March
1, 2007: The government announced a new crackdown on women who don't
cover up sufficiently. Every year, the morality police (mostly volunteers)
brace themselves for the arrival of Spring, and lots of young women who dress
in revealing clothing, and dare the morality police to do anything about it.
The government fears that eventually, a confrontation between some morality
police, and some of their fashion victims, could ignite violence that might
spiral out of control.
February
27, 2007: The United States has presented more evidence that Iran is smuggling
weapons and weapons components into Iraq. The U.S. believes that Iranian
designed roadside bombs have caused several hundred American causalities.
February
25, 2007: A modified Shahab 3 ballistic missile was launched without a
warhead, as a test of the ability of this missile to put satellites in orbit.
The missile went high enough (over a hundred kilometers) to have put a payload
into orbit. But it will be a few more years before Iran can put a small
satellite into orbit with its own launchers. Meanwhile, Russia is putting
Iranian satellites into orbit.
February
24, 2007: In the northwest, some 17 kilometers from the Turkish border,
secret police troops fought Kurdish separatists. There were nearly a hundred
casualties, including several from a government helicopter that crashed in bad
weather, or was shot down. The Kurds are believed to belong to the PKK separatist
organization, that has bases in northern Iraq, but does most of its violence in
eastern Turkey. PKK is trying to get Iranian Kurds interested in joining a
Kurdish state.
Iran
accuses the United States of stirring up its minorities, but the half of the
population that isn't ethnic Iranian has never needed any encouragement to be
unruly. The current Iranian nation is the remnant of a much larger empire. The
non-Iranian subjects of the empire have never been happy with their situation,
although the ethnic Iranians often think otherwise.
February
21, 2007: UN nuclear weapons inspectors report that Iran has ignored UN demands
and continued to process uranium into nuclear fuel. Iran has expanded this
process, despite UN threats of greater sanctions.
