I’ll admit it: I had real hopes that Iran’s election would be, well, an election.<\/p>\n
I’ve always been fascinated by the Islamic republic. I grew up in the shadow of the hostage crisis.<\/p>\n
It was an event that served as a kind of preamble to the growing tensions between the Muslim world and the West.<\/p>\n
(Or maybe it was just the first time that those tensions pushed their way onto our TV screens?)<\/p>\n
After the overthrow of the Shah, the country stumbled from bad to worse.<\/p>\n
As a young man, I knew two boys in Germany — little boys — who had been smuggled out of the country to avoid fighting on the front lines against Iraq.<\/p>\n
The fundamentalism of the clerics shattered a half-century of progress for Iranian women. And the slow, toxic rise of anti-Semitism has been stomach churning.<\/p>\n
But through it all, there seemed to be a vein of real democracy in Iran, a sense that that this was a society struggling toward some kind of self-determination.<\/p>\n
This election offered a realization — or at least a much-needed affirmation — of that spirit.<\/p>\n
Purple fingers were held high in celebration; and a peaceful transition of power was apparently accomplished without the pressure of American military might. <\/p>\n
Not a bad day’s work for a country in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
But then, tragically, the hard-liners in Teheran moved to steal the election. Riot police fanned out across the country, opposition politicians were arrested.<\/p>\n