Welcome to Iran.(Scan: Short news and commentary)(A Few Simple Shots)(Movie review)

The world is "a little bit late" in coming to understand the true nature of Iran's Islamic regime, says expatriate Joseph Akrami. As a youth in Iran, says the soft-spoken filmmaker, "I wanted just one thing: to get out of that hellish country." Akrami's new documentary A Few Simple Shots is a stark and disturbing explanation why.

Three years in the making, and one of the only films in existence documenting the human rights abuses of one of the most ruthless regimes in the world, this work is both grim and gripping. A recent screening at the American Enterprise Institute wasn't a typical night at the movies. Akrami has produced a rare combination of images capable of riveting an audience while inducing their repulsion. Audience members gasped, wept, and at times turned their heads away from the screen.

For most us in the West, it's difficult to comprehend an establishment that routinely arrests, imprisons, tortures, and executes its own people. But for the Iranian mullahcracy, terror is the key to staying in power. Why else would officials lash a young girl to death for wearing a bathing suit in her own backyard?

The heart of the film is the personal testimonies of Iranians describing their experiences in state-run prisons: the grown man, sobbing into the camera, trying to describe how much more ...