Shirin Ebadi is a maddening woman, as Nobel peace laureates often are. She is the Iranian human-rights lawyer who won the prize in 2003. She has done brave things in her home country, which is why she’s in exile now: The mullahs’ regime has not exactly appreciated her bravery. But she also has odd and vexing things to say about world affairs. Let me give you a taste of her Nobel lecture:

Why is it that in the past 35 years, dozens of U.N. resolutions concerning the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the state of Israel have not been implemented promptly, yet, in the past twelve years, the state and people of Iraq, once on the recommendation of the Security Council and the second time in spite of U.N. Security Council opposition, were subjected to attack, military assault, economic sanctions, and, ultimately, military occupation?

Ebadi thus did an awful lot in one sentence: going after America and Israel, the Great Satan and the Little Satan; condemning both the Gulf War of 1991 and the Iraq War that had started earlier in 2003. Typically for a Nobel peace laureate, she had nothing to say about what Iraqis suffered under Saddam Hussein. For that matter, she had nothing to say about what Kuwaitis suffered under Iraqi occupation, and nothing to say about what Palestinians suffer under their rulers: meaning, of course, their Palestinian rulers.

Human-rights champions can be pitiably selective.

In 2006, Ebadi spoke at a “peace jam” in Denver, an event that featured many Nobel laureates. Ebadi’s special contribution was to say the following about President George W. Bush: “When someone claims that he has a mission from God to bring war to Iraq and kill the people of Iraq, this is a kind of terrorism and a kind of fundamentalism.” When a flaky leftist such as some other Nobel laureates I could name, or an MSNBC personality, lies in this way, it does very little harm: That’s just the way flaky leftists talk. But when a great and esteemed woman lies in this way: It has an effect, it does some harm.

In Oslo last month, I interviewed Ebadi, writing a piece about her in a subsequent National Review. I also wrote about her and her performance at the Oslo Freedom Forum in an online journal, here. And on the site today, I have some extended excerpts from our interview. Go here, if you like. See what you think.

Ebadi is the type to say — how many millions have said this? — Donald Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983. And in 2003, America invaded Iraq, the hypocrites! As though it couldn’t have been right to do one thing in 1983 and another thing 20 years later. (By the way, Rumsfeld begins his memoirs — one of the best American political autobiographies I have ever read — with an account of his meeting with Hussein.)

When the history of Iranian freedom is written, Shirin Ebadi will enjoy a prominent place. In the meantime, she will frustrate the hell out of some of us — which is her perfect right, of course.