Tue May 01, 2007 4:30 am
I would like to think this was true, but don't forget that anyone with any kind of humanity would probably be stopped from standing for election (Khatami was an aberration in this respect and the mullahs probably decided they weren't going to make that mistake again), so the array of candidates is probably likely to be limited.
That said, ultimately, the repressive they get (this business about western hairstyles and the way women wear scarves), the worse things will ultimately get for the Islamists. You can only push people too far; I believe there is a pressure cooker effect, in that the more people are repressed and downtrodden, the more violent the final conflict will be. And it will come. If Ahmedinejad and Khamenei don't want to end up swinging from cranes, they should try and tone down the repression a bit; of course, they won't, but ultimately, it'll be there loss.
The big issue, I think, will not be so much the "religious" strictures and repression, but the fact that the Iranian economy is doing extremely badly. Thousands of educated Iranians are fleeing abroad, unemployment is very high and the country's image abroad, as an international pariah, is deterring investment.
I look forward to the establishment of the Republic of Iran, which will be a beacon of tolerance and justice throughout the Middle East.