Dispatch From Iran

Newsweek:
Iranians may have lost faith in the mullahs, but they're not about to overthrow them.

Beneath the surface, though, one finds that the Islamic revolution is still alive and well. Too well, in fact. Although the revolution has curbed many of its excesses, it's become institutionalized. It is an old, familiar umbrella of oppression that now stays just distant enough to be tolerated, even if it is little loved. The clerics who still control Iran can upset lives at any time, however, and without recourse to legal appeal.


Such is the paradox of Iran today. After years of turmoil, including mass street protests against the regime in the 1990s, the revolution has adapted. Among the public, political apathy now reigns. Active political opposition to Islamic rule is all but gone. And the current government, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is adopting a rather savvy tactic of letting ordinary people enjoy themselves a bit and, above all, taste the fruits of prosperity.

Young Iranians say it's still possible to have a life. As long as one doesn't cross certain known "red lines"—like openly criticizing the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—the mullah state doesn't ruthlessly crush dissent. Instead, the government tries to nitpick and hound offenders out of the political arena. If your newspaper goes a bit over the line—which usually means questioning the clerics—the authorities will ban it for a few months. If you want to run for office but run afoul of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Intelligence or Iran's all-powerful Guardian Council—which ensures Islamic fealty—you won't be arrested in the dead of night and taken to a secret prison. Instead, your application to get on the ballot will just be mysteriously denied.

The success of this oppressive but subtly effective system should give the regime-change advocates in Washington some pause. From the evidence in the streets of Tehran, there is no indication that this is a government or a political system that's ripe for overturning.

So where is Iran headed? Religious conservatives today openly invoke the "China model," whereby the mandarins in Beijing managed to quash political dissent after the Tiananmen Square democracy movement by redirecting the desire for more freedom into a booming economy.

Here in Iran, the political ferment that appeared in the 1990s when the reformist President Mohammad Khatami took office has been tamped down with an analogous formula: Ahmadinejad and his "new right" have kept most of the Khatami-era social reforms and focused most of their ire on weeding out dissenters. Warning to Washington: it seems to be working.