The latest news is grim indeed. According to the New York Times, everyone from student protestors, to academic faculty, to human-rights advocates, to apolitical Iranians whose clothing is deemed insufficiently Islamic, have been caught up in the government’s sweep, which has netted some 150,000 people in recent months. Particularly outrageous were photographs published this weekend of young Iranians forced to suck on chamber pots while being beaten by knife and club-wielding government goons in balaclava masks. Coming against the backdrop of a harshly imposed religious orthodoxy -- the Islamic Penal Code of Iran mandates death by stoning for adultery -- the crackdown brutally reinforces the government’s reputation for fanaticism.

Amir-Abbas Fakhravar, 32, knows the story all too well. A journalist and onetime leader of Iran’s underground student movement, the Tehran-born Fakhravar was arrested at least 19 times for his opposition to the government. In 2002, Fakhravar was sentenced to eight years in jail for the crime of “defamation” after publishing an article critical of Ayatollah Khameini. Sent to Iran’s notorious Evin prison, Fakhravar came to international attention when he became the victim of “white torture,” a form of extreme and dehumanizing isolation in which the prisoner looses all contact with the outside world and is surrounded by the color white. Released temporarily in 2005, he was finally able to flee Iran for the United States in April of 2006. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard reportedly has orders to shoot him on sight.

These scare tactics have not succeeded. Opposition newspapers for which Fakhravar wrote have now been banned by the government, but his voice has not been silenced. In an interview with FrontPage last week from his home in Washington D.C., he made no secret of his disdain for the government, stressing that the recent crackdown was entirely in keeping with its repressive character. “Whenever the regime faces pressure, internally or from the outside, it cracks down on ‘easy pray’ like college students,” Fakhravar said, speaking through a translator.

Fakhravar also took pains to emphasize that, as he saw it, the regime was radically out of touch with the national temperament. “Iranians are sick and tired of the fanatical religion that has been imposed on them by the regime,” he said. Citing statistics that 80 percent of Iran’s population is below the age of 40, Fakhravar argued that the country’s majority should not be confused with the theocratic ruling powers. “They had nothing to do with the revolution. They are modern people who grew up in a political system that is economically and politically repressed, and so they are not in line with the regime,” he said.

It is an unpropitious time to mount a defense of Iran’s political opposition. A growing media consensus holds that America’s support for Iran’s pro-democracy movement -- including the $75 million that the United States government has allocated for the cause of supporting democracy and human rights inside Iran -- is either ill-conceived, dangerous, or both. An article in this week’s New York Times Magazine, for instance, flirts with an endorsement of Iranian hardliners’ claim that American support for dissidents, rather than their suppression by the government, is the real threat to the cause of political reform in Iran. Similarly, a May article in the New York Observer alleged that U.S. backing for democracy was a conspiracy hatched by “Washington hawks,” and asserted that “most politically active opponents” of President Ahmadinejad also rejected American “political meddling.” Liberal blogs have warmed to the argument, with the popular Democratic site DailyKos.com even attempting to discredit Amir-Abbas Fakhravar as a cat’s paw of neo-conservative strategists. (Recall that Soviet dissidents were similarly denounced by communist fellow travelers in the West as “tools of Zionism” and “agents of international reaction.”) 

Such complaints might be easy to dismiss, were it not for the fact that influential parts of what Fakhravar calls the “free world” have responded to the Iranian government’s attack on civil society with the diplomatic equivalent of buckling at the knees. Last week, officials in Britain and Germany insinuated that they would be willing to reconsider their initial demand -- that Iran fully suspend its uranium enrichment efforts -- in favor of smaller concessions. At a time when many dissidents were counting on a resolute response, it was precisely the wrong move.

Fakhravar, however, is not backing down. “I strongly reject the notion that Iran needs a nuclear program,” he said. Nor did he accept the argument that Iran is enriching uranium solely for peaceful purposes. “If they want peace, then why did they hide the nuclear program for 18 years?” The bottom line, in Fakhravar’s view, is that the Iranian regime is “too incompetent” to be trusted with nuclear weapons, a point he illustrated with a reference to the defective automobiles turned out by Iran’s government-run factories. “They can’t even make safe cars, so how can they possibly handle nuclear weapons safely?” 

Above all, Fakhravar urged the West not to loose sight of what he considers the critical weapon in the showdown with Iran: the democratic opposition. “I believe the free world must help the democratic movement,” he said. “It is the only way to suffocate the regime.”