Iran's Troubled Economy and The Diabolus Magnus

Iran Comment

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenai has lashed out at President Ahmadinejad over the state of the Iranian economy. (Why is it that supreme leaders are never elected? Would elections reduce their supremacy?) This sharp criticism may help bring Mr. Ahmadinejad back to earth, down from his perch in the glare of international media and nuclear crisis management. Perhaps the media party is almost over for him. He came to power with promises of reform and improving the economy, something he has not done and is not likely to succeed in doing even if he knew how, not against the wishes of the clerics.
Official figures have mentioned an inflation rate of 10%, and in the Middle East one must add a political cheat premium of at least another 5% (actually another 10% is more reasonable). The unelected Ayatollah has put the economic blame on the elected president, an easy ploy, but attempts at economic and political reform in the past were aborted by the entrenched conservative clerics and their parliamentary allies.

The reality or Iran is that, beyond all the publicity about confrontation with the West (read Washington), and the adulation in some regional Arab media about its nuclear ambitions, the country is as besieged today as it has ever been. True, the hated throat-slitting, chastity-belt peddling, serial-marrying Taliban are gone from next door in Afghanistan, but now there are the forces of the Great Satan and her allies. And the Afghan warlords, poppy-growers and opium smugglers next door are thriving as well. True, the unstable Saddam Hussein, who was never able to resist a war that he could start, has gone into full O.J. courtroom mode. Now the forces of the Great Satan are in tenuous control of Baghdad, and Arab leaders, once shameless hairy cheerleaders for the murderous Ba'ath, are brazenly trying to shift the blame to Tehran for the mess in Iraq.

In fact the whole neighborhood, that is the Arab World from the Tigris to beyond the Nile, is today American territory, covered by a Pax Americana unprecedented since the days of the Roman Empire. Even the Roman Empire never reached the Tigris- that remained Parthian (Persian) territory until the Moslem conquests. Old triumvir Marcus Crassus did a Saddam more than two thousand years ago and invaded across the Tigris- they never found him or his legions nor, more imporatnt for the Romans, did they recover the sacred eagles that he carried.
This is a painful Pax Diabol(ic)us Magnus to the clerics in Tehran. The only exception, the only regional wriggle room the mullahs have, lies in a strip along the southern border of Lebanon and perhaps in Gaza.

Most of the people in Iran are fed up with the leadership, especially city folks, and are unlikely to worry much about the proximity of this Diabolus Magnus, a name often used by the mullahs that most of the people do not agree with and none use privately. Most likely, most Iranians could not care less what happens in the Arab lands to their south and west, across the Persian Gulf or the Zagross Mountains. They have their own tenacious local fundamentalist demons that they would dearly love to shake off. Still, it is wise to know that foreign forces or bombers will not be met with flowers in Iran.

Cheers
Mohammed