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Iran Running Scared Of The Net
Numerous mainstream media commentators have discussed how recent events have left Iran in a position of strength. Oil prices are buoyant. Tehran's creature, Hizbollah, boasts of a victory against Israel in this summer's war; in Iraq, Iran's arch-enemy is increasingly tied up against warring factions, at least some of whom act with the blessing of some Iranian clerics. The theocratic state continues its work towards building a nuclear weapon, as the west looks powerless to stop it.
Why, then, is Iran's internal policy more suited to that of a terrified, failing dictatorship than of a cocky regional bruiser?
Under hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's religious police have taken on new force: Satellite dishes, recently tolerated, have been cracked down on. Women are stopped in city streets and harassed for not wearing suitable clothes. Western books such as the DaVinci Code - as well as Iranian classics - are being banned and censored with a zeal not seen since the crazed days of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Now comes news that Iran has blocked access to some of the world's most popular websites, including Amazon and video sharing phenomenon YouTube. The BBC World Service's Farsi website is also blocked.
After China, which the Economist reports this week as employing an army of 30,000 censors, Iran's regime is the most censorious on earth, at least where the web is concerned. It is also one of the Middle East's most wired nations, with 7.5 million internet users, second only to Israel.
Many of these users are bloggers. The Guardian reports that Iran's press, which has been almost completely neutered under its grotesque "information bureau's cultural committee", has been largely replaced by bloggers. Iran's blogs are famously lively and present a picture of life in the nation that the official media chooses to ignore - or, worse, suppress altogether.
Undeterred, the censors are warning that users of "immoral and illegal" material will be found and punished.
Is this the action of an unassailable theocracy? Or, instead, is it a rear guard action by extreme religious conservatives to crush dissent which it knows that, if fed, will eventually overturn it?
Don't hold your breath for a secular revolution in Iran, though. Cynics might argue that the reason Iran can crack down on its citizens with impunity is because it doesn't need to worry about the West's concerns anymore. Previous regimes in Tehran tolerated dissent and outside influence, partly because being seen as too tough would put paid to any chance of rapprochement with the west; Ahmadinejad's supporters claim Iran doesn't need the West's approval.
More depressingly, the regime is now finding it has friends. Hugo Chavez is an admirer; Zimbabwe's monstrous Robert Mugabe another. China, too, doesn't mind who it shakes hands with, while Russia, eager for influence and energy deals, backs Iran too. All supported moves last year to wrest control of the internet domain names system from a US based organisation (the EU, shamefully, signed up for this too).
Ahmadinejad himself is something of a hero on the "Arab Street" thanks to his regular calls for the destruction of Israel and his vociferous support for Hizbollah.
Iran is getting worse: Can the West do anything but wait? However, that is perhaps all it will have to do. A state desperate to shut down dissent, to crush the aspirations of its people - even in the face of a teeming and ubiquitous information culture like that of the Internet - is a brittle one, for all its bravado. Internet use never declines, even in the most restrictive societies. Its users are one step ahead of its censors.
