It's crystal ball time. I think those of us who work in human rights always.... I'll speak for myself. We're in this work because we do have some degree of optimism that we can push things ahead and that in fact things are moving in the right direction. I personally am not enough of an Iran expert to make a judgment on that.
One reason to think this may be the case is the fact that just trying to take a poll to measure those kinds of attitudes would be extremely difficult in Iran today. Among the people arrested and sentenced for alleged crimes against the state are people who've been trying to take polls of political attitudes. Certainly what I tried to suggest in my presentation about the degree of activism one finds on campuses, among youth of that strata, for instance, is that it is very encouraging. One finds it, too, among workers, who are actively trying to organize and advance their own claims against the state, against their employers, and so forth.
I think there are certainly reasons to be encouraged, but I think at the same time that a change of government is not the same as a poll favouring one particular set of ideas or values over the other, because we're talking about a government that.... As Mr. Khatami, as president, learned to his chagrin, we're talking about a system that has become extremely entrenched, so that you might indeed have 70% not only of the youth but of the population in general favouring a certain approach, but it's not necessarily going to be reflected in the government, because its accountability in terms of the popular vote and so forth is extremely limited.