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As long as pearl jewelry have been known to people, they have been a highly sought commodity for their beauty. It's only in recent times however that the industry has taken the hunt for the perfect pearl to a whole different level. Today, the shiny orbs that we see on in display in jewelry stores have actually almost always been grown in farms. That's a far cry from the dangerous extraction and collection methods used before the invention of modern technology. In the past, not more than 100 years ago, the only way to retrieve pearls was by diving in lakes, floods and the ocean to pick them up, one at the time. The unfortunate divers who'se job it was to do this, were often poor and lured by the relative large sums they could get. The diver would sometimes have to dive as deep as 100 feet on one single breath of air. In order to preserve air and to stay submerged the longest, the divers would hold on to heavy stones on the way down. Naturally, this dangerous activity was reserved for the desperate or the powerless - in many cases slaves or extremely poor peasents. Today, this method is all but obsolete in most places of the world. The cheaper cultured pearls have become popular and are many times the only pearls available to the consumer. There are however still a few isolated areas that practice this old art of pearl diving. Some of the finest natural pearl speciments come from the gulf of Bahrain. Here, divers still risk their health to retrieve what are considered the top of the crop in the world. In fact, Bahrain wants no part of the sale of cultured pearls, banned from trade. Bahrain is one of the few places on earth that does an active job in trying to preserve the natural habitat and waters from pollution. It's an interesting story and one that continues to fascinate buyers around the world. Somehow, the beauty of the pearl grows when it's been retrieved from the depth of the ocean.

Buying pearl jewelry can be fun, exciting and confusing. Whether you're considering a gift of pearl jewelry for someone special or as a treat for yourself, take some time to learn the terms used in the industry. Here's some information to help you get the best quality pearl jewelry for your money, whether you're shopping in a traditional brick and mortar store or online. Pearls Natural or real pearls are made by oysters and other mollusks. Cultured pearls also are grown by mollusks, but with human intervention; that is, an irritant introduced into the shells causes a pearl to grow. Imitation pearls are man-made with glass, plastic, or organic materials. Because natural pearls are very rare, most pearls used in jewelry are either cultured or imitation pearls. Cultured pearls, because they are made by oysters or mollusks, usually are more expensive than imitation pears. A cultured pearl's value is largely based on its size, usually stated in millimeters, and the quality of its nacre coating, which give it luster. Jewelers should tell your if the pearls are cultured or imitation. Some black, bronze, gold, purple, blue and orange pearls, whether natural or cultured, occur that way in nature; some, however, are dyed through various processes. Jewelers should tell you whether the colored pearls are naturally colored, dyed or irradiated. Clams, oysters, mussels and many other mollusks with limy shells are known to produce pearls. But very few kinds yield gem pearls of jeweler's quality. The pearl is an abnormal growth of mother-of-pearl, or nacre, imbedded in the soft bodies of these shellfish. It is built up, layer upon layer, in the same way as nacre is added to the lining of the growing shell and always has the same color and luster. For example, over the country, hundreds of good-sized pearls are found each year in the oysters we eat. Unfortunately these have no commercial value regardless of whether they have been cooked or not because they are dull opaque white or purple like the shell of the parent oyster. In recent times almost all pearls of gem quality come from the oriental pearl oyster which has a bright shimmering translucent nacre. A pearl starts growing when some irritating foreign substance such as a sand grain, bit of mud, parasite or other object becomes lodged in the shell-producing gland called the mantle. Pearls formed in the soft flesh where nacre can be added on all sides are most likely to be spherical and the most highly prized. By far the great majority are flattened or variously distorted and have little value. Size, color, luster and freedom from flaws are other essential qualities. Unlike other gems, such as diamonds, pearls have an average life of only about 50 years. In time the small amount of water in a pearl's make-up is lost and its surface cracks. Because they are mostly lime, necklaces which are worn often are injured by the acid secretions of the human skin.

As long as pearl jewelry have been known to people, they have been a highly sought commodity for their beauty. It's only in recent times however that the industry has taken the hunt for the perfect pearl to a whole different level. Today, the shiny orbs that we see on in display in jewelry stores have actually almost always been grown in farms. That's a far cry from the dangerous extraction and collection methods used before the invention of modern technology. In the past, not more than 100 years ago, the only way to retrieve pearls was by diving in lakes, floods and the ocean to pick them up, one at the time. The unfortunate divers who'se job it was to do this, were often poor and lured by the relative large sums they could get. The diver would sometimes have to dive as deep as 100 feet on one single breath of air. In order to preserve air and to stay submerged the longest, the divers would hold on to heavy stones on the way down. Naturally, this dangerous activity was reserved for the desperate or the powerless - in many cases slaves or extremely poor peasents. Today, this method is all but obsolete in most places of the world. The cheaper cultured pearls have become popular and are many times the only pearls available to the consumer. There are however still a few isolated areas that practice this old art of pearl diving. Some of the finest natural pearl speciments come from the gulf of Bahrain. Here, divers still risk their health to retrieve what are considered the top of the crop in the world. In fact, Bahrain wants no part of the sale of cultured pearls, banned from trade. Bahrain is one of the few places on earth that does an active job in trying to preserve the natural habitat and waters from pollution. It's an interesting story and one that continues to fascinate buyers around the world. Somehow, the beauty of the pearl grows when it's been retrieved from the depth of the ocean.

Buying pearl jewelry can be fun, exciting and confusing. Whether you're considering a gift of pearl jewelry for someone special or as a treat for yourself, take some time to learn the terms used in the industry. Here's some information to help you get the best quality pearl jewelry for your money, whether you're shopping in a traditional brick and mortar store or online. Pearls Natural or real pearls are made by oysters and other mollusks. Cultured pearls also are grown by mollusks, but with human intervention; that is, an irritant introduced into the shells causes a pearl to grow. Imitation pearls are man-made with glass, plastic, or organic materials. Because natural pearls are very rare, most pearls used in jewelry are either cultured or imitation pearls. Cultured pearls, because they are made by oysters or mollusks, usually are more expensive than imitation pears. A cultured pearl's value is largely based on its size, usually stated in millimeters, and the quality of its nacre coating, which give it luster. Jewelers should tell your if the pearls are cultured or imitation. Some black, bronze, gold, purple, blue and orange pearls, whether natural or cultured, occur that way in nature; some, however, are dyed through various processes. Jewelers should tell you whether the colored pearls are naturally colored, dyed or irradiated. Clams, oysters, mussels and many other mollusks with limy shells are known to produce pearls. But very few kinds yield gem pearls of jeweler's quality. The pearl is an abnormal growth of mother-of-pearl, or nacre, imbedded in the soft bodies of these shellfish. It is built up, layer upon layer, in the same way as nacre is added to the lining of the growing shell and always has the same color and luster. For example, over the country, hundreds of good-sized pearls are found each year in the oysters we eat. Unfortunately these have no commercial value regardless of whether they have been cooked or not because they are dull opaque white or purple like the shell of the parent oyster. In recent times almost all pearls of gem quality come from the oriental pearl oyster which has a bright shimmering translucent nacre. A pearl starts growing when some irritating foreign substance such as a sand grain, bit of mud, parasite or other object becomes lodged in the shell-producing gland called the mantle. Pearls formed in the soft flesh where nacre can be added on all sides are most likely to be spherical and the most highly prized. By far the great majority are flattened or variously distorted and have little value. Size, color, luster and freedom from flaws are other essential qualities. Unlike other gems, such as diamonds, pearls have an average life of only about 50 years. In time the small amount of water in a pearl's make-up is lost and its surface cracks. Because they are mostly lime, necklaces which are worn often are injured by the acid secretions of the human skin.

Helping others through volunteer service has hit a critical mass in the United States. While that's all to the good, can such private efforts also solve big social problems, such as the high rate of high school dropouts?

That was President George H.W. Bush's hope 20 years ago, when his "thousand points of light" initiative called Americans to greater community service. Mr. Bush's successors all have echoed the call, including Barack Obama, the community organizer-turned-commander in chief. The two presidents met Friday at Texas A&M University to celebrate Bush's volunteerism initiative.

Service is a continuous thread in the fabric of American society. It stretches back to Benjamin Franklin's first volunteer fire department and weaves through time to pearl jewelry today's volunteermatch.org, universalgiving.org, and serve.gov – examples of Internet sites that allow people to search for opportunities by subject and location.

Volunteerism has surged in the last two decades, increasing by more than 60 percent to nearly 62 million volunteers last year. In that time, high schools have embraced community service as a necessary part of student life, and so have many colleges. Corporations routinely donate employees' skills and time. Two groups that serve much more than in 1989: youths and older Americans.

This month, TV is getting in on the act by writing volunteerism into program scripts and public-service announcements. More than 90 shows on network and cable TV are joining the "I Participate" campaign to inspire viewers to repeat the good works they see on their flat-screen TVs.

President Obama hopes to make community service a cornerstone of his presidency. His "United We Serve" call in June encouraged Americans to engage in biwa pearl their communities in a sustained, meaningful way. Under the bipartisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009, Obama seeks to triple the size of AmeriCorps, whose members receive a small stipend for activities such as mentoring, cleaning up parks, and responding to emergencies. But Congress, which authorized the act, is balking at fully funding it.

The greater challenge, however, is figuring out how to gather millions of "light points" into a few powerful beams that can illuminate and then alleviate some of America's most pressing problems.

Who decides what the high-priority needs are? Will steering volunteers toward a few key needs leave other important ones unmet? Will volunteers accept being steered at all?

People serve according to their passions and higher callings. They make their own decisions about how and when to donate time. That's a grass-roots, organic process that, if run over by government or well-meaning private organizations, could flatten the desire of individuals to serve.

Some core needs are obvious. For instance, the Points of Light Institute, the nation's largest volunteer and civic engagement organization, is focusing on education, the environment, and the economy. Millions of people have been displaced by the recession and need material support – and also help in learning new job skills.

One successful example is using volunteerism to combat the nation's 9 percent dropout rate (youths ages 16 to 24 not in school and with no high school degree). This means not merely tutoring or otherwise supporting at-risk young people, but turning them into volunteers so that they build self-esteem and discover firsthand the value of education.

Yet retaining volunteers is also a akoya pearl challenge. Last year, about a third of them dropped out. Service groups need to figure out how to turn the one-time stint at the holiday soup-kitchen into a lifetime of giving – and how to organize a volunteer experience so that first-timers don't sour on it. Internet training of service leaders could help.

Provo, Utah - It is tradition for pundits to produce a report card on a new president's first 100 days.

Only a few weeks into his presidency, President Obama attended one of those Washington dinners where the president is expected to make amusing, ideally self-deprecatory, remarks.

He is very good at this, and brought the house down when he said he would spend his second 100 days setting up a foundation to celebrate the achievements of his first 100 days.

Well, not withstanding the controversial Nobel Prize award, perhaps the president should wait for pearl jewelry his second year in office to start tallying up the achievements of his first year.

He promised change if he were to become president, but few could have imagined the breathless pace he would set, starting with his first-day promise to close the Guantánamo Bay prison by year's end.

Unfortunately the president has discovered that bringing change to the ship of state is as cumbersome and slow as turning a giant ocean liner or oil tanker around.

Thus, although he seems to be everywhere, popping up daily on television – on five different networks in separate interviews in one day recently – his elegant phraseology and soaring words of hope leave behind a formidable list of problems to be solved.

At home, the economy is showing signs of upturn, but the jobless rate still teeters around 10 percent when the White House predicted it would flatten out at 7 percent. The housing market is awaiting a jump-start.

The president will probably get some health reform legislation passed this year, but without major features he had wanted, and with little Republican support to fulfill his promise of a bipartisan honeymoon.

Meanwhile we have not heard a whisper about the looming crisis with Social Security, or made much of a dent in global warming or progress on energy conservation.

When the president was tweeted in the biwa pearl presidential election campaign about his ability to simultaneously handle complex domestic and foreign affairs, he assured his critics of his multitasking prowess.

Guantánamo is unlikely to be shed of its prisoners by year's end and there is a long list of unfinished business on the foreign-affairs front.

On the war in Afghanistan, which he has declared to be one of "necessity," he faces an unenviable choice.

He can honor the plea for more troops from the new commander he has installed to win the war and who says that without the troops the war will be lost. That would infuriate the left wing of the Democratic Party and unnerve Americans uneasy about a prolonged war.

Or he can turn down Gen. Stanley McCrystal and run the risk of being the president who "lost Afghanistan" and possibly Pakistan.

On the most critical problem in the Middle East – securing a permanent peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians – there is no progress to report between an obdurate prime minister in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a factionalized Palestinian populace.

On Iran, it is not clear whether talks just begun with its interlocutors are a forerunner to a change of heart in Tehran – which many suspect is unlikely – or merely postponement of a showdown while Iran speeds its clandestine development of nuclear weaponry.

Mr. Obama has warned against any Iranian foot-dragging. But punitive measures are few: tougher economic sanctions, maybe with Russian support, but probably not from China, and certainly not before the end of the year.

On North Korea, the regime of Kim Jong Il has successfully developed nuclear weapons and tested its rocketry without being given pause by major power warnings or blandishments.

North Korea may be ready once again to akoya pearl talk but, as with Iran, it has routinely lied while simultaneously developing nuclear weapons capability and engaging in protracted discussions.

It's enough to make the president of Brazil ponder whether he can count on a US presidential visit to Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Chapel Hill, N.C. - By most assessments, this summer's moment of racial anxiety and outcry – namely, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge police in July – came and went faster than it takes to empty a glass of beer.

This was perhaps to be expected. Americans are famously reluctant to talk about race and racism, and the self-congratulatory remarks by Professor Gates, Sergeant James Crowley, and President Obama after the touted "beer summit" only appeared to reinforce this aversion.

Yet, as seen at various town hall meetings and the Tea Party rally in Washington Sept. 12, a deeper sign of racial tension has emerged with the reappearance of a different inflammatory expression: socialism.

In the context of American politics, socialism has seldom been about the economy or state power alone, despite its political-economic roots. Instead, it has been a slur, synonymous with the charge of communism, but with meaning extending beyond this term as well.

Black leaders in particular have faced this accusation. In 1964, amid the momentous occasion of congressional approval for the Civil Rights Act, Senator Strom Thurmond of pearl jewelry South Carolina declared its passage the result of "Negro agitators, spurred on by Communist enticements to promote racial strife."

Martin Luther King Jr. was not an exception to this allegation, but a direct target. Indeed, he faced immediate pressure to distance himself from close aide, intellectual mentor, and key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, Bayard Rustin, who once had ties with the Communist Party.

Take another black leader, another society fraught by racial division. In 1956, Nelson Mandela and 155 other antiapartheid activists were arrested by the South African government under the infamous Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, a law that was used gratuitously to incarcerate anyone who was critical of the government.

The treason trial that followed resulted in a 1961 acquittal for all those involved, the government unable to prove any "socialist" intentions. But the political equation of black activists as "communists" would continue up through the 1980s.

The Reagan administration egregiously soft-pedaled the issue of apartheid on the basis of the South African government's purported anticommunist stance. Indeed, the South African government itself viewed its policies not as racist, but as anticommunist. Only popular pressure through a global antiapartheid movement persuaded the US to isolate South Africa.

Needless to say, the cold war has ended. But its legacies have not. The re-emergence of "socialist" as an epithet amid this summer's healthcare debate has served as an expression of fear among far-right critics toward the idea of a bigger, more powerful, tax-heavy federal government. Yet this discourse has gone wonky when this term has been placed beside others that would, by any strict definition, appear incompatible. The Obama administration embraces socialism and fascism at once? Mao and Hitler as biwa pearl ideological comrades?

The response among progressives to such associations has ranged from silence to a shaking of heads to a sober litany of examples as to how federal and state governments already provide much-appreciated public services for the common good – public education, fire departments, Medicare, and so forth.

But this reaction is inadequate. It takes the cry of "socialism!" literally, whereas it should be read as representing a more complex set of political feelings. It fails to take full historical account of the xenophobic, hypernationalistic, and, yes, racist uses of this expression.

When Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, among other Southern politicians, voiced criticism of Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists, they did so not on racist grounds, but on anticommunist grounds – a more publicly acceptable stance given the cold war climate of the time. But in hindsight we can easily connect the dots, if there were any doubts about their shared sense of white racial entitlement.

Understanding this history also informs the present. The passion surrounding the expression "socialism" has less to do with the actual meaning of the word, than its associations with foreignness, anti-Americanism, and racial difference. If its reemergence and use sound antiquated and anachronistic, the motivations for its revival become clearer when placed in a context of latent white anxiety toward a black president. The "birther" movement and its concern over Mr. Obama's origins were but an earlier sign of these race-based, xenophobic sentiments held by some.

To his credit, Mr. Obama has akoya pearl sought to defuse the situation by stating that he believes the drive of his harshest critics is not racist in orientation, going so far as to distance himself from comments by former President Jimmy Carter that reinforced this perspective. But this quick resolution risks overlooking a historical pattern of how black leaders have been viewed and treated, and passing, yet again, on a more meaningful conversation about race in America.

Now that President Obama finds himself once more in the rare company of King and Mandela, albeit in the more auspicious setting of the Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps he will embrace the political courage to address racism more thoroughly as a social issue as they did – beyond beverage socials and one-time campaign speeches.

The persistence of racism cannot be attributed alone to such blatant acts as a white cop unfairly arresting a black man. The intersection of Jim Crow and Joseph McCarthy needs to be better understood.

President Obama's visit to a charter school in post-Katrina New Orleans today is just one more indication that these nontraditional schools are finally getting the validation they deserve. This, after nearly 20 years of scrutiny as publicly funded but privately run schools.

The Obama administration is pearl jewelry heavily promoting more of these hybrid schools. As part of a $4.35 billion education-reform initiative, the president plans to reward states that make it easier to start charter schools that often serve inner-city children. Eleven states still don't allow charters.

The school visited by the president, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology, educates mainly poor African-American children. It stands out as a success story, along with other New Orleans charters, when compared with the city's traditional public schools, which are still largely classified as failing.

States such as Tennessee, Illinois, and Louisiana have responded to the administration's incentive by removing limits on the number of charter schools. Other states are moving in the same direction. That's good news for successful charter operators, such as the Kipp Academies, which want to expand. Nationwide, about 1.5 million kids – many of them poor and minority students – attend about 4,600 charter schools.

Teachers unions, however, chafe at the mostly nonunion schools. They decry the schools' ability to fire low performing teachers at will, and to pay according to performance instead of biwa pearl seniority and credentials. When charters show success, the unions argue it's because the schools skim off the most motivated kids (and their parents).

A September study puts that argument to rest. The study examined New York City charter schools that determine admission by lottery. It found that students randomly chosen to attend the charters performed better on state exams than those who were not chosen and had to attend the city's public schools.

No skimming the cream there. The study, conducted by economist Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., removed bias by relying on random samples of two groups of students who wanted to go to charters.

Ms. Hoxby also found that New York City kids who stayed in charters from kindergarten through eighth grade almost matched their peers in white affluent suburbs in math. They did less well in English, but still closed 66 percent of the gap.

The study reaffirms the value of a school's freedom to innovate. It did not conclude that charter characteristics such as a longer school year, merit pay for teachers, or more time on English lessons caused higher achievement. But it did find a correlation.

Not all charters are equal, and akoya pearl other studies show mixed results. But states must take charters more seriously as an alternative to failing public schools. They must measure and monitor them – and learn from them.

Washington - Sophisticated critics of sending more US troops to fight the Taliban argue that the group is not as central a threat to American national security as Al Qaeda.

Yet, for Al Qaeda operationally, there is nothing more important now than the Taliban wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

To start with, the critics are undoubtedly correct in underscoring Afghanistan's near-irrelevance, and thus lack of influence, in the development of modern Muslim thought as well as the central importance of Arabs to Al Qaeda. I can't think of a single Afghan intellectual who has shaped either Sunni or Shiite militancy.

To be sure, the pearl jewelry Arab world's dysfunctional efforts to come to grips with modernity created the pestilence that struck us on 9/11 and has slaughtered so many Muslims – especially in Iraq. And it's a decent bet that the slow evanescence of jihadism as a vibrant religious calling among Sunni Arabs – assuming it continues – will be the death knell for jihadists globally.

Unless Al Qaeda is able to reignite Sunni-Shiite strife in Iraq – and the odds of this happening seem pretty small – Sunni jihadism has lost the Iraq war, and with it, cross your fingers, the Arabs.

Mesopotamia really was the central front in the war on terror because it was the only military theater Al Qaeda and its allies had in the Arab world. Drive out the Americans, unleash a Sunni-Shiite bloodbath that just might bring Sunni Arab states and Iran into a bloody cold – ideally hot – war, and Sunni Islamic militancy might just shake the region.

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, both decent strategists, knew what they were saying when they described Iraq as the decisive battleground. Victory there would have given their cause real possibilities in the Muslim heartlands.

The neo-Taliban in Afghanistan, like the Pakistani Taliban, are the children of Al Qaeda. Only in Afghanistan and Pakistan have we seen jihadism actually take root in large numbers. No place else in the Muslim world was laid waste like Afghanistan. The Taliban represent a remarkably redoubtable militant Islamist movement capable of grafting onto a vibrant ethnic identity (Pashtunism) and the diversity of culture and local loyalties that inevitably come with mountainous terrain.

Mullah Omar and many other Pashtuns embraced Mr. bin Laden because the Islamist soil in Afghanistan was so fertile: Savage Afghan communism in the 1970s, even more brutal Soviet occupation in the '80s, and civil war in the '90s left Afghanistan with no transcendent loyalties beyond faith.

In a functioning tribal society, with its conventions and family hierarchies, Mullah Omar, or the suicide-bomber-loving Jalaluddin Haqqani, or the equally vicious Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, could not have arisen. They thrive in Afghanistan today because tribal society has been dying – especially for men of imagination, ambition, and militant conviction. And there is no border when it comes to radical Islamic Pashtunism: Militancy on one side of the Durand Line feeds militancy on the other.

No doubt bin Laden and Mr. Zawahiri would probably prefer to have the central front again in the biwa pearl Arab world. But in Afghanistan and Pakistan they have wars that their side might win. Now, or in the not-too-distant future, it may be impossible operationally and philosophically to tell the difference between Arab Al Qaeda and Afghan and Pakistani radical groups, which have as a lodestar the Pashtun militants who make up the neo-Taliban on both sides of the border. The foot soldiers of this cause are not as worldly as their Arab forerunners; they do not have any noteworthy thinkers drawing large crowds.

But they do offer the promise of great success, and within Pakistan and India are highly educated Muslims who just might join the cause. Arab Al Qaeda never enlisted first-rate – or even second-rate – scientific talent. Pakistan and India, with vastly better educational establishments than the Arab world, might just provide what modern holy warriors have so far lacked: the requisite skill to deploy weapons of mass destruction against the United States.

Pakistan, indeed, has become one of the great battlegrounds of the Muslim civil war. It's not an Arab-only endeavor. Pakistan and Iran, the most dynamic laboratory of Islamic political thought, and post-Saddam Hussein Iraq are the guides to a better (or worse) future for believers. They are trying to rework the way modernity and religion have, so far, unsuccessfully married. They are trying to work democracy effectively into the faith, and with it the promise of less easily traumatized mores.

Egypt, too, once it frees itself from the tyranny and stasis of Hosni Mubarak and the police state behind him, will likely join them (the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in negating the legitimacy of the truly violent takfiri fundamentalists is unexplored terrain, but it's something to look at).

The Arabs are big players in the current tug of war among Muslims. But they may not be the decisive agents. That honor may go to the Iranians and the Pakistanis, with the much more religious Turks running closely behind.

Arab lands surely will provide more lethal soldiers and philosophers to the jihad. But they will likely join a movement led by Muslims who won't give automatically pride of place to those who come from the historic heartlands. Their passions and their enemies will be shared – note that the three pillars of the Afghan neo-Taliban (Omar, the Haqqanis, and Hekmatyar) have become more virulently anti-American than they were a decade ago, and they were extreme then.

The war aside, this is a natural evolution: The best and the brightest of the Islamist cause will think and hate globally.

Islamic history has regularly seen ideas and institutions germinate with the Arabs and then spread among the more numerous and more powerful peoples of the faith. As bin Laden has never appeared to be a man of particular Arab hubris, and his akoya pearl affection for Afghanistan and Pakistan appears to be real, he's probably content to see the evolution. We shouldn't be.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former CIA specialist on the Middle East. He is the author of "Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey Into Revolutionary Iran."