Iran’s 30-year-old republic
Defiant, and doubtful
Feb 5th 2009 CAIROFrom The Economist print edition
Iran gives America the finger
FEBRUARY 1st marked the 30th anniversary of the return to Iran of the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini (see article), and his heirs have been celebrating the ensuing Islamic revolution. On February 2nd, to much fanfare, they launched an “indigenous” satellite, borne into space on a rocket of Iranian making, however much it may have owed to North Korean and other technology. Despite protestations that the achievement was entirely benign, with no menacing implications, it was greeted by the new administration in Washington with “great concern”. No wonder: reversing his predecessors’ stand-offishness, Barack Obama has indicated that he is ready for a direct dialogue with Iran. Launching a Safir-2 rocket looks very much like putting up a finger.
Iranians are no doubt proud of their scientific triumphs, despite the international sanctions that are unfairly, in their eyes, imposed on them, for their country’s obdurate pursuit of nuclear technology. They largely agree about such things as the wickedness of American support for Israel and the justice of the Palestinian cause. But, if visitors to Iran are struck by anything, it is the dominant mood of weariness. Unlike the Soviet Union or China in the 1950s, Iran is not sealed off from the world. Via the internet, satellite dishes, travel and interaction with a 2m-strong diaspora, its people are painfully aware of the prosperous cosmopolitanism enjoyed elsewhere.
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They cannot help wondering why, with its educated population and bountiful resources, including the world’s second-largest reserves of both oil and natural gas, Iran struggles with high unemployment, low wages and surging inflation. Even if sanctions are partly to blame, rather than the all-too-evident managerial failings of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, they cannot help asking why the world should be so hostile. Yes, they believe that Iran is a great country, and should be treated as such. But does this require constant friction with other countries, or postponing all fun to the afterlife?
The urgency of these questions will grow as the next presidential election, in June, approaches. Despite the official bluster, the idea of a thaw with the West has lately been provoked by such melting events as visits by American sports teams and academics, and a directive from NATO letting its members seek supply routes through Iran for their forces in Afghanistan. This warmth has been accompanied by a crash in oil prices that is likely to slash government revenues in half, brutally shrinking Iran’s margin for manoeuvre.
But Mr Ahmadinejad is not rolling over. Iran has pointedly failed to issue visas to an American women’s badminton team this month. The president still enjoys strong backing from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And his hardline allies, who have kept the reformist opposition in check since ousting it in 2005, may well now fix the June poll. In any event, they are hardly likely to allow the election of either a liberalising Gorbachev or a pragmatic Deng Xiaoping. But faced with the temptation of a more welcoming outside world, and the danger of economic paralysis at home, whoever it is that runs the Islamic republic may be obliged to opt for one of those models. After all, even the revolutionary imam himself, Ayatollah Khomeini, after eight years of war with Iraq, chose to “drink the cup of poison” and make peace with Iran’s most loathed neighbour, Saddam Hussein.