June 23,
2008: The increasingly rebellious
younger Iranians are fighting back by not getting married. Part of that
reluctance is the poor state of the economy. Many, perhaps 20 percent of more,
of young Iranians are unable to find a job. But the marriage rate has plummeted,
and the government is fighting back by experimenting with a program where young,
male, unmarried employees are threatened with loss of their jobs if they don't
get married within a few months. Meanwhile, trying to play nice, the government
has opened a "woman's only" park in the capital, where women can walk around
without their veils. Newspapers critical of any of these government actions
continue to be shut down, even if run by Islamic conservatives. The clerics who
run the government are increasingly fighting among themselves, both openly and
behind the scenes.
June 21,
2008: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
openly mocked the Western nations failed efforts to halt Irans nuclear
programs. Many Iranian government officials fear further Western sanctions,
especially those that would further restrict Iranian access to the world
banking system. Such sanctions are being planned. To get around this, Iran is
trying to set up new banking operations in South America (particularly
Venezuela). But those efforts are known to the West, and are threatened as
well. So the Iranian government continues to negotiate, even as Iranian president
Ahmadinejad mocks Western efforts to halt his nuclear weapons program. Ahmadinejad
does fear Israel, which he continually threatens with destruction. Recent
Israeli Air Force exercises, which had bombers flying long distances over the
Mediterranean, seemed to be a practice run for a strike on Iran's nuclear
research facilities. In response, Iran cranked up the propaganda machine and
threatened unspecified, but terrible, retaliation, if Israel went after the
nuclear weapons Iran is building (presumably to destroy Israel with.)
June 20,
2008: The government warned Iranians to
cut their electricity use by ten percent, or face blackouts. This, plus the rising
price of oil and more stories about government corruption, have simply made
Iranians more angry with their own government. But not angry enough to do much
about it.
June 19,
2008: In Iraq, U.S. troops have found
proof that Iran has ordered it's Shia militia operatives to carry out bombing
attacks on Shia targets. It was hoped that this would inflame Shia public
opinion against Sunni Arab groups that are now working for the government to
take down al Qaeda.
June 14,
2008: The war on the Pakistani border
won't go away. Baluchi rebels recently surprised, and kidnapped sixteen policemen,
and took them back to Pakistan. The Baluchi tribes also take part in drug
smuggling operations, and will shoot it out with border guards to get through.
All this violence is not just rebellious tribesmen. The Baluchis are Sunni
Moslems, and the Shia majority in Iran considers Sunnis fair game. The
kidnapped policemen are being offered in exchange for the release of a Baluchi
tribal leader held by Iran (who accuse the man of being an al Qaeda leader as
well.) Baluchi tribes are often hospitable to al Qaeda terrorists, because of
shared conservative religious beliefs.
June 10,
2008: A member of a parliamentary
investigative committee, Abbas Palizar, has done the unthinkable. He has
accused senior members of the clergy, by name, of corruption, and detailed the
crimes, and done it publically. President Ahmadinejad is a friend of Palizar,
so this is seen as another round in the war between the Iranian clerical
establishment, and Ahmadinejad's radicals. The secret police came several days
later and arrested Palizar. Most Iranians believe this corruption is mostly
responsible for the terrible state of the economy, and foreign economists are
inclined to agree.
In the
capital, a bomb was found in front of the home of the Iraqi ambassador. The
bomb was defused.
