The reality has always been there but now it cannot lurk behind the curtain of deception and tergiversation which has been the stock in trade of Tehran (and Qom.) Nor can one be blinded any longer by hopes that somehow the mullahs might change their ways.
Iran is seen wide open as what it has been for years and years now. It is a weapons happy, expansive, subversion oriented wannabe global power and regional hegemon, which keeps its inner peace by the worst of police state means in the midst of general poverty and specific corruption, skewed government expenditures, and mullah-sanctioned investment in death.
That is not an attractive picture to see and accept. Particularly if you are a member of the hope-for-change crew surrounding the Oval Office. Giving peace a chance is a diminishingly viable option.
The realities of Iran as well as the mullahocracy's blunt indifference to the real world of humans rather than the mythic realm of Mahdis and the establishment of a Tehran Caliphate can be seen a handful of factual matters.
The majority of the Iranian population is under twenty-five.
Inflation runs at or above twenty-five per cent.
Unemployment is above twenty-five percent overall and approaches fifty percent among the youth of the country.
Despite the surge in global oil prices during recent years or its return to the above seventy dollar level in the past few weeks, the wealth has not benefited either the Iranian people generally or the overall economy. There has been no investment for the future.
Iran has a maximum of thirty years more oil production at current rates of extraction.
The Iranians are aware of reality. Consider that the total fertility rate back in the early days of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the time of the Iran-Iraq War hovered around 6.8. By 2000 the TFR had shrunk to 2.0. Currently it sits at the 1.7 level, which makes it lower than the European or American average.
While the mullahs of Qom contemplate religiously driven fantasies of the Tehran Caliphate and dare any to interfere with their nuclear (and terror) powered drive to turn fantasy into reality, the Iranian man and woman on the street faces the future with a pervasive fear which expresses itself in the ever-dropping birth rate.
Sometimes a declining total fertility rate is a sign of prosperity and faith in the future. This interpretation has long been a standard contention behind arguments in favor of economic policies which seek the conversion of proletariat into good bourgeois. However, in Iran the falling fertility couples with the negative development of the economy and the perceived probability of a highly lethal war to scream, "We're scared of tomorrow!"
The Iranian mullahs and those who have benefited from the massive subsidies of various sorts distributed among the poor, the hyper-pious, the marginal, the displaced peasantry by the freshly re-elected Ahemidinejad have combined to keep Iran and its people in a nuclear bunker eating poorly and crushed by the security forces if they have the temerity to complain about their (wretched) lot in life. Such are the joys and consequences of living in a country whose government is a theocracy with a thin veneer of controlled democracy.
Oh, well. The founder of today's Iran, Grand Ayatollah Khomenei, made it clear that both humor and democracy were contrary to the foundation of Islam. His successor, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei has carried that line forward--and expanded upon it.
While there may be some sort of examination of the election by the Guidance Council, it will amount to nothing but the application of white wash. After all, the head of the body is a cleric who is cut from the same ideological cloth as Ahmedinejad. Likewise the protests and tweets will go on for at least a few more days. Then the ruckus will subside, crushed by the police both religious and secular. Arrests will be made. Web sites will be blocked. Some (called the "lucky") will be able to flee the "Islamist Paradise" as East Germans at one time raced from the "Workers Paradise."
Most of those who wanted and voted for change no matter how slight and cosmetic will stay, sullen and morose in their minority role. The mullahs and their anointed Orator-in-Chief will continue to ride high and talk loud. The centrifuges will spin. The Weapons Group will refine their designs. New missiles will be tested.
At the same time, the Europeans and their willing student and emulator, President Obama, will continue to urge diplomacy be given enough time to work. Will continue to hope the myth of the "International Community" will actually do something to abate the fear, abate the pending threat of Iran with a nuclear capability.
As has been the case before with such emerging, high-visibility, high-threat governments as those of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union, transparency will bring no increase in the resolve of those threatened to stop the threat before it is too late. As it was, so is it now.
The world has been given an unmistakable wake-up call. Will it slumber on?
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