These days, press coverage of the Middle East is all bombs and burkhas, but Victoria Jamali is fighting a very different battle. The Iranian woman cofounded one of her country’s most active nonprofits, the Women’s Society Against Environmental Pollution. Now, along with colleagues at the University of Tehran, she is launching Iran’s first environmental law program. U.S. environmentalists have called Jamali an Iranian John Muir. She is leading Iran’s movement against severe water and air pollution (cities like Tehran must close their schools in the fall, when air pollution is most severe); against threats to the country’s wildlife (such as the rare Persian cheetah); and against the general lack of environmental regulation in her society.
