NOT SUPREME:

Cartoon from America's past resurfaces in battles over Iran's future (BRIAN MURPHY, 1/12/03, Associated Press)

Protesters in bloodstained shrouds clog streets in Iran's holy city. A popular newspaper is closed and key staff arrested.

The brother of Iran's supreme leader chokes back tears in parliament.

Call it the cartoon crisis.

A torrent of outrage from Muslim hard-liners increased Sunday over a most unexpected provocation: a 66-year-old American political cartoon about a Depression era power struggle.

The drawing, published last week in the now-closed Hayat-e-Nou newspaper, showed a Supreme Court justice being humbled under a giant thumb representing then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Iranian conservatives saw something closer to home.

They felt the white-bearded judge in the cartoon resembled the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. It was considered a stinging insult to his memory.

The newspaper was ordered closed indefinitely Saturday. Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi said three employees involved in publishing the cartoon have been arrested.

You know, it does look like him:

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 12, 2003 11:53 PM