1188 Under the Persian Rug

1188 Under the Persian Rug

They’re dancing in the streets of Tehran.  Why?  Did Israel fall into the sea?   Did the western world lift its crippling sanctions?  Did some girl manage to put on a bikini and not fall victim to an honor killing?

None of the above.

What happened was the voters chose a new president, Hassan Rowhani, a moderate, so-called.  

He won with almost three times the number of votes than his opponents.

Don’t pick up that rug, lest you fill the air with the dirt that languishes there.

The Mullahs still run Iran.  They still won’t move on any significant economic or nuclear issue.  They’ll still rattle sabers at the west.  And they will control the secular and nearly useless civilian arm of the country’s government.

Rowhani is a moderate like you’re the pilot of a flying … um … carpet.  But he wrote the book -- literally -- on nuclear arms negotiations when he was Iran’s man at the table during the first few years of this century.  It’s called “National Security and Nuclear Policy.”

The crowded field of candidates to replace ultra orthodox fundamentalist hate monger Ahmadinejad was whittled down to three, all of whom are Ahmadinejad-Lite.  The real reformers never made the cut.

So the man “in charge” still reports to the Imam behind the curtain.  And that means no substantial change in the nuke program.  It means no reversal of the country’s terrible economy.  It doesn’t even mean cousin ZohReh will be able to show more forehead in public, let alone put on a bikini.

Persia, once a capital of intellect and diversity, has long forgotten its heritage and its history and turned into a cesspool of anger, hatred and fear.

So don’t look under the carpet.  You won’t like what you see.

But there are a few interesting side notes to this election:

→The voter turnout was over 70%.  Do they know something about elections we don’t?

→The winning candidate got an actual majority, not just a plurality.  It was only a fractional, 50.7%, but that’s enough to avoid a runoff.

A huge chunk of the population was born after the Islamic revolution and a lot of those people aren’t happy with the way things are run.  Could this be a first step in the re-civilization of one of the world’s great civilizations?

Shrapnel:

--Did Putin really steal New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s $25,000 Super Bowl ring?  Vlad says it was a gift. Kraft says he was showing it to Putin who then, surrounded by three KGB bodyguards walked out of the room with the ring in his pocket.

--Revenge of the Nerd... no -- not the movie, the Miss USA contest.  The winner, Erin Brady of Connecticut is a math geek with a job at an accounting firm and who will spend a year touring and campaigning to end drug abuse and breast cancer.  She’d do more good if she also campaigned against arithmophobia.

--Genie in a bottle has nothing on a bear in a jar.  In Bloomsburg, PA. a young bruin got his head stuck in a plastic bottle and it took eleven days to hunt him down, corner him and get his head out of the thing.  The bear was described as “uncooperative.”

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013