LESLEY: So what happened to them? Were they part of this demonstration? Will they be suppressed, along with everybody else?

ROYA: Well, in this round of stamping out, everybody has been rounded up. Even the daughter of former president Rafsanjani was arrested last week and held in custody for about two days.

LESLEY: Do you consider her an Islamic feminist? Is she part of what you’re talking about?

ROYA: Of course. She wouldn’t be my favorite feminist in the world, but I do understand the value of all of these Islamic women who rose in Iran and started to really lay claim to power in Iran. And in many ways they not only changed the face of feminism for Iran, for Iranian women, but I think Islamic women everywhere. They redefined the possibilities of what it means to be a Muslim woman and what it is that a Muslim woman can possibly do.

LESLEY: Is there any possibility that there will be a compromise, or have things moved well past that now?

ROYA: If you had asked me this question prior to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s Friday prayer address, I would have said yes, because in 1988 Ayatollah Khomeini gave a public speech on television in Iran and said this war with Iraq would be his route through Baghdad to Jerusalem. Ayatollah Khomeini really saw the war with Iraq as a way of liberating Israel.

LESLEY: Oh, the Palestinians.

ROYA: The Palestinians. You know, we were attacked in Iran, and he said, "What a great opportunity to now not only defeat Saddam, but also carry on and go further and liberate Jerusalem." This was his grand plan. And in 1988, when he realized that there had been something close to a million wounded and dead, the economy was in shambles and people were exhausted after nearly eight years of fighting, he came on television and said, "This compromise is a cup of poison, which I must drink for the good of the country. And so I will."

LESLEY: Oh, my.

ROYA: And so based on that, the fact that there was precedent for a compromise, because the Ayatollah himself had once done it, my expectation was for Khamenei to now take the lead and say, "We must make a compromise now. We should hold another election and if that election is a cup of poison I’ll drink it here." But he said the opposite. He was very staunch. He yielded not whatsoever to the opposition, and was as firm as he could be against the unrest. So I can’t see it.

LESLEY: How do you see what’s happened in Iran affecting the power and legitimacy of Islamic rule across the Middle East? Does this weaken the whole idea of Islamic fundamentalism as a force? Does it weaken Hezbollah and Hamas, those organizations?

ROYA: In its dream of having Islamic fundamentalist rule, having a theocracy, Iran was ahead of the rest of the world. In other words, the Afghans, the Pakistanis, the Iraqis and other parts of the Middle East, are somewhat toying with the idea, with the dream, or the utopia of a theocracy. And Iran, on the other hand, is the one country that’s done with it. Iran has been done with it for almost ten years now because they had a 20-year head start, you know, compared to other people. They are done, not simply because of what has happened as a result of the last round of elections, but because of so much else that was promised to them and didn’t happen. Initially Ayatollah Khomeini even promised to provide free electricity, water and gas to people’s homes. He said Iran has so much oil that no one, no Iranian, should be paying for these utilities. I mean, it was as ridiculous as that, you know, the initial promise. And look what has happened, even without the rigged election. Women have been living in a country of apartheid.

LESLEY: You mean apartheid between men and women?