Although it’s not getting much play in the American press, there is a major crackdown on opposition groups being carried out by the Iranian government. In fact, there have been more executions in the past few weeks in Iran than at any time in over two decades. Ahmadinejad’s government has justified this wave of repression by alleging that the country is under siege from internal and external enemies.
To bolster this claim, several American hostages have been forced to ‘confess’ on national television to plotting the downfall of the regime and, in a hilarious twist, Iranian authorities have detained four squirrels who they accused of being fitted with espionage devices (I’m not kidding.) But the latest acts of repression do have a minor upside: they indicate that the Iranian government is finally feeling the heat.