Since the massively contested presidential election of June 2009, scores of peaceful demonstrators have been arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and murdered; prominent human and women’s rights activists, reformists, and labor union leaders have been arrested and subjected to Stalinist show trials and given long and punishing prison terms; the leaders of the opposition Green Movement have been systematically harassed and intimidated; the universities have gone through yet another round of ideological purges; yet another cultural revolution to silence and suppress non-conformist ideas is well under way; an entire cadre of independent-minded journalists have been forced into the indignity of exile — and yet few of these atrocities manages to gain much attention in the conversations that these prominent American journalists have with Ahmadinejad.
