Iranian Alert -- DAY 47 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

The Iranian Student Movement Up To The Minute Reports ^ | 7.26.2003 | DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movment in Iran from being reported.

From jamming satellite broadcasts, to prohibiting news reporters from covering any demonstrations to shutting down all cell phones and even hiring foreign security to control the population, the regime is doing everything in its power to keep the popular movement from expressing its demand for an end of the regime.

These efforts by the regime, while successful in the short term, do not resolve the fundamental reasons why this regime is crumbling from within.

Iran is a country ready for a regime change. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary.

Please continue to join us here, post your news stories and comments to this thread.

Thanks for all the help.

DoctorZin

[DoctorZIn]

To find all the links to all 47 threads since the protests started, go to:

[DoctorZIn]

Join Us at the Iranian Alert -- DAY 47 -- LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Live Thread Ping List | 7.26.2003 | DoctorZIn

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

I thought you should be aware of this. I wrote an editorial for Iran va Jahan last weekend entitled, Will CNN Never Learn.

I wrote the editorial based on an article that had been sent to me by an Iranian Student in Iran. Most of you are probably aware of the story, but it was about a young student “Hamid” who had, according to the Gooya.com report, provided video of the regime’s attack on the student dormitories.

Gooya.com reported that the Hamid had provided CNN with a copy of the footage. Hamid was subsequently arrested. It was reported that he had swallowed additional footage just moments before his arrest. He was then taken by the regime, to Evin prison where they performed surgery in the prison to retrieve the footage. Hamid later suffered infections and last Monday, died.

Sunday morning (before Hamid’s death) after hearing this story and out of concern for the health of this young man, I decided to take the Gooya.com report and circulate it to the English-speaking world. My hope was that if we could get media attention to his plight, the regime might make sure he received proper medical attention.

After drafting the editorial I called CNN, asking them to confirm or deny the Gooya.com report. I told them the article was written in Farsi. They said they had people who could translate it. I emailed them a link to the story (around 1PM PST). They confirmed that they received it.

I was told that the person responsible for making comments was at home for the weekend but that they were going to contact her at home and forward my email to her. They asked me by what time I needed to hear their response. I told them that I needed to hear from them before 10PM PST. I was told they would get back to me. They never did.

A few hours later the story was published on the website: Iran va Jahan. The story was then linked on a number of other sites. But after the death of Hamid I assumed interest in the story had faded. Then Thursday, I noticed a “Editor’s Note” under my editorial on Iran va Jahan.

Will CNN Never Learn?

Repeating their Iraqi mistakes in Iran.

7.20.2003

It appears CNN is once again in the business of burying news stories when their reports might embarrass their host country. If it were not for a student from Iran I might not have heard of this report. Fortunately the world of the Internet makes it increasingly difficult for stories to remain hidden from the public. The story I am referring to was published on gooya.com and while written in Persian is available on the net.

http://news.gooya.com/2003/07/18/1807-ff-01.php

I contacted CNN for a response but they chose not to.

Gooya.com is reporting that an Iranian student, Hamid, provided CNN with video of the attack on the student dormitories by the regime. The student was arrested by the regime and taken to the same prison, Evin where the Canadian/Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was tortured. Kazemi eventually died allegedly under the hands of the regime official Saeed Mortezavi, Tehran's Chief Prosecutor. The story of her murder has been international news for the past week.

But unlike Kazemi whose photos of the Evin prison remain in the hands of the regime, Hamid was successful in getting his footage to CNN. According to this report CNN is refusing to air the student’s footage, claiming it would endanger his life. But since they refused to air the footage the story has not received international attention and his life is now in grave danger.

It was reported that as the regime’s enforcers arrived to arrest him Hamid, he ate additional footage to keep it from the regime. They report that this young man was then taken to Evin prison where the same official responsible for the death of Kazemi ordered immediate surgery in the prison to retrieve the footage in his stomach. Since that time, due to infections caused by the surgery they were forced to move him to a hospital where it is reported he has four different infections.

Apparently CNN has not yet learned it lesson about protecting tortuous regimes. Just a few months ago CNN admitted that it sat on a variety of news stories in Iraq that would have exposed the nature of the Iraqi regime (New York Times, Editorial | April 11, 2003, Friday The News We Kept To Ourselves, by CNN producer Eason Jordan).

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0C16FD3C5F0C728DDDAD0894DB404482

In both cases they use the same excuse that they are protecting the lives of their sources of information.

In reality, the only thing keeping the regime from killing this brave Iranian is international awareness of his situation. The regime needs to maintain the illusion of respect for human rights to provide the Europeans and Japan with an excuse for further economic ties. If CNN were to broadcast this report and attribute it to him it would provide him with the notoriety needed to keep him from being one more unnamed student executed by the regime. It is time for CNN to stop protecting this regime in order to maintain its office in Tehran. When journalists sell out their ethics for rating it destroys the value of a free press to protect the innocent from corrupt governments.

I hope CNN will reconsider its position on this story. It may save a life and perhaps redeem the soul of that network.

Editor's Note - On July 24, 2003, Iran va Jahan received the following statement from CNN Public Relations with regards to the above story:

"A Statement From CNN...

It is entirely untrue that CNN declined to air a video tape purporting to show an attack by agents of the Iranian regime on students in their dormitory. CNN was never offered such a tape, does not know if such a tape exists, does not have an office in Iran and never has.

CNN Public Relations"

Since I had not heard from Iran va Jahan, I wrote them telling them that I was going to investigate the source of the Gooya.com report. I have not heard back from them yet.

I then wrote Gooya.com asking for help with the source of the report. I have not heard back from them either.

This morning I received an email from Iran that Gooya.com had published a correction to their report.

http://news.gooya.com/2003/07/18/1807-ff-01.php

The student who sent me this said, "At this link, Gooya got a letter from CNN, advising them to recorrect the news of Hamid. They recorrected the news but still insisting on existing of such tape and the fact that CNN has that video tape as well.”

The later today, my editorial on Iran va Jahan was removed and the following is in its place.

Will CNN Never Learn?

July 20, 2003

Iran va Jahan

..................

..................

"A Statement From CNN...

It is entirely untrue that CNN declined to air a video tape purporting to show an attack by agents of the Iranian regime on students in their dormitory. CNN was never offered such a tape, does not know if such a tape exists, does not have an office in Iran and never has.

Please remove this story and any links from your website.

Thank you.

CNN Public Relations

</B http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news_en.pl?l=en&y=2003&m=07&d=20&a=5

I am still trying to get to the bottom of this story, but felt that you should know what is going on. I don’t want to pursue a report that is false, but I also don’t want to participate in a cover up. I will keep you posted.

DoctorZIn

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[F14 Pilot]

Jul. 25, 2003. 09:05 AM

Editorial: Get tough with Tehran



Pulling Canada's ambassador from Iran, as Prime Minister Jean Chretien has done, should be but the kickoff in a spirited campaign to draw global attention to the fatal injury suffered by a Canadian photojournalist in gravely suspicious circumstances in a Tehran prison.

Ottawa should also lobby for a United Nations probe of Zahra Kazemi's death, and press for the return of her remains.

Nor should we be put off by Tehran's allegation yesterday that Vancouver police "criminally" killed an Iranian earlier this month. Keyvan Tabesh was shot brandishing a machete at police.

Kazemi suffered a fatal blow to the head after she was arrested for taking pictures. Canadians want to know who authorized her arrest, how the injury occurred and whether anyone will be held to account.

Canada imports millions of dollars worth of luxury goods from Iran every year. We can get along with fewer Persian carpets, and less caviar and pistachio nuts, if Iran doesn't co-operate. And we don't have to continue hosting Iranian students here.

Kazemi's arrest and death was "horrible," as Chretien noted. And her speedy burial this week, thwarting a Canadian post-mortem, was contemptuous. Canadians are outraged, as are many Iranians. That anger must show.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1059043000522&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

[nuconvert]

Good for you, Toronto Star

[firewalk]

Good morning
thank you for the pings

[nuconvert]

Thanks for the update.
I suppose one reason none of the media contacts I made responded, was because they did some checking also, and couldn't find anything to back it up. Thy have to be a lot more careful what they print than what we put on the thread, or even email out to others.Though if we're not a reliable source of news stories, we'll end up on their Spam list.

[F14 Pilot]

Many Persian language sources confirm this news but there is no doubt that no one can ignore this fact.
The regime is torturing its people in a wide range.
Hamid was an example of milions who were tortured by the regime officials.
You didnt see Ms. kazemi?

[F14 Pilot]

Canada to Iran: Follow our lead

Norma Greenaway, with files from Anne Dawson
The Ottawa Citizen

Saturday, July 26, 2003

Graham offers Tehran access to inquiry into RCMP shooting death of Iranian teen.......>>>>

The Chrétien government has sought to up the pressure on Tehran to find and punish those responsible for the death in detention of a Montreal photojournalist by offering Iranian officials access to the investigation of the police shooting of an Iranian teenager in British Columbia.

Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham made the offer yesterday in a diplomatic note to the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa. He was responding to Iran's attempts Thursday to draw a parallel between Zahra Kazemi's death in custody in Iran on July 10 and the fatal July 14 shooting by a Port Moody police officer of Keyvan Tabesh, an Iranian youth who was allegedly wielding a machete.

Though he rejected the analogy, Mr. Graham told reporters he would use the homicide inquiry and a planned coroner's inquest into Mr. Tabesh's death in B.C. to show Iran how democratic societies conduct such investigations. He urged Iran to follow its lead by giving Canadian officials access to an equally transparent investigation into how Ms. Kazemi died from a fractured skull.

"They raised the case of Mr. Tabesh," Mr. Graham said.

"They said the circumstances were an analogy. I'm saying if there is an analogy, then I expect the analogy to take place."

"And I expect us to have the reciprocal rights and privileges in Iran. In that case, for example, we would expect the same form of open, transparent investigation into the death of Mrs. Kazemi to take place with the opportunity of our officials to be present and represented as we will offer them the same representation in our society."

Mr. Graham returns to Ottawa today to meet Canada's ambassador to Iran to consider other measures to bring Iran to heel over the Kazemi inquiry and the government's continued efforts to have her remains returned to Canada. Trade and diplomatic sanctions are on the list.

The government recalled Ambassador Philip MacKinnon to protest Ms. Kazemi's burial Wednesday in Iran, contrary to the wishes expressed by her son in Montreal and the federal government.

Paul Martin, the front-runner to replace Jean Chrétien as prime minister, weighed in on the Kazemi affair for the first time yesterday by praising Mr. Graham, one of his leadership supporters, for recalling the ambassador and keeping the pressure on Iran.

"I believe that this is something that Canada must deal with in the strongest terms," Mr. Martin said.

"The actions that Bill Graham is taking are the right ones, and I would encourage him to do whatever he has to do in order to have the truth come out."

Mr. Graham said the need for an impartial inquiry is more apparent in light of new revelations that a senior Iranian official said he had been coerced into covering up the beating death of Ms. Kazemi by stating falsely she had died of a stroke.

"It's now clear there has been acceptance that the death occurred as a result of actions of authorities in the prison. That's beyond doubt now. It's just a question of ascertaining who those authorities are.

"And, of course, we've seen the recent reports the effect there was pressure put on certain Iranian authorities to provide a false declaration as to the cause of death. We are assuming that all of these matters will be the subject of an open inquiry in Iran, which we will have the opportunity to participate in."

Mr. Graham laid out the plans for the Tabesh inquiry, beginning with the current homicide investigation into the culpability of the police officer, now on leave, and going on to a public coroner's inquest into the circumstances of the death.

In the diplomatic note, the federal government offered to help Iranian officials go to B.C. and talk to investigators.

It also noted the remains of Mr. Tabesh had been returned to his family and buried in Vancouver, as per the family's request, a pointed shot at the refusal of Iranian authorities to heed the requests to return her body to Canada for burial.

Mr. Graham said he is hoping to persuade the pro-reformist Khatami government to put pressure on the judicial authorities responsible for conducting the inquiry. Reformists in Iran view many in the judiciary as conservative hardliners, and the Kazemi case has become a cause célèbre for both sides in the ongoing power struggle in Iran.

Javad Esmaeili, a veteran Iranian judge, was named yesterday to conduct independent inquiry. Mr. Graham said he that he will seek Mr. MacKinnon's input in evaluating that appointment during their weekend meetings.

http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=CAAA47DD-4177-4558-AFF5-EA28C10A5F79

[jriemer]

Dr. Zin - CNN is still ignoring the fact that US-based Iranian satellite broadcasts are being jammed on behest of the Iranian government by transmitters in Cuba. If it were CNN and their uplinks, the whole rest of the broadcast media world would be on the story like ants at a picnic. Since it's just you guys, it's conviently ignored.

Keep reminding the media that if they can silence your TV station, they can silence all broadcasters. Go to the owners / adsalespeople - bypass the editors / newsies.

[nuconvert]

Yes, I have no doubt that the regime has tortured and killed it's people.
And this particular story may be entirely true, or it may be true up until the involvement of CNN. It's possible that was added to get the story more attention. I understand how that can happen and why. It's possible that a young reporter who indirectly works for CNN still has the video(s) in his possession.

It's important to try to stick to the facts if we're going to be emailing and phone calling the media regarding news we receive. We don't want to hurt our credibility. We want them to feel they can rely on stories we send as being true. Otherwise, they won't pay attention to what we say, and that defeats our purpose of trying to get the news out & the media involved in supporting the Iranian people in their struggle. When there's doubt, we have to say in our postings, that "this hasn't been verified," or "this is what is being said" or "this is what I heard", then we can work from there to get verification. Credibility is everything. Otherwise, we're just a rumor mill.
Make sense?

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Thank you for the ping.

And, I appreciate all of your digging on the CNN story.

[F14 Pilot]

Call for European Union to break with Iran over journalist's death

Iran- 25 July 2003

Reporters Without Borders called on the European Union today to break off the "constructive dialogue" it has conducted with Iran since 1998 until officials responsible for the death of Canadian-Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi earlier this month had been brought to trial.

It said it was "unthinkable" that such talks could continue while such a serious crime remained unpunished. It also called on the EU to back Canadian efforts to have Kazemi's body returned to Canada and for an international commission of enquiry to be set up.

The appeal to the EU was made in a letter to the current EU Commission president, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, to EU external relations commissioner Chris Patten and to Javier Solana, the EU high representative for common foreign and security policy.

After official attempts to cover up the cause of Kazemi's death, Iranian Vice-President Mohamed Ali Abtahi publicly admitted on 16 July that she had been "beaten." An autopsy and a government commission set up by President Mohammad Khatami was not able to provide full details and the origin of the skull fracture that caused her death remains a mystery.

For the past week, Iranian legal officials have strongly opposed further investigation. Kazemi was hastily buried on 22 July in the southern town of Chiraz, making a new autopsy by independent experts more difficult. Canada has repeatedly asked for the body to be repatriated.

The case file was handed over on 23 July to a military prosecutor by the hardline Teheran prosecutor Said Mortazavi, who some accuse of being directly responsible for Kazemi's death. He said errors may have been committed by the intelligence services or security forces but definitely not by his department.

The government commission of enquiry said Mortazavi had personally attended the interrogation of Kazemi shortly after she was arrested. With the military now in charge of the case, any trial will be held in secret without independent observers and without any guarantee of neutrality or impartiality.

Kazemi is thought to have been arrested on 23 July as she took photos of Evin prison, in northern Teheran. She was then reportedly beaten and died of her injuries on 11 July.

A total of 23 journalists are currently imprisoned in Iran, making it the biggest jail for journalists in the Middle East. Thirteen of them are believed to be held by Mortazavi's department and by the Guardians of the Revolution, in the same place where Kazemi was interrogated. They are not allowed visits from family or lawyers and are held in very bad conditions. Reporters Without Borders is very worried about their plight. Their families have written to President Khatami saying they have been physically and psychologically tortured.


http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=7640
*

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=66
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=7268

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the links!

Bush Doctrine Unfolds :

To find all articles tagged or indexed using Bush Doctrine Unfold , click below:
	click here >>>	Bush Doctrine Unfold	<<< click here
(To view all FR Bump Lists, click here)

[norton]

I heard a quote from Otto Von Bismark that went something like:
...never believe anything until it has been officially denied at least twice...

I'd bet on CNN exercising cover up power.
This is not a good time for the big-time news agencies:
BBC, CNN, NYT are all skating on the edge.

[McGavin999]

Ah, so the weak kneed Canadian government is depending on the weak kneed EU to do the right thing? Fat chance! Although with Burlisconi at the helm, they might be able to do something. The Journalists Without Borders are pretty funny in this whole thing too. They stood by while thousands were imprisoned and didn't say a single word. Now they are outraged. They should have been outraged years ago, they are responsible for the deaths of thousands who wanted nothing more than freedom and all the journalists had to do was their job. They didn't.

[DoctorZIn]

Regarding the story about CNN and the Iranian student Hamid.

I had hoped to provide you with a clear response to CNN, but since I have not yet heard from from Gooya.com and Iran Va Jahan I did not want to sit on the developments. I felt you deserved to hear what is going on

I have my suspicions as to what may be going on, but without more information. I cannot speak definitively. .

Our stories posted here are read widely, and our credibility is everything.

As soon as I have more information I will let you know.

DoctorZIn

[DoctorZIn]

May 14, 2003

The Road to Victory Goes Through Tehran

To Win the War, the U.S. Must Topple Terrorism's Real Center: Iran
By Robert W. Tracinski

President Bush has declared the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq, but he has not declared victory in the War on Terrorism--and that's a good thing, because the largest and most important battle in that war still remains to be fought.

The road to victory goes through Tehran.

An end to the threat of Islamic terrorism requires, not just the toppling of one state sponsor of terrorism in Iraq, but the toppling of the regime that is the Middle East's most active promoter of terrorism--and the most virulent center of the ideology behind Islamic terrorism: the theocracy that rules Iran.

The most recent evidence for the urgent need to confront Iran is the simmering conflict in southern Iraq. Post-war Iraq has been touted by the administration as an attempt to create a free, peaceful, and prosperous society as a model to be followed by dissidents in neighboring countries like Iran. But Iran also wants to turn Iraq into a model--a model for American humiliation and the triumph of Islamic fanaticism.

The evidence of meticulous Iranian planning is everywhere. Note that Shiite demonstrators showed up just days after the fall of Baghdad carrying elaborate, professionally made banners proclaiming their theocratic agenda--with slogans printed in both Arabic and English, for the benefit of the Western media. This is not the work of poor, uneducated Iraqi peasants. It is the work of well-funded political operatives. Indeed, U.S. forces have already begun to capture Iranian agents in Iraq and believe that thousands more Iranian-backed fighters have flooded over the border in the past month.

A peaceful Iraq that respects the rights of its citizens--and allows the presence of U.S. troops or military bases--is a grave danger to Iran and to its co-conspirator in terrorism, Syria. So these two nations are trying to turn Iraq into "another Lebanon"--a quagmire of terrorist attacks and guerilla warfare. Their hope is that the United States will be so afraid of looking like a "bully" imposing an "occupation" that we will withdraw and abandon Iraq, letting Iran set up its own Khomeini-style regime there--in the same way that we abandoned Lebanon, allowing it to be colonized by Syria.

If we let this Iranian strategy work, we will have achieved "regime change" all right--we will have exchanged a fascist anti-American regime for a theocratic anti-American regime.

The nascent guerilla campaign in southern Iraq is a clear hostile act against the United States. Yet Iran is hoping that America will refuse to recognize this as an act of war. The mullahs hope we will once again put ourselves in the impossible situation of having to fight bands of guerillas among Iraq's civilian population, while refusing to confront the terror masters they serve.

What makes them think they can get away with it? Ultimately, Iran is counting on the administration's loudly proclaimed refusal to "impose our values" or our form of government on Iraq. But fighting for liberty is never an "imposition." No one has a right to violate the rights of others--and so it is no limitation on the "freedom" of Iraqi Shiites or Iranian agents if we deny their ambition to impose religious strictures by force.

The vow that we will not try to influence the new Iraq is a declaration of America's unilateral moral disarmament--our failure to fight for and protect the crucial values at stake in this war.

America needs to recognize that this war is inherently a conflict between two opposing value systems. Our enemies are driven by the theocratic philosophy shared, despite minor sectarian differences, by Osama bin Laden and by the mullahs who rule Iran. The destruction of the Iranian theocracy would do more than just eliminate the world's largest supporter of terrorism; it would do more than end a nuclear-weapons program that is far closer to completion than Iraq's ever was; it would do more than stop the Iranian-staged Shiite agitation in Iraq. The end of the Iranian regime would destroy the Middle East's laboratory of theocracy--the leading example and exporter of a system of religious dogma enforced by terror.

President Bush called the military victory in Iraq "the turning of the tide" in the War on Terrorism. That may be true, but the tide won't stay with us--or carry us to victory--until we are willing to take the war to Tehran and topple the most important material and ideological supporter of Islamic terrorism.

Robert Tracinski is the editorial director of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute (www.aynrand.org/medialink) promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/roadtovictory.shtml

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

Two more journalists arrested in Iran

Saturday, July 26, 2003 - ©2003 IranMania.com

TEHRAN, July 26 (AFP) - Two more Iranian journalists have been arrested, press reports said Saturday.The two, both from the monthly Gozaresh (Report), were cartoonist Arash Noorchian and cover designer Mohammad-Amin Golbaft.

They were detained on unspecified charges after failing to post the judicial bail demanded by Tehran's prosecutor, reports said. Security forces raided the monthly's office on Wednesday, confiscating documents arresting the two journalists after searching the premises for some hours, according to the reports.

Abolghasem Golbaft, the monthly's director, was also sent to jail last month by the press court. A wave of recent arrests has targeted the reformist press since an outburst of virulent anti-regime protests in mid-June and July.

The latest arrests bring to 26 the number of journalists believed currently to be detained in prison in Iran.Since 2000, Iranian authorities have suspended the publication of nearly 100 papers, most from the pro-reform camp.

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=17222&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail me”

[DoctorZIn]

'Bored' Youths Signal a Discreet Social Revolution

July 26, 2003
The Financial Times
Rafael Behr

Helicopters buzz over Tehran's residential areas looking for the illegal satellite dishes that many Iranians, sceptical of state-controlled media, stow on balconies, behind flowerpots and between washing lines.

Enforcement of the widely defied ban was stepped up following mainly student-led demonstrations that were reported in dissident newscasts, beamed into Iran by diaspora communities abroad. Although the protests petered out, the broadcasts were seized on by hardliners in the government as evidence that the domestic reform movement was playing into the hands of Washington hawks seeking regime change in Tehran.

But this has little resonance for those most attracted to foreign media - the young and bored. More than half of Iran's population is under 25 years old. Unemployment is 15 per cent and young Iranians bemoan their lack of prospects.

This generation has grown up knowing only the draconian social restrictions of post-revolutionary Iran. Curiosity about all things taboo is in evidence in every internet cafe where teenagers scour the web for material that, while often politically anodyne, is also usually licentious. Pornography and pop music downloads clutter the hard-drives of public computers. Instant messaging services are especially popular.

This leaves young Iranians free to cultivate tastes and relationships that are incompatible with revolutionary ideology and hidden from conservative clerics, traditionally minded parents and police helicopters. The result is a discreet social revolution. "We are already Americanised in our outlook," says one 16-year-old. "We also want regime change."

Changing attitudes are most apparent in Tehran. The city's northern suburbs have cruising grounds where young men and women exchange telephone numbers through car windows as they pass in gridlocked traffic, risking lashes or imprisonment for illicit sexual liaisons.

Drugs and alcohol, long available on the black market, are being used more widely and more openly. Inebriated youths are sometimes seen teetering through Tehran streets, a sight that would have been unthinkable five years ago.

The erosion of traditional values has far outpaced the rise of the political reformers, led by President Mohammed Khatami, whose election in 1997 and renewed mandate in 2001 first raised expectations of social transformation. The reformers are stuck fighting a rearguard action against the conservative clerical establishment, forcing a split in their support between those who want to pursue change through the existing institutions and those who want to abandon the political process altogether. But so far the growing contempt for the Islamic state's social controls has not tipped over into a mass mobilisation demanding political freedoms.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1058868184588