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State Of Fear
Iran's religious rulers are unleashing a new crackdown against women in western dress. Women wearing clothes deemed unislamic by the mullahs face fines or imprisonment, while police have been instructed to arrest other dangers to the state including people walking their dogs and "men with outlandish hairstyles." Fines for owning satellite television dishes have multiplied by fifty.
Is this the behaviour of a confident government?
The Guardian, which carries the report, claims that the new, strictly enforced dress code is the first clear sign of suppression of dissent by fundamentalist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The new regime believes that the more relaxed dress code favoured by many Tehran women is a symbol of the previous reformist presidency.
Among the new laws, taxi companies will be held responsible for the attire of women passengers. Firms can be closed if they repeatedly drive women in non-approved dress. Women motorists who do not wear the hijab correctly can be stopped, while stores selling unislamic clothing have been raided. The Guardian compares the crackdown with "the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution, when women wearing lipstick were often confronted by female vigilantes wiping their faces clean with handkerchiefs, which were said to often conceal razor blades."
Tolerance of satellite dishes, which brought global television to millions of Iranian homes ends too - Tehran has raised the fine from £50 to £3000.
The newspaper reports that the purge is being led by Nader Shariatmaderi, a Tehran councillor with close ties to the president. Shariatmaderi claims his crackdown will bring Iran closer to "social utopia."
Why this frenzy of intolerance? It's tempting to see the purge in the light of president Ahmadinejad's sabre-rattling towards Israel and the United States. Iran's nuclear programme is advancing fast towards the stage where it will be able to build a nuclear bomb. Many in the west see conflict as inevitable, and Ahmadinejad's regime using a crackdown on western habits to stir up hatred in advance of attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities.
But these are fearful fascists. Not just from a military position, though Iran has everything to lose if it choses to provoke a confrontation with the west. The Iranian regime fears western habits, perhaps even more than American bombs. Satellite television brings news from the outside world - bloggers and the internet provide Iranians with non-approved reporting and criticism of the government.
Behind the bravado, clothing purges are the sign of government fearful it is losing grip.
Women choosing to wear western-style clothes - or even the looser headscarves many educated women favour but which the state has just banned - are a symbol of an alternative Islam, no less pious but not so confrontational - or medieval, if you like.
Iran is changing. While it's probably true to say that a majority of its people want the authorities to continue with a nuclear power programme, if not a nuclear bomb, most of its youthful population, beginning to see and hear news from the outside world for the first time, will not want to be conscripted into Ahmadinejad's vision of national suicide martyrdom.
Many Iranians will resist the Talibanisation of their country. It's unlikely that the mass slaughters of dissidents that accompanied the 1979 revolution could happen today - and despite Ahmadinejad's presidential victory, most citizens see their future as a part of the international community, not as a closed-off state sacrificing itself for a medieval religious ideal.
Friendship with the United States is some decades away, perhaps, but for now both sides (outside Ahmadinejad's camp of cranks) would make do with mutual tolerance.
Elsewhere in the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash peers into the near future and lists the possible consequences of a US-led attack on Iran's nuclear facilities in 2009 (ordered by president Hillary Clinton, no less).
Panic in the oil markets, postponed elections amid mass protests in London, 10,000 victims of Iran-backed suicide bombers and dirty bombs in Tel Aviv, London and New York City.
Garton Ash puts the turning point as spring this year, when Ahmadinejad revealed Iran's success in enriching uranium, not long after declaring his plans to "wipe Israel off the map."
"Whether true or not, these claims effectively destroyed the last hopes of achieving a diplomatic solution through negotiations led by the so-called E3 - France, Germany and Britain," he writes.
It's a bleak outlook. Garton Ash's aim, we suppose, is to demonstrate that conflict is not inevitable but that we may face such a disaster if we refuse to continue seeking diplomatic solutions.
Despite the usual "blame the Jews" and "Bush will kill us all before 2009" rants on the comments section below Garton Ash's piece are several interesting comments.
One presents an alternative future, where Clinton backed down from an attack. Following an escalation in Islamist terror attacks and Israeli retaliation, Iran succeeds in dropping a nuclear weapon on Tel Aviv, killing 140,000 people. Israel retaliates, wiping out much of Iran. A war in the middle east continues for several years, killing millions. But thankfully, writes the contributor, this didn't happen as Hillary had the cojones to destroy Iran's nuclear programme in 2009.
Another adds that Garton Ash only tells half the story, as if the end of Iran's nuclear programme followed by Iran-backed terror attacks on western targets would be the end of the story. Nope: Retaliation by the US would ensure that the Iran regime - and probably most of Iran's people - would not see 2010.
Is this the glorious future Ahmadinejad plans for his people? An unwinnable battle against modernity, followed by an unwinnable battle against the world's superpowers? No wonder the mullahs are frightened.
As ever, it's good to look to the estimable Mark Steyn for a summary of the situation. Here he is in the Sun-Times:
"You know what's great fun to do if you're on, say, a flight from Chicago to New York and you're getting a little bored? Why not play being President Ahmadinejad? Stand up and yell in a loud voice, "I've got a bomb!" Next thing you know the air marshal will be telling people, "It's OK, folks. Nothing to worry about. He hasn't got a bomb." And then the second marshal would say, "And even if he did have a bomb it's highly unlikely he'd ever use it." And then you threaten to kill the two Jews in row 12 and the stewardess says, "Relax, everyone. That's just a harmless rhetorical flourish." And then a group of passengers in rows 4 to 7 point out, "Yes, but it's entirely reasonable of him to have a bomb given the threatening behavior of the marshals and the cabin crew.""
