Although it is Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has alarmed the world with threatening gestures, it is actually the Ayatollah Khamenei and the 12-man Guardian Council who control all decisions regarding Iran’s relations, its nuclear program and domestic freedoms. This regime has increasingly suppressed freedom of expression: Women can be stoned to death for adultery, and in November an Iranian man was publicly hanged for homosexuality