Ebadi had previously toed the official line on the Iranian nuclear program — that it is the country’s inalienable, sovereign right. “Aside from being economically justified,” she once said, “it has become a cause of national pride for an old nation with a glorious history. No Iranian government, regardless of its ideology or democratic credentials, would dare to stop” it. But now she dismisses that sentiment as agitprop.
“The claim that nuclear energy is the national pride of Iran is not true at all, and I don’t accept it. It’s the propaganda of the Ahmadinejad government,” she said. “The people of Iran have so many problems in their daily life they can’t even pay their gas bill. They don’t have time to think about stuff like that.”……
Shirin Ebadi, a prominent Iranian lawyer now exiled in Atlanta, had been an of the international sanctions. She said they had hurt the Iranian people and were a poor substitute for pressure on the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to restore democracy and freedom. But at an event Thursday at the Carnegie Endowme…
