Spengler of the Asia Times gives us his diagnosis and prognosis for Iran. First, the diagnosis:
Iranian dissidents put overall unemployment at 30% and youth unemployment at 50%. Government subsidies sustain a very large portion of the population; 42% of the non-agricultural population is employed by the Iranian state, compared with 17% in Pakistan.
…
What most analysts, including this writer, foresaw as a medium-term problem seems to have confronted Iran much sooner than expected. The present inflation rate of about 20%, driven by a 40% rate of monetary expansion, suggests that government resources are already exhausted. Governments resort to the printing press when they no longer can raise sufficient funds through taxation, sales of state-owned commodities such as oil, or borrowing. That is surprising, considering that Iran reported a current-account surplus of US$13 billion last year. The fact that Iran cannot stabilize its currency suggests a breakdown of political consensus within the regime, and a scramble by different elements in the regime to lay hands on whatever resources it can.
He then talks about Ahmadinejad’s foolish decision to peg bank lending rates well below inflation rates, assuring near-term disaster for the economy. Finally, he gets to the prognosis:
What strategic consequences ensue from Iran’s economic misery? Broadly speaking, the choices are two. In the most benign scenario, Iran’s clerical establishment will emulate the Soviet Union of 1987, when then-prime minister Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged that communism had led Russia to the brink of ruin in the face of vibrant economic growth among the United States and its allies. Russia no longer had the resources to sustain an arms race with the US, and broke down under the pressure of America’s military buildup.
The second choice is an imperial adventure. In fact, Iran is engaged in such an adventure, funding and arming Shi’ite allies from Basra to Beirut, and creating clients selectively among such Sunnis as Hamas in Palestine.
He believes that Iran will continue to pursue imperialism, and that eventually the situation will devolve into internal and external violence. Yet another reason to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities.
May 30, 2008 at 10:02 am
And yet the Kossacks are claiming that anything Iran does is a bogus “false flag” operation by Bushco.
May 30, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Oh, please. No sane person ought to even listen to the Kossacks. I don’t. Call me intolerant or whatever…I simply refuse to even consider their opinions. If the Chief Kossack were before me, I’d show him the hand. *snap snap*
Iran is a mess.
One of the tenets of the realist interpretation of international relations states that states are rational and unitary. In other words, they have explicit reasons for their policies, which support the state’s interests (which in the realist interpretation is always national security and military strength and might and prestige), and that a state acts in a uniform, united matter, all units essentially well-oiled cogs in a massive machine.
Iran shows that this is not the case. It has many competing interests and methods to pursue or further them, and the various internal factions are jockeying for position, influence, and dominance. Iran is, in fact, a truly messed up and divided place. Even politically and ethnically. (Interesting note: the Balochi nationalist terrorists are as much as a threat to Iran as they are to Pakistan.)
I just hope, for our sake, Iran implodes and a sane and West-friendly regime comes into power.
But I do wonder how we’d deal with a state that is practically a theocracy. How do we eradicate this ideology and aspect from their paradigm?