaign,” said Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme in a statement.

Two former presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a political activist have been under house arrest since 2011. 

READ MORE: Olivia Ward's Iranian election guide and why the country is at a crossroads 

Zahra's anger: A postcard created by authors of the graphic novel featuring Zahra which readers can download and send to the Guardian Council in Tehran which vets presidential candidates. (Courtesy: vote4zahra.org)

 

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour 

Grim anniversary for couple separated by Iran

Antonella Mega and Hamid Ghassemi-Shall before his arrest in May 2008.  (Photo courtesy of Antonella Mega.)

This is an anniversary Antonella Mega never wanted to see.

Instead of a party, there will be an Amnesty International vigil in the Beaches on Monday. It’s to commemorate the fifth year of imprisonment for Mega’s husband Hamid Ghassemi-Shall, an Iranian-born Canadian who was seized in Tehran on May 24, 2008, while on a family visit, tried on widely-decried charges of espionage and put on death row in Evin Prison.

Ghassemi-Shall was not a political refugee, but someone who believed that his life would be better in free and prosperous Canada. He emigrated, got a job as a salesman in a fashionable shoe store and fell in love with Mega, whose background is Italian. For a few years it was the perfect Toronto success story: a multicultural couple working hard and enjoying their lives in their home in the Beaches, out fishing, entertaining friends or walking their beloved German shepherd. They were planning to adopt a child.

That all ended when Ghassemi-Shall answered a plea to fly to his sick mother’s bedside. As a devoted son and Canadian with no Iranian political baggage, he didn’t hesitate. He had made previous family trips and anticipated no problems.

But this time his reception was catastrophic. His brother, a former naval officer, was arrested and later died in suspicious circumstances in Evin Prison (the authorities insist it was from cancer). Ghassemi-Shall was detained shortly after his brother and accused of joining him in a treasonous plot against the clerical regime. A death sentence followed a sham trial in which he had no chance to defend himself.

Ottawa has protested. People from around the world have signed petitions and sent letters of support. On Monday from 6.30 to 9.30 p.m. Mega, Amnesty members and well-wishers will gather for a vigil in St. John Anglican Church on Woodbine Ave. at Kingston Rd.

They’ll hear a talk on the brutality of life in Evin by award-winning author and former prisoner Marina Nemat, and watch a video about Ghassemi-Shall’s incarceration by 14-year-old Beatrice Perusse, who was deeply moved by his story. They can also sign a giant banner urging his release, and bound for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office.

On Monday Parliament will also launch an Iranian political prisoner advocacy project in which prisoners, including Ghassemi-Shall, will be “adopted” by MPs.

Mega’s message is simple: free Hamid. And now. Five years is five too many.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to South Asia and the Middle East, winning national and international awards.

Iran's presidential poll: no women need apply

An Iranian woman casts her ballot at a polling station in the Shiite holy shrine of Massoumeh, in 2008 parliamentary elections. (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

What if Iranian women woke up one morning and found they could apply for a passport without a husband’s say-so?

Or if they could go out on the street bare-headed without risking 74 strokes of the lash?

Or if their inheritance rights spiked overnight from 50 per cent of men's to a full 100 per cent?

Or if their husbands could no longer divorce them on a whim, without warning?

The odds on that happening would be boosted if an Iranian woman won the presidency in next month’s contentious election.

But don’t bother to scan the slate for likely female candidates.

They’re banging their heads on the cast-iron ceiling of election laws constructed by the current constitution.

A total of 686 wannabees have registered to campaign against widely-resented President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who must step down shortly because of term limits. But the 30 or so female candidates bold enough to reach for the exclusively male highest circle of power were sharply reminded of their place last week by a member of Iran’s constitutional watchdog group, the Guardian Council, which keeps “undesirables” from seeking office.

Although there are nine female Iranian members of Parliament, all of them are conservative and hand-picked by the council. Reformers are not allowed in the race. But female presidential candidates are forbidden altogether: “the president must come from among the religious and political statesmen” or “rejal” in Farsi. In case of doubt, the word means “men of high achievement.”

The same holds true of the office of attorney general, who must be a “mojtahed,” or religious man qualified to issue a decree. Not much room for woman-power there.

 That shuts out all of Iran’s capable, energetic and well educated women – like Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who now lives in exile under death threats. Ebadi, a lawyer and Iran's first female judge, was an egalitarian activist who opposed the Shah, and was happy to see him leave the country in 1979. A year later she was purged from her job by the new clerical regime and demoted, absurdly, to law clerk.

“They turned back the clock 1,400 years,” she told me in an interview. And when Ebadi and her liberally-minded husband went to a notary to swear out a marriage agreement that would give her back her matrimonial rights, the official was aghast. “Why would you want to do such a thing when the law has given you all the rights?” he asked her husband.

Three decades later, women seldom dare to ask the regime why their rights are still stuck in the Dark Ages. Although the presidential poll bars women candidates, the doors of the prisons are always open.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.