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The R-word
Youth increasingly opting for radical surgery to cure the intractable ills of the nation

November 17, 2001
The Iranian

While explicit debates rage on the merits or lack there of a monarchy (constitutional or Persianized), a theocracy, or an oxymoronic Islamic Democracy, here on the Iranian.com, and connotatively on the American mass media outlets, the intended beneficiary is about to have yet another violent convulsion.

The armies of unemployed, over and underemployed are becoming desperate. Wide spread opiate addiction not only has not pacified the populace, it has arisen their universal anger at the facilitating officials. Social dysfunction of all description has reached an epidemic level. According to the official IRNA news agency, on any given day, an average of forty-two runaway boys and girls are apprehended at one of the bus terminals in Tehran. Annualized, that translates into over 2,000, in just one location.

Street walkers, both male and female and intervenes drug addics are on the increase, resulting in a dramatic rise in communicable diseases and AIDS. Large, well organized white slavery operations are supplying desperate souls to the highest bidders, mostly in the little fiefdoms of the Persian Gulf. All this on top of the capital and brain drain (officially estimated at 205,000 last year alone) in addition to refugees fleeing out in every direction.

Graft, nepotism and official corruption has become a rule rather than an exception. Ostentatious spending by the ill-gotten nouveau riche has produced high rises equipped with elevators to take the residets' automobile up to their floor. One connected company even has the gull to advertise their ultra fancy Caspian resort community on the net.

All this in a country where the system cannot make its payroll on time, factory workers routinely go unpaid for months and malnutrition is raising its ugly head. Even the veterans of the Iraqi aggression are not getting their meager stipend on time. Their absence in the last annual claim to fame handiwork, the US Embassy seizure, was clearly noticeable.

With falling oil revenue, refusal of Turkey to honor its pledge to purchase liquid gas, increased food imports due to inefficiency, monopolistic policies, drought devastated farmlands and little foreign investment--(according to the French Embassy in Tehran, the total dollar amount for the duration of this regime stands at a little less than a quarter of billion dollars).

With no hope in sight, the dreaded R-word is creeping in. The generation which was to be the guardian of the revolution is increasingly opting for radical surgery to cure the intractable ills of the nation. Soothing, validating speeches and philosophical sophist hogwash have lost their mesmerizing effect. So has playing the role of the underdog.

The perpetual moving of the goal-post is no longer fooling the majority either. Fewer and fewer people still believe in the problem being that of not having the control of this or the other organ of power, rather the whole ball of wax is the problem. The half-baked, cockamaymy constitution with its codified oppressive clauses and the omnipotent leader is beyound salvation.

The ruling clique in Tehran is making the same mistake its predecessor did. The semi-official spin doctors pooh and puff away all the manifestations of an ominous cataclysmic event. Reassuring and lulling the regime by the numerical might of its apparatus of suppression and the nonexistence of a credible organized alternative.

They have chosen to believe in their own propaganda and forget Iranian history. Time and time again for as long as humanly possible, the Iranian nation has chosen the path of appeasement in face of its oppressors . But, once that fine line has been breached, then the old desperation cry of "een bereh man ham roosh" sets in which nothing, -- absolutely nothing -- can stop once it is set in its destructive motion.

The only silver lining is that the population has been Baptized by fire and is ready, willing and able to take back its rightful place in the community of nations. Therefore, it requires no B-52s to have some sense knocked into their head. The enabling factors could come in the form of refusal to further equip the regime with the technology of oppression and extention of credit. Restricting its operatives overseas travel and alike symbolic actions which would give a clear signal that the jig is up.

There are many many potential leaders in Iran with a life long record of selfless struggle to bring democracy to Iran. Some are rotting in jails, others are free and awaiting a chance to become active once they realize the regime's umbilical cord has been cut. With the Taliban about to go to the dust bin of history, the West should complete the fumigation of the region and in the process earn an eternally grateful ally nation which has a lot more than cheap oil to offer the world democracies. Namely, stability in the entire region and an economical, safe transit route for the newly discovered energy resources of the Stans.

Comment for The Iranian letters section Comment to the writer Shahriar Zangeneh