Class Warfare - Iranian Style

If you watch BBC World News, you'll notice that young Iranians are willingly defying authority. Throwing stones as if it was the first intifada. But why? If you look carefully, you'll notice that these young Iranians are westernized. The ones protesting is the MTV generation of Iran in a country where the median age is near 26 years. However, we don't see the rustic country folk resisting Ahmadinejad's election as much as they are. The Iranian election was about class warfare. The poor, religious working class against the somewhat well-off urbanites.

Ahmadinejad knows his base and throughout his 4 years in office he visited these rural provinces many times and gave much of the oil money to them to ease their life. In a country where oil subsidizes everything, the poor really need the money however this money is clearly as the Americans would call pork. Even as oil prices fluctuated the poor were better off under the leadership of a blacksmith's son. How was Mousavi going to compete with that? Without looking at the demography of the country, Mousavi was outnumbered even if there was some vote irregularities.

Also, the election is a signal that Iran does not want to engage the US, despite offers from Barack Obama of dialogue some day. Iran is going it alone, especially with regards to its nuclear programme making the entire region nervous. In Ahmadinejad's second term we could see a desperate action undertaken by Israel or worse - a nuclear arms race in the Middle East

Besides, when you really examine it. Do you think the Iranian Republican Guard and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei was going to let Mousavi win? They vowed to crush his "Green Movement" if he caused any trouble after the election and he maybe under house arrest right now. The Ayatollah has all the cards in that pseudo-democracy. It was just a matter of time until the Iranian people realized they didn't have a true democracy. Hopefully, it will make them realize what they voted for was a sham. Too bad it took them so long to see it.