AP Photo

Over the past 72 hours, the city of Tehran has become a glass house. The windows are a bit dirty due to media censorship, but through Web sites like YouTube and Twitter -- and simply by word of mouth -- the world has gotten a decent glimpse of threats to the Islamic Republic being met with an iron fist.

Most of the Western media coverage of the demonstrations in Tehran has been emotion-driven and focused on a segment of the Iranian population -- dominated by educated, young urban elites -- that has dared to cross a line by shouting "death to the dictator" against the president and supreme leader, and in calling for a Green Revolution to bring down the system established by the Islamic Revolution. This somewhat distorted coverage not only fails to seriously consider Iranian...