“Thugocracy Iran”

“Make Iran pay, stop coddling the mullahs and crack down on their quest for nuclear weapons,” is today’s sentiment in an editorial from the New York Daily News. “The thugocracy that runs Iran has shown with brutal repression that regime change will wait another day, while proving with nuclear boasting that it doesn’t care what anyone thinks about its atomic ambitions. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have well taken the measure of both their internal opposition and global threats to their well-being. Troubled they are not. The Iranian citizens who have risen up with increasing vehemence since Ahmadinejad staged a fraudulent reelection got the worst of it Thursday, as Iran marked the 31st anniversary of its Islamic revolution. Independent gatherings were forbidden under unambiguous peril of violence. What the State Department called a ‘near total information blockade’ was clamped down, to stifle dissent. Hard-liners attacked two reform leaders. The wife of one of them was assaulted. Members of their families were jailed and beaten. And more. Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad trumpeted that Iran had just processed a batch of enriched uranium so as to become a nuclear nation. The government bused in a huge crowd to cheer the announcement. The obligatory cries of ‘Death to America’ and “Death to Israel” had more edge than usual.”