"He's not asking for money, and we're not advocating money for him," [David Wurmser] told me. "As for him wanting power, sure, he probably has an agenda. But it doesn't matter. This is where you go back to the Soviet Union, because it's the same question that we always work with, from Lech Walesa to Vaclav Havel: 'Did they have an understanding of the malady and danger posed by the totalitarian regime in their country?' "

People such as 32-year-old Amir Abbas Fakhravar, an Iranian dissident now riving in exile in the United States. In a 2006 Washington Post Op-Ed article, [Richard Perle] promoted Fakhravar as a heroic and inspirational figure around whom oppressed Iranians could rally, if only he were given America's support. Fakhravar is president of the Iran Enterprise Institute, which takes its name and some of its financial support from the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, of which Perle is a resident fellow. In the coming weeks, Fakhravar will be speaking at a conference in Palm Beach, FIa., on the subject of regime change in Tehran, addressing the Heritage Foundation in Washington and then heading to Rome to deliver a lecture on "Democracy in the Islamic World." Just recently, he was the honored guest at DePaul University's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," where he was introduced as "the hero of our age."

"No," Perle replied. "I don't. But he's his own man. I don't always understand what he's doing and why he's doing it."

Political behavior
Political dissent
Governmental reform