The pot calls the kettle black

The story behind the woman in the "Iranian adultary case" we will never know, we will never really know whether they ever intended stoning her to death and we would do well to give the Iranian Embassy the benefit of the doubt when they contend that "this kind of punishment has rarely been implemented in Iran and various means and remedies must be probed and exhausted to finally come up with such a punishment" and that "news and reports should not be taken for granted and considered a reliable source of information". Moreover, while the very fact that this punishment appears to exist in the Islamic Penal Code and that this in itself is repugnant, there is no reason not to believe the Embassy spokesman when he says that "the stoning punishment has not been cited in the draft Islamic Penal Code being deliberated in the Iranian Parliament. We can, of course, only hope that it is removed from that country's statute books as soon as possible.

However,  when the 'Times' cries out that "Iranians back down" and that the "Ayatollah's theocratic regime is not deaf to international pressure" we can be sure that we are being confronted with sensationalist politically motivated hypocrisy of the worst order especially when we can read that the "80 public figures to join worldwide protest" include none other than the war criminal Condoleezza Rice, the Zionists David Milliband and John Bolton and a number of Rabbis. For let us make no mistake about it, while it is right for the world to unite against Iran's "indefensible punishment" and while a lot of good people are rightly disgusted by the fact that Sakineh Ashtiani might have been stoned to death, the likes of Bolton and Rice condemning the Ayatollah regime is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black and now there they are telling us all that it is time to put pressure on Iran and that Iran is not deaf to pressure. Their pressure, of course, and if that pressure doesn't achieve the desired results we can expect them in the not too distant future to be committing crimes which will eclipse those being committed by the mad mullahs.