Opinion: Obama’s Nobel Prize Should Benefit 2003 Iranian Laureate

President Obama should donate his Nobel Peace Prize medal and monetary award to Shirin Ebadi, the past Nobel laureate and Iranian human-rights activist who is facing tax charges in her native country, a commentator writes in a Wall Street Journal commentary.

The president, who will accept the award in Oslo this week, has said he will give the $1.4-million cash prize to charity. The Iranian government, which claims Ms. Ebadi owes $410,000 in back taxes, recently seized her 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and other valuables in a raid on her husband’s bank safe.

Terming the Nobel committee’s awarding of this year’s prize to Mr. Obama “an empty gesture,” Emanuele Ottolenghi, a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a commentator on Israeli and Iranian affairs, writes that the president could “give meaning” to the award by donating it to Ms. Ebadi and directing that the prize money be used to pay her fines and support human-rights causes in Iran.