‘Change is driven by the Iranian people’

OPINION:

Your ideas are compelling.

The awareness of the dreams and the struggle of ordinary Iranian people is moving beyond a world of insiders in the corridors of power, and into the consciousness and conscience of millions of Americans.

I support and admire your work. I’ve learned a lot about your strategies—promoting democracy, the separation of church and state, gender equality, the rule of law. Thomas Jefferson would feel right at home with the principles that you set down in your 10-point plan.

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One principle that your struggle has embraced is especially impressive to me: the principle that lasting reform must come from within. You’ve figured out that lasting, durable change in Iran will only come about when that change is driven by the Iranian people themselves. Your approach, in my opinion, is very far-seeing and wise.

I believe you will be successful in creating the democratic, secular, non-nuclear Iran you seek. You’re on the right side of history. Your movement contains plenty of sophisticated, optimistic Iranians, in effect a government-in-waiting ready to step up. Iran—and with it the whole Middle East—is at a fork in the road. One leads backward—to more corruption, more brutality, to an even darker place. The other road—the one you are working to construct, leads to light—a better world for the young people of Iran today and for many more generations to come. To a world where your sons and daughters will finally have their own shot at “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”