Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Winner Predicts Persian Spring
Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi told Sophie Claudet in an interview that renewed protests against the Iranian government are imminent and that the opposition is working behind the scenes even if the state's crackdown has kept it off the streets. She also gave her views on Iran’s nuclear program, Iranian politics, sanctions and the Arab revolutions.
DEAUVILLE – Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi spoke to Sophie Claudet last week on the sidelines of the Women’s Forum in Deauville, France.
Ebadi told Al-Monitor that Iran would soon have its own revolutionary spring. “It is not going to be too long before that day arrives,” she said, warning that the exact timing “was difficult to predict.” An uprising against the government, she explained, is “a function of Iran’s relationship with the United States, Iran’s relationship with neighboring states and the economic situation of the country.”
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of several Iranian cities following the June 2009 presidential election to protest what they believed was a rigged contest that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second term.
The popular uprising was crushed by Iran’s police and security forces, leaving dozens dead, although no official toll was ever established and estimates vary between 20 and 150, depending on the source.
