A candle burning

Roger Cohen of the New York Times wrote several columns in February and March regarding the Iranian people and what he perceived as their inherently good character. For this and other columns, he has been branded a "dupe of the ayatollahs," an apologist for Ahmadinejad, and numerous other critiques, some of them honest and fair, most vile and unfair. In March, commenting on Cohen's columns and the reaction to them, I said the following:

Whether or not one believes that Iran is a great place to be a Jew - and I think it is quite obvious to us on the outside that there are much better options - articles like Cohen's open our eyes to a broader reality. Cohen points to an opportunity to find commonality, rather than distance; to not conflate our struggles against the deep flaws of an autocratic, theistic regime with the people who have to exist within that regime, whether in the specific Jewish minority or within the Persian majority culture; to not supplant our critique of Iran's leadership, but to move toward a guarded view of a chance to transform a poisonous and dangerous relationship.

I wouldn't expect those who have been critical of Cohen to apologize now that those same voices have decided that there is a large population in Iran that is worth supporting.

At any rate, Cohen is back. There's no point in me quoting him at length here - go read what he has to say, on the ground in Tehran, in the middle of a new revolution. There's no telling if what he sees and reports speaks of a genuine decency of the Iranian people, or simply the desire to be free of tyranny. But the genie is out of the bottle now, and it is unlikely that it can ever be put back in.

It's pretty dangerous, yet remarkable and inspiring.

UPDATE: Don't take my word or Roger Cohen's word for anything. Here's Jason Jones, instead.