Dangerous fissures in Iranian society

While the Arab spring unfolds all round them, the citizens of Iran seem condemned to a lonely purgatory. Their 1979 revolution promised refuge from the Shah’s roller-coaster rule, but the Islamic Republic that replaced it is beset by an equally secular malaise. A soaring murder rate (the country’s top weightlifter was a recent victim), family breakdown and chronic levels of personal debt are standard topics of conversation in homes and on buses that ply the capital. The country’s most accomplished filmmaker depicts a society that is built on deception and mired in strife. At a middle-class dinner party, a female guest talks casually of driving her car off a cliff.

The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, disapproves of all this Cassandraism. Under his guidance, he believes, Iran has become internationally respected — especially for its refusal to give up a controversial nuclear programme in the face of international sanctions. Khamenei demands an end to ‘negativist’ statements from the country’s officials, which breed ‘hopelessness’.

Iran’s leaders put a stop to participatory politics when they rigged the 2009 presidential election in favour of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and crushed the opposition ‘green’ movement that rose up in response. Its figureheads, Mir Hussain Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, were put under house arrest last winter. But the silencing of organised opposition has not bro… >>>

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Iranian Singles

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Serena Shim Award
Meet your Persian Love Today!
Meet your Persian Love Today!