The New York Times news blog “Lede” has published an article featuring Kian:

“This week, at the start of the fourth mass trial of opposition supporters in Tehran, an Iranian prosecutor read another indictment accusing leading reformist politicians and an Iranian-American scholar named Kian Tajbakhsh of plotting to overthrow Iran’s government…

Leaving aside the fact that there appears to be no real evidence, save for what could be forced confessions, that such a plot existed, it is striking that the leaders of Iran’s Islamic republic appear to be obsessed with the peaceful transfer of power that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1989. For starters, the comparison is extremely unflattering to those in power. After the fall of the Berlin wall, the Czechoslovak Communist regime was so unpopular that it crumbled in a matter of days when it became clear that enforcing its will through violence against peaceful demonstrators was no longer an option.

But the larger problem for those in Tehran who look at the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi and see an Iranian Vaclav Havel, is that Czech and Slovak dissidents led an entirely homegrown movement that was not in any way orchestrated by foreign powers.”

[Full article]