Who's afraid of Shirin?

When people are asked who their heroes are, you can expect to find someone like Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi topping of the final tally. Indeed, two years ago, 150 MPs voted the anti-apartheid campaigner as their biggest political hero. But the name Shirin Ebadi is usually absent from the equation. Yet today, Mrs. Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer, human rights activist and (the first female Muslim) Nobel laureate deserves to be high on anyone’s list.

The Nobel committee singled Mrs Ebadi out for promoting human rights and democracy in Iran. It also paid tribute to her courage, noting that she had "never heeded the threat to her own safety". Both Mrs Ebadi and her daughter receive death threats regularly.

Now, however, her life really seems to be in danger. Before Christmas, Iranian officials shut down and sealed off the human rights centre she founded. Eight days later, her law offices were searched. Using a customary regime tactic, a militant mob then protested in front of her house. When Mrs Ebadi called the police, they took a leisurely time arriving and, once on the scene, simply stood and watched the people. Now the regime has accused Mrs. Ebadi of tax evasion (though without bothering to go through the trouble of presenting a little evidence to prove their charge).

The Iranian regime’s treatment of Mrs. Ebadi proves – if proof was needed – that it is deeply insecure, worried that even a mild-mannered, gradualist lawyer like Mrs. Ebadi, who has been highly critical of the Bush Administration's Iran policy, may undermine the flimsy edifice upon which it stands. To be sure, the Iranian regime has done many worse things than intimidate Mrs. Ebadi, as she herself has bravely told the world. But a regime’s nature can often be discerned in its pettiness, and its desire to stamp out even the smallest challenge to its authority. In its display of what can be termed the “narcissism of minor persecutions”.