Now is an extraordinary time to be in Iran.

Men and women, babies, teenagers and elderly people, are cloaked head to toe in black. Main roads are blocked off and streets are filled with mourners waving red, green and black flags. 

Brightly coloured alams (metallic ornaments engraved with verses from the Quran or names of the Prophet Muhammad and his children) are twirled by master spinners as rhythmic poems and chants are recited -- sometimes thunderously fervent -- other times subdued and mellow. 

Each verse is recited in perfect sync with the sound of drums and beating chests, and each seems to prompt a new flood of tears.

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The United States will not tolerate the countries of the world acting like the United States, senior U.S. officials say.

In particular, according to U.S. officials speaking in a variety of media, the United States will not permit foreign intelligence services to act like U.S. intelligence agencies.

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For all we know, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a fine ophthalmologist with a sympathetic bedside manner.

By all accounts, though, he is not a very nice person. Indeed, he would seem to meet the commonplace definition of "ruthless Middle Eastern despot."

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It's one thing to treat the execution by another country of a large group of political prisoners as a strictly internal matter, unsavory perhaps, but none of our fine, principled Canadian business.

It is something else entirely to treat an apparent plan to commit genocide or something very much like it by that same country as if it were none of our business.