The Iranian regime, a theocratic dictatorship that has secured its own de-legitimization by revoking the last vintage of democracy, has officially surpassed China as the world’s number one jailer of journalists according to the independent Committee for the Projection of Journalists [CPJ].

[The New York Times.]

Iran, mind you, is a nation of 70 million to China’s 1.3 billion. The more stringent and widespread Iranian crackdown, which already comes on the heels of the shutting down of many liberal publications under the presidency of extremists and demagogue Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; came about when millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest what they saw was electoral theft by the allies of Ahmadinejad.

The government crackdown has seen the arrests of thousands of opposition leaders and members, a great deal of whom have been journalists. What fate awaits these people is a scary thought.

With the full-sweep arrests of hundreds of Iranian journalists, Iran has replaced China as the most anti-free press country in the world. Although Iran has arrested a great deal of journalists, “only” about 30 are officially in jail right now. Nonetheless, that 30 places Iran above China.

Though the Chinese may regain that position as Iran restores control and may allow for the release of some journalists and as the Chinese confront their own domestic, freedom-inspired upheaval in the form of the Muslim Uighurs.

Both these regimes, and their cohorts [lets not forget the vile Tunisian regime, which is the worst jailer of journalists in the Arab world and among the worst internationally], are as Obama often says “on the wrong side of history.”

Freedom of thought will come to the Iranians, to the Chinese, to the Tunisians, to the Cubans, to the...