Perhaps they haven’t seen the gut-wrenching images of young Neda Soltani bleeding to death in the streets of Tehran.

Maybe they’re unaware that by the Iran’s constitution, a woman’s life counts for half that of a man.

And perhaps somehow they are unclear that the most compelling aspect of the election protests in Iran is the fact women have taken such a key role in the dissent.

Only ignorance of these facts could excuse NOW’s deafening silence on the treatment of women in Iran at this crucial time, as the election-related revolt slips from the front pages to the back, from the top of our minds to a place of lesser importance.

Sadly, NOW—our purported National Organization for Women—has remained mute at this historic moment. It is a failure of the highest magnitude.

Look at the organization’s homepage and you’ll see the group will speak out on all sorts of women’s topics—even managing to condemn the light sentence rapper Chris Brown got for beating up his famous girlfriend. But not one word about the women of Iran.

Look more closely, however, and you see what critics have long said: NOW’s “concern” for women is but a red herring, a tool for rallying around only leftist politics.

Nothing else could explain why NOW has chosen to back the play of its President, and remain essentially mute on the goings-on in this repressive regime. NOW has accepted the false choice Obama has presented us, where his cowardice is high-minded and voicing support for the protesters means you want to invade Iran. There is no in-between for these “feminists.”

Amazingly, NOW seems not to care that the women of Iran clearly aren’t calculating the policy differences between Barack Obama and Dick Cheney. They’d just like a little freedom, as highlighted in the fantastic NY Times article by Roger Cohen:

Women marched in 1979, too. But when the revolution was won, women were pushed out. Their subjugation became a pillar of the Islamic state. One woman told me that she had been 20 when she fought to oust the shah. “It’s simple,” she said. “We wanted freedom then, and we don’t have it now.”

If one looks more closely at NOW’s goals, this really shouldn’t be a surprise; one merely has to understand they have their stated priorities out of order.

On its website, “top priorty” issues include “violence against women,” and one could easily be excused for thinking this might include speaking out against the oppression of females in Iran.

A little further down, however, “other issues” include “fighting the right.”

If they would just be honest with themselves and switch these two—no, put “fighting the right” above all others—then it would be easier for folks to understand why NOW has abandoned Iran’s women like they’d step over George W. Bush if he needed a helping a hand.

Do us all a favor and just change your name, NOW, because women rights clearly are not your chief concern.