Misreading Tehran

[Rose Siding]

snip>
The severity exists these days mostly as memory and threat, a reservoir of fear that surged to the surface of more liberal Iranians last year when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president. The day after the election, a young secretary given to wearing spring pastels with matching sandals showed up at work looking like a nun. "I am making myself ready," she said.

But the crackdown never came. Iran's ruling theocrats know their failures as well as anyone: stunning rates of opiate addiction, brain drain, traffic fatalities and a feeble per capita income. They clearly have calculated that the nation's young majority will not abide both joblessness and ruthlessness. The fear runs both ways.

....Their traditions are elegant. If they are indeed proud, as the children of empire will be, a particular aspect of history often pointed out these days is that almost all of Iran's wars have been defensive.

"Why don't Americans know this about us?" a man asked me last month in Arak , where the government is building a water reactor as part of its nuclear program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301373.html

And one of the companion pieces:

THE IRANIAN MOMENT
Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi)

....How is it that Bush, who vowed that on his watch "the worst weapons will not fall into the worst hands," has chosen to beat such an ignominious retreat?

....I know it is not too late for us, not too late to give substance to Bush's words, not too late to redeem our honor.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301375.html

Richard Perle is worried about his honor