Letting the bad times roll in Tehran

Sunday Scotsman:

RENTS are soaring, inflation hovers around 17% and 10 million live below the poverty line. The police said they shut 20 men's barber shops last week because they offered inappropriate hairstyles, and women have been banned from riding bicycles in many places, as a crackdown on social freedoms presses on.

For most of this year, Iranians have endured economic hardships, political repression and international isolation as the nation's top officials remained defiant over Tehran's nuclear programme. But in a country whose leaders see national security, government stability and Islamic values as inextricably entwined, problems that would usually constitute threats to the leadership are instead viewed as an opportunity to secure its rule.

Paradoxically, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's economic missteps and the animosity generated in the West by his aggressive posture on the nuclear issue have helped Iran's leaders hold back what they see as corrupting foreign influences, by increasing the country's economic and political isolation.

Pressure from the West over Iran's nuclear programme and its role in Iraq, including biting economic sanctions, have also empowered those pushing the harder line.

"The leader is concerned that any effort to make the country more manageable will lead to reform and will undermine his authority," said Saeed Leylaz, an economist and former government official.

The effort to keep Iran's doors to the West sealed tight was on display last weekend, when Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had developed 3,000 centrifuges and mocked the West for trying to press Iran to stop uranium enrichment and slow its nuclear programme.

Later, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, used western pressure to rally public sentiment. "Iran will defeat these drunken and arrogant powers using its artful and wise ways," he told a group of students.

...

They are exhibiting all the wisdom of a stump. Their economic performance is worse than a corrupt Democrat in a big city. While they may think they have new excuses for cracking down, they are losing the hearts and minds war in their own country and are only barely holding on through repression and subjugation. There are many groups that have been alienated and hopefully we are finding ways to support those groups.