The scales fell from his eyes while tormented in Iranian prison
The Princeton Historian Mugged by Reality
Since being freed from Iranian detention, Xiyue Wang has been unrelenting in his criticism of the authoritarian country—and some American elites’ attempt at rapprochement.
“I was fucking stupid,” Wang told me. “Unbelievably stupid. If I could go back, I would slap myself.” He now argues that the United States should patiently inflict pain on the Iranian government militarily and economically. “The Iranian regime is stalling for leverage,” he said. Once it is weakened and beggared, negotiation can begin.
Atlantic
This recalls Bertrand Russell’s story about a British academic who went to live in Stalin’s USSR because it was the Worker’s Paradise. When her husband was imprisoned in the Gulag she returned to England for help from Bernard Shaw who dismissed it as impossible.