By Boston Herald Editorial Staff
The civilized world waits and wonders about what the dawn will bring to the growing and long-suffering political opposition in Iran. Thursday marks the 31st anniversary of the Iranian revolution - but today there are two Irans and two very different ways of marking the day.
The nation’s lunatic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has already chosen his way of “celebrating” with an announcement that Iran has resumed its production of enriched uranium in defiance of U.N. resolutions. The fuel is only 20 percent purity, the Iranians insist, not the 60 percent needed for a nuclear weapon - but who knows?
Ahmadinejad’s government has also marked the “holiday” by hanging at least two political prisoners, detaining countless others who have taken part in earlier protests and threatening to execute more.
The Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has already warned that demonstrators “who stand against the great job done by the Iranian nation in the [last] election, are not a part of the people.”
And still the protesters, many of them students, are expected to gather - in Tehran and elsewhere - risking their lives even eight months after those contested elections to call for reform, to plead for something resembling real democracy.
Meanwhile the international community dithers over “sanctions” for Iran’s nuclear activity. And as Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it, “No U.S. president has reached out more sincerely and frankly taken more political risk in an effort to try to create an opening for engagement for Iran.”
Perhaps that’s part of the problem. Rewards for bad behavior only get more bad behavior.
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The two Irans collide
2/10/2010 
