Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi wasted no time in making her award as political as possible. Within hours of her return to Iran on Tuesday from a conference in France, she demanded that the government release all political prisoners and detainees.
It was as it should be - the winner of the world's most prestigious award using her new-found standing to make the world a better place.
The Oslo-based Nobel Institute's choice of Ms Ebadi, a 56-year-old lawyer and human rights activist, was surprising, but nonetheless in keeping with its objectives of making a political statement of its own. Iran, accused by the United States and its allies of harbouring terrorists, producing nuclear weapons and denying its citizens basic rights and freedoms, was to be its cause this time around.
When the award was announced last Friday, Iran's officials were slow to respond. President Mohammad Khatami finally congratulated Ms Ebadi on Tuesday, but he also called the accolade a 'political' tool and lamented that it was not awarded on merit, as other Nobel prizes were.
Mr Khatami had either failed to grasp the meaning of what the Nobel Peace Prize is about, or was being purposefully obtuse in the face of the massive show of support by ordinary Iranians to their new-found heroine. For a leader who calls himself a reformer, but is pinned behind the authority of Islamic hardliners, the latter is most likely the case.
Ms Ebadi has been denounced by Iranian conservatives as wanting to dismantle the Islamic system through western-backed means. She was the country's first female judge, but lost her job in the 1979 Islamic Revolution when women were barred from the judiciary. She has since worked to further the cause of human rights in Iran, representing dissident writers, intellectuals and anti-government protesters. Such credentials fit the Nobel Institute's ideal for a Peace Prize winner.
With 165 nominations, making the most relevant choice would not have been easy for the five-member selection committee representing all ideological spectrums of Norwegian politics. Names submitted by former winners, politicians, history and political-science professors, and the committee members themselves, are never released publicly.
