For Nowruz this year, let's start some new traditions.
Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh in Tehran in 2013 after being freed following three years in prison. By Jason Rezaian Jason Rezaian Global Opinions writer Email Bio Follow Global Opinions writer March 19 at 7:46 AM For thousands of years, Iranians and those influenced by Persian culture have celebrated their new year at the first moment of spring. In Washington, it will take place just before 6 p.m. on March 20. The holiday is called Nowruz, which literally means “new day.
For more than two decades, this is how most outside observers have tried to explain what’s going on in the country. But it turns out to be a pretty crude way of sorting out political alignments in a country governed by an absolutist view of religion. Viewed from a Western perspective, there is no such thing as a “moderate” in a theocratic system whose leaders are most concerned with maintaining divine law. There are no Jeffersonian Democrats there, and we should not expect one to emerge.
One doesn’t have to support either to understand that those are the opposing forces within the regime in Tehran. Forget the either-or choice here. The Islamic republic is based on a bankrupt system that has no place in the modern world: It’s a theocracy that is more unpopular than ever among its own people, in part because it derives its legitimacy from a revolution that has long exhausted its relevance as well as an exceedingly narrow view of religion that is out of step with what many now believe.
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