The risk of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, despite Israeli propaganda and the provocation of their close allies is not an immediate threat. However, the threat of a military invasion and the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities is much more imminent and could be turned into a full scale war with unpredictable consequences. In addition, the threat of a preemptive strike and the fear, insecurity and uncertainty it creates gives Iranian war mongers a good excuse to expedite their bomb making project, which was said to have been stopped in 2003 by multiple official reports.

Mansour ‘s eyes were full of tears, his whole being was full of a clamor: the clamor of generations of people in our homeland who have experienced the worst forms of discrimination within their flesh and bones, from early childhood at schools… to the last moment of death at the gallows.

After the revolution, Baha’is were among the first to experience the violence of suppression and be sent to the gallows based on imaginary and untrue accusation of spying. These executions generated almost no reaction even in the liberal classes. Prior to the selection of the Yárán, the leadership of the Baha’i Community was held by the elected members of the National Spiritual Assembly. This nine-member body was arrested in the summer of 1980 by the “Pásdárán” military squad (Guardians of the revolution) and subsequently disappeared. The Baha’i community believes that the entire group was executed.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s defense is a new chapter in the acceptance of the civil rights of the Baha’is, a right recognized by one of the highest religious authorities among Shiite centers. I don’t know whether if I had been a high ranking cleric, or if I had been the source of emulation of the Shiites, or if I had been the deputy supreme leader of the nation, I would have had the courage, the humanity and the deep conviction in human virtues and human rights which prompted Ayatollah Montazeri to defend his imprisoned opponents. I don’t know if I could have acted as nobly as he has.

To create horror and terror and to suppress any form of opposition, Qajar dictators forced followers of the newly established Babi community to walk in the streets while burning candles were inserted into holes cut in their flesh. In the history of our county, this may have been the first time that torture to this level of intensity was publicly displayed;, moreover, mobs of people were also encouraged to participate in such savage and inhumane treatment of the Babis.
The burned bodies of the Babis were then given to the incited mob to cut into pieces and to hang at the entrance gates of the cities or to throw into ditches as food for wild animals.

All the people who were taken for execution had already been sentenced to prison. But most of them had already served their terms. Many of the guys who were executed had spent time in prison in excess of seven years.
Some had been pardoned and had only a few months left to serve. There were also a few who had finished their term but remained in prison, which we called “melli-kesh,” or “nationalized victims.” One such prisoner was Jalil Sufizadeh whose term had been finished for months and still they wouldn’t release him. There were others whose faces I remember but whose names I have unfortunately forgotten.