The Rape Of Iran's Women*

*Image courtesy of AP Images.

"The Jerusalem Post" is currently carrying an interview with a serving member of the Basij militia in Iran. And it is horrifying.

The interview itself was obtained by telephone after this married man with his own children served a period in jail for showing some humanity to two Iranian teenagers; apparently his error was in allowing them to escape imprisonment, an undeniable hell for those forced to experience such a place. And this, unfortunately, is the one encouraging point delineated throughout the course of the conversation.

The Basij militia member interviewed eventually details his so-called honor to marry virgins the night just prior to their own executions. As Iranian law under Ali Khamenei forbids the execution of virgins for whatever crime, this man would then be joined to these tortured individuals in an obviously forced ceremony, see to their drugging to ease any struggle, and then rape them--a legal right that he admits caused more anxiety and suffering in these young girls than the executions that followed.

Apparently his experience is not unusual.

Oddly enough, it needs to be said here that any regime torturing and murdering its own citizens is depraved--and such a fact should draw reasonable minds together with the aim of its overthrow. But any culture that routinely sanctions the legal rape, torture, and murder of women and children is playing with the blackest sort of sin--and that kind of tyranny deserves not only the harshest condemnation in words, but also utter annihilation by whatever violence justifiable within moral limits, either by their own freedom-seeking citizens or by a nation such as America that holds the moral and historical imperative to act.

Without a doubt, Iranians have the right to freedom. Their men have a right to dignity and the honorable pursuit of any worthwhile profession. Their women have a right to speak, to live their lives unmolested, and to be free of the fear attached to indiscriminate execution. And their children have the same rights in fully realizing their own potentials, along with a supreme right to innocence as they grow toward maturity.

President Obama knows this. He has known this long before he ascended to the Presidency. And he has no excuse to remain silent concerning the atrocities being carried out right now with such terrifying brutality in Iran. Consequently, both Democrats and Republicans should join together in condemning his appalling lack of action, his inexcusable lack of courage, and his inscrutable lack of support for Iranian freedom.

After all, there is enough complicity in these horrific crimes as it is.