“America, think again about Iran.” Thanks, Roger, for the kind advice.

And while “thinking again about Iran”, consider the following from the Voice of America website dated 25 January 2009 (http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/2009-01-26-voa4.cfm):

“The government of Iran recently confirmed that in December 2 men in the city of Mashhad were stoned to death on the charge of adultery. A third man was able to free himself from the pit in which he was buried and survived.

According to the “Stop Stoning Forever Campaign,” an organization devoted to ending the gruesome practice, there are at least 8 women and 2 other men who are at risk of being stoned to death in Iran. However, Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Hashemi Sharoudi recently issued an order that the stoning verdict against one woman be changed to 100 lashes.

Despite a 2002 directive issued by Mr. Shahroudi, announcing a ban on stoning, in a recent news conference Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said that Mr. Shahroudi’s directive was advisory only, and that judges in Iran could ignore it if they chose to do so. However, the Tehran criminal court recently acquitted 2 sisters who had been sentenced to stoning on the charge of adultery.

The stoning verdict had been originally approved by the Supreme Court, but once it was taken to the Judiciary Chief for approval the Judiciary Chief said the verdict was not in conformance with religious laws and was not legal.

Amnesty International issued a statement deploring the stoning executions that took place in Mashhad. It also urged Iranian authorities not to carry out the sentences of death by stoning against Iranians in other areas of the country.

“Stoning is a sickening punishment, specifically designed to maximize suffering,” said Amnesty International United Kingdom Director Kate Allen. “The Iranian authorities should abandon it immediately.” The European Union also condemned the practice.

The United States joins the international community in denouncing the inhumane practice of stoning in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a written statement issued by the Department of State, the U.S. called the practice “cruel and unusual punishment … that does not meet the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Iran has ratified. We call on Iran not only to permanently abolish the practice of stoning, but to offer all defendants fair and transparent trials.”"

Roger, I realize you probably did not witness a stoning in Iran (I am pleased that a woman smiled at you on the subway), but just to let you know: The victims of stoning are wrapped in white shrouds and pelted with stones that do not kill immediately, but sized to cause intense pain, leading to an agonizing death, sometimes observed by the victims’ children.

Think about that, America, if you are able to fathom this 21st century barbarity, while reaching out to Iran in the spirit of change.

“Roger Cohen writes in “Iran, the Jews and Germany”: “One Iranian exile, no lover of the Islamic Republic, wrote to me saying that my account of Iran’s Jews had brought “tears to my eyes” because “you are saying what many of us would like to hear.” Foolish me, I always thought that journalism was more than telling people what they “would like to hear.”

Questions: When you wrote “What Iran’s Jews Say”, with how many Iranian Jews did you speak? Who selected these Jews for you? Did you speak with them via an interpreter? (Fess up, Roger, you don’t speak Farsi.) And when you spoke with them, who was present? (I have met and spoken with many Iranian Jews who fled Iran, and their descriptions of their former life differ in the extreme from your account.)

But more important, Roger, after a month in Iran, what about closure? Your message, as I understand it: “Indulge” Iran and cut them some slack as they pursue their nuclear plans, notwithstanding Khamenei’s potentially apocalyptic intentions; after all, young Iranians like Nikes, and I’m a Jew and was treated royally there. But haven’t you forgotten something? As I see it, there’s still unfinished business, i.e. the Baha’is, Iran’s largest religious minority, whose desperate plight must not be ignored. I think you owe it as a journalist to tell their story.

Yes, I know: Tucked away in a prior op-ed is the single sentence: “Among minorities, the Baha’i — seven of whom were arrested recently on charges of spying for Israel — have suffered brutally harsh treatment.” Is that all you have to say? You didn’t happen to ask to meet with the seven? Why not? Several readers’ online comments requested additional information about the Iranian Baha’i community, but you didn’t oblige, so allow me to assist:

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution “only” 13 Jews have been executed by Iran on the grounds of spying for Israel. In comparison, more than 200 Baha’is have been cruelly butchered during the same period. Why do Jews get “preferred treatment”? Simple: Judaism and Christianity are deemed predecessors to Islam, and both Moses and Christ are legitimate prophets; however, Mohammed is for some Muslims the ultimate and final messenger, whose precepts require no elaboration and tolerate no deviation. Although Judaism and Christianity are “not fully evolved”, they nevertheless paved the way for Islam, and Jews and Christians, although inferior, can on some level be suffered. On the other hand, in the nineteenth century, more than 1,200 years after the death of Mohammed, Bahá’u’lláh, Baha’i’s founder, appeared on the scene in Persia, and the Baha’i faith, which embraces Bahá’u’lláh, as opposed to Mohammed, as God’s latest manifestation, constitutes heresy for Iran’s ayatollahs.

The result: Tens of thousands of Baha’is have been slaughtered in Iran from the time this religion emerged. The most recent murder occurred in July 1998, when Rúhullah Rawhani, a Baha’i businessman and father of four, was executed in Mashad without sentencing and without any semblance of due process.

Concerning the seven imprisoned Baha’is you so casually mentioned in your last op-ed written from Iran, a 22 February 2009 VOA editorial “reflecting the views of the United States Government” (http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/2009-02-23-voa5.cfm) states:

“More than 9 months have passed since 7 leaders of the Baha’i community in Iran were arrested and sent to prison with no access to legal counsel. Now the Iranian government has announced the 7 have been charged with espionage. The move is the latest in decades of repressive measures against the Baha’is, the largest non-Islamic religious minority group in Iran. Those measures include barring Baha’is from attending public universities or working in public agencies, destroying or closing Baha’i places of worship, bulldozing Baha’i cemeteries, legally confiscating Baha’i property, and killing Baha’is with impunity.”

I would also add that among the aspects of the Baha’i faith most rankling to Iran’s Shiite majority is its advocacy of women’s rights. For a personal harrowing account of the depths of brutal oppression experienced by an Iranian Baha’i woman, read an interview with Ms. Mehri Mavaddat (http://info.Bahai.org/article-1-8-3-15.html).

Roger, you would have us know that “Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran — its sophistication and culture — than all the inflammatory rhetoric.” I suggest you examine Iranian “civility” toward its gentle Baha’i minority before pronouncing judgment. More to the point, go back and try writing an op-ed “What Iran’s Baha’is Say”. I am confident “the consistent warmth” (your description) with which you were received in Iran by this savage theocracy will dissipate with the speed of a uranium enriching centrifuge.”

In response to a particular question, Cohen was somehow impelled to relate the nature of what crabbed and wary lives Iranian Jews are forced to lead in a totalitarian state; viz. an organized political society where the whims and fancies of a ruling class of medieval autarks, adherents of an expressly antisemitic eschatology at that, call the tune. In the course of this description Cohen begins by conceding that the lives of the Jews of Persia are “difficult.” From this he goes on to state that the Jewish population of Iran exceeds the number of Jews now living in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia etc combined; a fact from which Cohen infers that the mullahs must be encouraging a vibrant Jewish presence in the life and civic organs of the society. Then Cohen reveals what he really means by this stated deduction: So long as the Jews of Iran remain content not to cross certain “red lines” – specifically, “criticizing the Supreme Ruler” or “praising the State of Israel” (both conditions Cohen, himself, might happily live with) – their daily lives can continue to proceed and/or subsist in the common experience of subjects in a totalitarian state.

Now, all of this bit of blithe and bland insouciance from Cohen seems of a piece with his self-indulgent political fantasizing; fantasizing whereof it is presumed that totalitarian political societies, generically and as such, pose no special threats to the Jews (a premise which, at very least, requires a gross elision of entirely relevant history)and whereof it is to be presumed that the merger of authoritarian state power with the tenets of what only can be described as a dark and evil, specifically antisemitic religious-doctrinal component is of no consequence.

Giving Cohen due credit for stupidity – something which might be said to veritably ooze from his pores – it, still and withal, becomes difficult to believe that anyone – even Cohen – could align his perceptions with these kinds of fetishes. This is why, in the end, Cohen comes off as not any “useful idiot” but for an active and knowing propagandist for forces which may only be described as evil. The New York Times, if it weren’t already a disgrace in its own right, would be as ashamed of Roger Cohen as Roger Cohen is, confessedly, ashamed to be a Jew.