On the second Saturday of April, 44-year-old Mahsa Torabi put on a pair of black running pants and a blue sweater with green reflective stripes. That day, she would become the first woman to ever publicly finish a marathon in Iran. She chose a pink-patterned hijab, and she set out for Naqsh-e Rustam, an ancient necropolis in Fars Province, right across the Persian Gulf from Kuwait. It was 6 a.m., and the only sign that the first international marathon in Iran’s history would take place that morning was a ribbon across the starting line. Torabi took one photo in the dark of the desolate cour

In Iran, women are strongly discouraged from attending soccer matches in public. So those female soccer fans aren't sitting on the sidelines anymore -- they're playing the game themselves. Even in Iran's oppressive culture, revolution is happening. A generation of females is playing soccer as never before. That's no exaggeration: As recently as 2005, there were no Iranian women playing organized soccer in the country. According to a new feature by Bill Spindle in The Wall Street Journal, that number is now up to 4,000 and growing. At the heart of this change is an Iranian-American wom