Well, generally speaking, I understand and appreciate the significance of your posts including material you forward. But I am not sure what the purpose of the capital punishment in Iran post was. Can I read from your response above that the intention was primarily to target Yoshie?
And I do not understand why you would call it PR? The govt of Iran does not pay Yoshie nor is she Iranian. Why not the more parsimonious assumption that she genuinely believes that the issues she presents about Iran are ones she considers important for the left?
As I stated in my earlier post, Iranians do not have a lot of options. From my limited understanding of history: they tried a form of socialist, democratic, progressive government. Mossadegh. We derailed it. They tried to live under a puppet ruler we installed. That didn't work out either. That gave way to religious fundamentalist rule, followed by Western Liberal "reform" (Khatami). We called them the "Axis of Evil" anyway. Compared to these options, a populist government, with calls for economic equity, a strong opposition to the greatest danger that Iran (including Iranian women, and perhaps even gay Iranians) faces (i.e., us), with all its warts, deficiencies, may be the only first step towards a better life for them.
If that is the case, then what role can well-meaning outsiders, leftists like us, play in helping them? We could call for certain forms of progress that we are used to -- hence my e.g of the recent child labour laws in India. We could advance comparisons to ideals. I guess (unlike celebrated Western leftists like Seymour Hersh) we could remain silent.
--ravi