Fifteen years ago the supreme leader of Iran, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, met with 18-year-old Omid Kokabee, a high-school graduate of extraordinary talent who performed exceptionally well on the country’s nationwide college entrance exams. Today, Kokabee is dying in an Iranian prison for his refusal to apply his talents to help Iran develop an atomic bomb.

I told the story of Omid Kokabee in two Washington Examiner op-eds published on April 23 and September 2 of last year. He was a physics doctoral student at the University of Texas in Austin when he was arrested in Tehran on a visit with his family during a winter break in 2011.