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Michael Barone,senior writer for U.S.News & World Report:

You have probably been reading in the press stories that even the EU3–Britain, France, and Germany–which have been negotiating with Iran over nuclear installations are dissatisfied with the response of Iran's mullah regime and are considering referring the matter to the United Nations Security Council, as the United States has urged in the event these negotiations fail. But UNSC action is uncertain, and even an embargo may not persuade the mullahs to stop the nuclear program.

What else can we do? Well, we could try to encourage the advocates of peaceful change inside Iran in the way that we encouraged, verbally and by concrete actions, Solidarity in Poland (which is just celebrating its 25th anniversary) and other anti-Communist activists in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. The mainstream media have been portraying Iran as a country increasingly under the iron control of the mullahs. But mainstream media have not been able to send many reporters into Iran. To get a better picture, you might want to consult weblogs that present news from Iranians. Here are two such weblogs. www.daneshjoo.org and www.regimechangeiran.com. I haven't been reading these closely, but I intend to, and my first read suggests that "iron control" is not a good description of what is going on in Iran today.

I hope to return to this issue in the days and weeks to come.

Welcome to our site, Michael.