To be fair, I actually gave the President credit in this March 26th opinion piece entitled “Is President Obama Turning The Tables on Iran?” See, it occurred to me that the President might be undertaking a very brilliant strategy toward the Islamic Republic. If the President offers the Iranian regime nothing but carrots and gets nothing but sticks in return, then the regime is exposed as the hard case it really is. Nobody could say the President hadn’t tried every means at his disposal to make peace.

The BusHitler isn’t around for the regime to hide behind anymore. Just the opposite, in fact. President Obama has gone out of his way to accommodate the regime in Tehran, and it is unacceptable for the Iranian government to only respond with continued contempt and hostility toward America and the Obama White House. They then become exposed for all the world to see what they really are: a hard-line extremist dictatorship with absolutely no interest in diplomacy.

Yet if exposing the regime were the President’s goal, it has long been achieved. In the case of Roxana Saberi, the regime promised to release her ’soon’ on March 6th, a day after Secretary of State Clinton’s demand for her release. But instead of a timely let-go as promised, the regime not only continued to hold Roxana in Evin prison in defiance of international law and simple human decency, the charges against her escalated from buying a bottle of wine to reporting without press credentials to trumped-up charges of espionage, for which Roxana was sentenced to eight years in Evin prison in a fifteen-minute lawyer-free religious tribunal kangaroo court.

I’m sure many liberals and lefties consider the Iranian regime’s release of Roxana Saberi as a magnanimous humanitarian gesture and a hopeful sign, an opinion the President himself expressed. Yet there was nothing humanitarian at all about Roxana’s months-long unlawful detention in Evin. I remember the psychological deterioration. The hunger strike. Fears for Roxana’s safety, health, and well-being. The torment of Roxana’s parents throughout the ordeal, never mind for Roxana herself. The worldwide condemnation and outrage.

If Iran has been magnanimous here, it is only in the way an armed robber in Boston was once merciful to me as a teenager, taking everything I owned at gunpoint, but leaving me a dollar so I could catch a train back home to Cambridge instead of having to walk ten miles. And don’t think the regime released Roxana because they’re nice guys. The heat on the regime to release Roxana was nuclear. If there’s one thing dictatorships despise, it’s bad PR. Ruins their image.

For fascist dictatorships like Iran’s, as with Hollywood celebrities, Image Is All.

But Roxana was not the only glaring example of the Islamist Iranian government’s hostility and intransigence. After President Obama personally approved visas for the nine members of AMPAS and their historic cultural and diplomatic mission to Iran, Team Oscar was met fresh off the tarmac with heated and unreasonable demands for apologies and submission, even with complaints that thirty films currently in production in Tinseltown did not meet Mad Mullah standards.

Civilized nations don’t act like this. Olive Branch #1 slapped out of the President’s hand.

On March 20th, even as Roxana was still being held in Evin despite SOS Clinton’s demand for her release two weeks earlier, President Obama sent a video message of peace to the Iranian people. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, perhaps the most powerful official in Iran, responded to that diplomatic outreach by throwing Death To America rallies to remind the Iranian people that the Great Satan was just Under New Management.

Meet the new bosses. Same as the old. Olive Branch #2 slapped out of the President’s hand.

And on the day North Korea set off its second nuke, President Ahmadinejad reiterated that the West would receive absolutely no cooperation whatsoever regarding their shady nuke program. The President has since stated that Iran has a right to nuclear power, yet that is not the question here. Every nation should have the right to nuclear power. Even Japan, which has a ‘no nukes’ clause written into their Constitution, is currently operating 55 nuclear reactors for their energy needs.

Yet Japan does not find it necessary to place anti-aircraft missile batteries at their nuclear facilities, as Iran has at their nuclear site at Natanz and elsewhere. Nor has Japan, or any other nation, been caught with its pants down trying to use the New York banking system to finance the smuggling of bootleg nuclear components that have no peaceful purpose whatsoever.

The President has given Iran until the end of the year to comply with international demands to open their shady nuclear program up to inspection. Yet famed Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau testified to Congress on May 19th that Iran may be within six months of getting a nuke. At that point, the horse is out of the barn.

This takes us to yet another common talking point among liberals and lefties. If the United States and Israel can have nukes, why not Iran? The answer to me is very simple. When it comes to nuclear weapons, Sanity Matters. North Korea would sell nuclear and other WMD technologies to the highest bidder, and if Al Qaeda wins the auction, ka-ching! And Iran’s extremist leaders have sworn up and down that Israel is radioactive history just as soon as they get theirs.

Funny thing about libs, lefties, and Iranian nukes. If a radical Christian nation were racing to build illegal nukes, while at the same time promising nuclear Armageddon on a Muslim neighbor, they’d all be excreting bricks. But even all this is only scratching the surface of the horrors of the Islamist regime in Tehran. At home, they stone and hang women and young girls, murder bloggers, execute minors, hold mass hangings (as recently as May 15th), and hunt down and exterminate LGBTs.

Outside their borders, they fund and arm their terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah to the teeth, and supply heavy weaponry to both Shiite extremist militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iranian EFPs alone have killed hundreds of American and British soldiers in Iraq. Yet even despite this evidence of Iranian complicity in the spilling of yet another ocean of American blood, the Obama Administration invites Iran to the Afghanistan Conference in The Hague to discuss security with the regime that is backing all the killing, and undermining every allied effort to stabilize the region.

As a bonus, Iran has now successfully exported their own anti-gay pogrom to Iraq, much as Hitler exported his to Poland. Am I the only one seeing all this? Again, what’s the script? How many times do you have to be beaten and bloodied to realize that the storyline to date just ain’t working?

For those who think the upcoming elections in Iran could bring a new era of peace and democracy to that troubled nation, should a wave of so-called ‘moderates’ win hands-down, you don’t know Iranian politics. Moderates are routinely disqualified from the election process by Supreme Leader Khamenei and his Guardian Council of Mad Mullahs. Party Members in Good Standing only.

Example. Conservative reform candidate Mohsen Rezaei, now running against Ahmadinejad, is wanted by Interpol for his involvement as an Iranian ‘diplomat’ in the worst terror attacks in Argentina’s history. That warrant was issued on May 22nd. That’s the reform candidate? And regardless of any election outcome, the theocrats rule supreme in Iran, and can overturn any government decision or ruling by the Majlis, Iran’s Parliament, if deemed ‘un-Islamic’ by the Mullahs.

No separation of church and state in Islamist Iran. The church, in fact, IS the state.

No Hope for Change on that score anytime soon. Yet despite all the hostility, all the belligerence, all the horrific human rights violations, all the arming and funding of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and our mortal enemies in Iraq, which is impeding our desire to detach ourselves from that mess, as in Mosul, where Iranian-funded militias are causing all sorts of bloody mischief, the President continues to consider Iran a worthy diplomatic partner. Based on what evidence, I ask you?

And now, he invites them to Fourth of July parties. What does he hope to accomplish with that? Reciprocal invitations of American diplomats to Death To America rallies in Tehran? Hell, the regime’s idea of the Fourth of July is lighting up the night sky with burning American flags and setting off fireworks on the US!

I really just don’t get this story at all, people. The Obama Plan For Iran seems to me a not well thought-out, incredibly naive, and ill-advised production that appears to be headed for a very tragic ending. Though no one in their right minds would advocate war with Iran, the President’s rose-colored glasses approach is leading us straight down that path. You don’t stop crime by taking all the policemen off the streets. You only invite chaos.

By acquiescing to Iran’s demand for ‘peaceful’ nuclear power, despite all the evidence to contrary, the President has practically assured war by leaving Israel no other choice but to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities out of pure self-preservation. Let’s face it, if Mexico were a fascist Islamist regime arming hostile neighbors who attacked us at every opportunity, was working on a shady nuke program, and was threatening our nuclear annihilation on a regular basis, what would YOU do?

President Obama now finds himself in the same position British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain found himself in at Munich in 1938, given all the glaring evidence. He can choose dishonor or war. If he continues to choose the former, he will get the latter. The Iranian regime to date has hit us with enough sticks to tell us in very clear terms that the carrots just ain’t working. Just like Chamberlain got pummeled. More pressure on the regime, not less, is what is called for here.

Hollywood Diplomacy isn’t working. Never has. Given the circumstances, I would even go so far as to demand the regime open up its nuclear facilities to international inspection and put an end to this impending threat of Iranian nukes once and for all, or cut off all their processed gasoline imports. See how fast nationwide gas rioting gets them moving in the right direction.

There are alternatives to war, like squeezing the regime until they cry uncle. But with each passing day, those alternatives grow fewer. You can practically smell the anxiety wafting over from Israel, and newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never been one to sit by with his thumb up his ass as an existential threat grows on Israel’s horizon.

The history is clear. When the Osirak reactor posed a mortal threat to Israel in 1981, Israeli jets took it out (ironically, the Iranians also took potshots at Osirak during the Iran-Iraq War). They likewise took out a suspect nuclear site in Syria last year. And I can guarantee you, the Israelis don’t give one hoot about what Obama would think about it. This is a matter of survival to them. Would you?

Even further muddying the storyline here are President Obama’s recent declarations regarding America being a major Muslim nation, and revelations of his own Muslim heritage he found so necessary to deny during his presidential campaign. Just where exactly do his sympathies lie in all this? As an American citizen watching this bizarre story unfold, I think that’s a very fair question.

How will it all end? Who knows what plot twists lie in store? I could be totally wrong, and I hope I am. But I’ve seen enough productions like this in the past to know that happy endings are rare.

Again, I ask you, Mister President: What’s the script? Because if you want me to back this production, I want to know where this story is going. There ain’t a filmmaker or studio in Hollywood that would invest in a Cecil B. DeMille-scale venture like this without knowing the endgame. Israelis aren’t the only ones vulnerable to dispositions of intense anxiety. And if the story ends tragically, like Michael Caine in “Dark Knight,” it will bring me absolutely no joy to tell you, “I told you so.”

But I already read the book.

Or, by its Hollywood acronym, RATS. Funny. I actually found that startling contraction fitting, not for Roxana (not hardly), but for all of the major black hats and clueless morons who populated this nerve-wracking Thugocracy Studios production, which had civilized people everywhere both riveted and outraged in its most grueling and suspenseful moments.

Not to mention for Roxana and her parents. But before we get to heroes and villains, let us look at the story to date with all its dramatic twists and underpinnings, many with significant international implications. Just like a good Hitchcock drama should. And I caught ‘em all!

By pure happenstance, Your Most Humble Critic and Boy Reporter was already hot on the job covering Iran (unlike some people) and hammering AMPAS for their tea and finger-cookie soirees with these guys, when I saw what Iran was pulling with Roxana and called it for what it was: a hostage crisis. And on the same day HRW called it the same in a press release on March 13th, which I didn’t find out until the 19th thanks to our on-the-ball Vein Stream Media.

Even then I had to look. But HRW called it on the 13th based on international law. I called it the same day from knowing Iran too goddamn well. Why not test Obama? See what he’s made of? They’ve tested every other US president since Carter, and let’s face it. Obama ain’t scarin’ nobody right now.

Fortunately, this particular but not totally unexpected production of Iranian political theater has now ended with Iran’s magnanimous ‘gift’ of Roxana Saberi’s freedom. You know. Like the British getting their Easter ‘gift’ of their own sailors back. My heroes. The Easter Bunny’s got nothin’ on them, huh?

Though President Obama called Iran’s merciful end to this sordid and cruel international affront ‘a humanitarian gesture’, it has been anything but from the beginning. If anything, this tormenting episode of international injustice and flouting of the law should prove just how unworthy a diplomatic partner Iran is. See, diplomacy requires both sides to be civilized to work, and the backstory on Iran’s regime, as with Roxana’s story there, is as uncivilized as it gets.

And let’s be clear here. I am not advocating war with Iran, though what they’ve done and continue to do makes me feel very warlike. But I am advocating that the ugly truths about Islamist extremist Iran be put on display for all to see. Nobody else seems to be interested in covering Iran’s abominable human rights situation. Is that too much to ask from Your Most Humble and Obedient Critic? Despite the nightmare we, Roxana and her parents had to endure, Roxana’s one of the lucky ones.

In order to understand RATS in toto, we must look at the whole backstory of Islamist Iran since 1979 to put Roxana Saberi’s ordeal into its proper context today. I’ve been following Islamist extremist Iran for thirty long years, starting with the US Embassy Hostage Crisis on November 4th, 1979.  See, I knew that date because I was due by legal contract to head for boot camp on November 13th, which I did. You remember things like that. You know. Heading for boot camp, heading for war.

Especially when it was peacetime when you signed up.

It sure looked like war at the time. Yet strangely, war didn’t happen. President Carter was too busy gnawing his nails down to the knuckles for 444 days, with one abortive rescue mission in between gnawings. If I were President back then, I would have at least started taking out Iran’s military facilities with B-52s if we didn’t get the hostages back. Ronnie got ‘em back right away after he became President on January 20th, 1981. I think they knew The Gipper would have bombed them to Hell to free our hostage citizens. He was that kinda guy.

A smart move on Iran’s part. But even Reagan suffered greatly from the Iranian thugocracy’s proxy terror attacks from Hezbollah, like the Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon that killed 241 US servicemen on an international peacekeeping mission there. See, Iran just moved their terrorization of Americans and others into the shadows, letting their Brownshirt Hamas and Hezbollah goons do all the dirty work outside Iran. You know. Like Hitler’s used to do.

In fact, every president since Carter has been tormented by Iran, Obama no less. Clinton had the Khobar Tower bombings in 1995. For W, it was Iran-paid and trained militias and EFP IEDs in Iraq, killing and wounding hundreds of American soldiers. No Hope For Change with Obama on that score either, it would seem. Or with Iran’s supplying the Taliban with weapons.

And we are far from alone in the category of Iranian death and devastation. Iran’s thugocracy is currently being held accountable for the worst terror attacks in Argentina’s history, including one former Iranian ‘diplomat’ now running for high office and wanted by Interpol for his involvement in the bombing. See, that’s the reform candidate for president in Iran.

Welcome to Extreme Politics in Islamist Iran. Al Capone and The Joker would fit right in.

But why Argentina? I can understand the whole Great Satan thing, but what did Argentina ever do to Iran? Was the Iranian thugocracy pissed about Argentina no longer supplying WMD components and nuclear supplies, which Argentina cut off in 1992, the year the terror attacks began?

Or was it because of Argentine-born Jews? And all Jews everywhere deserve to die, and in the greatest numbers possible? Maybe it was a twofer. You know. Like Death To America and Death To Israel. They love that stuff, at least enough to paint it on all their missiles.

It’s right up there with “Death To The Jews!” Or partying with their BFF O-Bash.

Then again, do terrorists REALLY need a reason? I think they’re more than content to watch the world burn. Look what Iran’s Islamist Nazi thugs do to their own people! Seventeen-year-old Nazanin Fatehi, sentenced to death for stabbing and killing her and her niece’s would-be rapist in a park in Tehran. One thirteen-year-old girl stoned to death for being raped! Gays hunted down and exterminated. As bad as we, Israel, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the rest of the world have had it from Iran’s terror-loving regime and its proxies, we’re the lucky ones.

Ahmadinejad was right about gays in Iran, you know. Just like Hitler was right when he said there were no Jews in Germany. The discussion’s pretty much moot. And Iran has now successfully exported their own Gay Holocaust to Iraq, which Bush should have stopped and Obama must.

Thus ends the prequel, and leads us straight to Roxana Saberi and today. I have a full recap of Roxana’s story from Day One here, in my BH piece bashing AMPAS and Hollywood over their dead silence and total absence in championing Roxana’s cause. Hell, Team Oscar was IN Iran when Clinton demanded Roxana’s release! You hear a peep out of any of them?

Roxana was BBC and NPR, not FOX! Wait, Mr. Snerdley tells me Roxana DID work for FOX on occasion. Okay, got it. The Hollywood blackout on Roxana all makes sense now. But Roxana is free, and that is all that matters. The rest, lessons learned. And that brings us to a few loose story ends.

What are we and the world now to think of the Iranian thugocracy’s brilliant facade of justice, showing us how merciful they can really be, and that they are truly nice guys after all if only we will be nice to them? Were Roxana the only story here? Maybe. But she isn’t. Not by a damn sight.

Iranian-American filmmaker Esha Momeni still faces her own kangaroo court tribunal for celluloid slanders, for her a women’s rights documentary. And former FBI agent Robert Levinson is nowhere to be found after two years The Iranian government even blocked efforts by the Swiss to track him down at our request. Wouldn’t even let them go to Kish Island to investigate. Hmm. Curious.

Most important of all, Islamist extremist Iran was, is and remains a human rights horrorshow, one of the worst in the world. Even bloggers pay for the wrong words with their lives, like Omid Reza Mir Sayaf, who died in Evin during Roxana’s unlawful detention there. And they seem just a bit too antsy to get nukes. That bothers me greatly. It’s one thing for Israel to have an arsenal. Would you want Hamas or Al Qaeda with a warhead? See, when it comes to nukes, Sanity Matters, okay?

My fear is, the world will look at the merciful end of this obscene miscarriage of justice, and cat-and-mouse toying with Roxana Saberi and us by Iran’s thugocracy, as the light at the end of a dark tunnel, whereas I see a freight train coming at us at full speed. Yet I have no power over those events. I can only report on them to the best of my abilities with what information I have.

Am I biased against Iran? You bet!

But not Iran’s freedom-loving people, who are suffering the most of anyone. The freedom-crushing and terror-sponsoring Shiite Islamist thugocracy is the real problem here. Just as it was with Hitler and his thugocracy of terror.

People need not to lose sight of what Iran’s Islamist thugocracy is really all about. And if you doubt my stern and brutal accusations, go look up the truth yourself. One Google search and you’ll be neck-deep in it. Then think of where this story is really going.

Now, on to the Heroes and Villains.

First up, the Good Guys and Roxana’s true BFF. Freeroxana.net, the North Dakota Legislature with their Free Roxana bill, the CPJ, The BBC, NPR and ABC with their 10,000-plus signature petition and strong words, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Iranian.com and too many others around the world to mention here. Roxana had, and has, no shortage of friends. I will even include the UK Guardian and Huffington Post, both of whom I’ve warred with, but which have long been on the Free Roxana Bandwagon with their peerless reporting on Iran and full support of Roxana.

I know, I know. But credit where credit is due.

Unfortunately, there was also no shortage of villains either, the greatest being the Iranian thugocracy itself, which unlawfully detained Roxana from the start, lied about Roxana’s release to SOS Clinton on March 6th, sent signals to Roxana’s parents as they left for Iran that Roxana’s release was being speeded up, only to land and see Roxana sentenced falsely to eight years for espionage, in closed session and without even a lawyer present. Broke everyone’s hearts.

Hitler had rigged courts like Iran’s that imprisoned and executed the innocent, and freed serial killers. How much further behind the curtain do you have to look to know the wizards are evil?

Yet I fully expect the Iranian thugocracy to use this ‘peace-seeking’ correction of an abomination of justice as a political and diplomatic club, or proof of their divine benevolence. Most likely both. And far too many will fall to their knees in gratitude over Roxana and agree. They don’t fool me. Then again, I’m not a fool when it comes to Iran. I’ve been watching their Islamist horrorshow for thirty long years. I’ll go by what history and my eyes and ears tell me, and not some clueless morons.

Speaking of which, Congress, The President, State, and the Invisible Press all pulled major disappearing acts on Roxana, when she should have stayed front and center after SOS Clinton’s demand for her release. Look at these unbelievable search results from March 20th, two weeks after Iran promised to release Roxana ’soon’. It’s like she was bad press the Obamamedia and government wanted swept under the rug.

No bill submitted to Congress in all that time in support of Roxana that I can find, only statements by Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Roxana’s home state. Too busy cleaning our pockets, I guess. Or calling us racist redneck teabaggers. Roxana who?

This whole sordid production also revealed to me how mile-wide and micron-deep Hollywood’s support for human rights really is. And I don’t mean Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey, George Clooney and the dozens of other real human rights and troop-supporting heroes of Hollywood.

I specifically mean the left-wing Looney Tunes Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which fancies itself as human rights champs. Name me one mention of Roxana Saberi from any prominent Academy member to date, even when Team Hollywood was in Tehran. Won’t find her anywhere in Team Oscar member William Horberg’s Iran blogging. No press releases. Yawn.

How about filmmaker Esha Momeni? Nope, no Esha. Or any mention of the Iranian regime’s hunting, party-raiding, online entrapping, torturing and slaughtering of gays that should have outraged them beyond measure but which they seem to have curiously overlooked, and not a week removed from their four-hour gay rights infomercial called the Oscars. They’re still silent about it!

It’s not like you really have to look for this stuff. And I know they know. I’ve told them. Repeatedly.

Wait a minute! Was Team Oscar on some super-secret Mission Impossible Thing for ObamaMan ? You know. “Should any member of Team Oscar be caught or killed, the President will disavow all knowledge.” Are they remaining silent and staying nice so they can infiltrate Iran again? If so, I apologize, guys. My only regret is that you all escaped unharmed. Maybe I should file an FOIA on that one. Why not? Shouldn’t be a problem. They seem to be just giving away secrets these days.

In summary, ‘Roxana: A True Story’ was a riveting, very uncomfortable and all too real life-and-death drama with plenty of ordinary citizen superheroes, Blofeld-like villains, Dr. Smith-like cowards and even a few Judases. Zeroes were Stars, and Stars were Zeroes. Yet this production should never have been staged in the first place. It should have ended after SOS Clinton’s demand. And Roxana’s happy ending is only one of far too few in today’s Iran. Too many play out like ‘Schindler’s List’.

On that note, how about we all start calling cruel, oppressive and violent nations for what they are, instead of what we wish them to be? It ain’t helping those who really need help. But a lot of people speaking up for Roxana helped save her. How about ‘Artists United Against Insanity’? Little Stevie’s still out there!

As to what the future brings, who can say? But Roxana is free now, so today I’m gonna have that symbolic piece of overdue birthday cake, and set aside my reporting for other endeavors. As to Iran, I will say Caveat Emptor to all. But I will spare you, in parting, one inevitable coming attraction to Thugocracy Studios already in production. It’s a sequel, actually. Or is it the third in a trilogy?

Stay Tuned!