No Lysistrata in Tehran

When one hears that the wife of Ahmadinejad's chief of staff has caused controversy in Iran for speaking out, one gets a shudder of excitement imagining some great feminist act of defiance. Maybe she's demanded more rights for women, or objected to Iran funneling money to Hezbollah rather than dealing with the country's own pressing ...

When one hears that the wife of Ahmadinejad's chief of staff has caused controversy in Iran for speaking out, one gets a shudder of excitement imagining some great feminist act of defiance. Maybe she's demanded more rights for women, or objected to Iran funneling money to Hezbollah rather than dealing with the country's own pressing problems, or perhaps she's even announced a Lysistrata-style sex strike until genuine democratic reforms are introduced.

When one hears that the wife of Ahmadinejad's chief of staff has caused controversy in Iran for speaking out, one gets a shudder of excitement imagining some great feminist act of defiance. Maybe she's demanded more rights for women, or objected to Iran funneling money to Hezbollah rather than dealing with the country's own pressing problems, or perhaps she's even announced a Lysistrata-style sex strike until genuine democratic reforms are introduced.

Sadly, the excitement is misplaced. As Time reports, Fatemeh Rajabi is actually stirring things up by being more extreme than the regime. She's demanded that Khatami be defrocked—the clerical equivalent of a court-martial—for venturing into the belly of the beast. She is also the author of the hagiographic Ahmadinejad: Miracle of the Third Millennium. One dreads to think what she imagines the miracles of the first two millennia were.

I wonder what the author of the Female Brain, who argues "that girls are motivated — on a molecular and a neurological level — to ease and even prevent social conflict," makes of Ms. Rajabi?

James Forsyth is assistant editor at Foreign Policy.
Tag: Iran

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