RANDOM LUNCH

It was all off the record. So I can't tell you what Shirin Ebadi said at lunch yesterday, though I sat next to the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate for nearly two hours and listened closely to her comments about working for human rights in Iran -- how difficult it is, especially under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's radical regime, to protect children and women from social and legal injustices, not to mention the imprisoned journalists who now comprise most of the clients in her Tehran law practice.

The truth is -- and I hate to say this -- nothing she said broke any news, nothing you wouldn't already know from reading the press, so there's nothing to tell even if her remarks had been on the record, except that it was Ebadi speaking.

She is a small, sturdy, earnest woman with close-cropped hair who wears no makeup or jewelry. She's a devout Moslem who dresses Western-style, and speaks cordially in rudimentary English and perhaps less academically in her native Farsi. (It seemed so when her translator spoke for her.) The get-to-know-Ebadi lunch, attended by dozens of reporters, was laid on by Random House, which is publishing her memoir, "Iran Awakening" (due out in May).

She did say one thing that surprised me, though. When asked whether she was alarmed by the prospect of Iran developing a nuclear bomb, she turned the question around. Possession of a nuclear bomb is not in itself the great danger apparently. Let me whisper it without quoting her: She's more alarmed by Iran's lack of democracy. A democratic government must answer to its citizens and, therefore, is not going to use atomic weapons. Out of politeness, I did not say, "Huh?"