If, as the poet Philip Larkin observed, sex began in 1963, it has finally reached Iran over the last year.
True, girls and women can still be imprisoned for going out without proper Islamic dress. But young people are completely redefining such dress so it heightens sex appeal instead of smothering it.
Women are required to cover their hair and to wear either a chador cloak or an overcoat, called a manteau, every time they go out, and these are meant to be black and shapeless. But the latest fashion here in Shiraz, in central Iran, is light, tight and sensual.
''There are some manteaus with slits on the sides up to the armpits,'' said Mahmoud Salehi, a 25-year-old manteau salesman. ''And then there are the 'commando manteaus,' with ties on the legs to show off the hips and an elastic under the breasts to accentuate the bust.''
Worse, from the point of view of hard-line mullahs, young women in such clothing aren't getting 74 lashes any more -- they're getting dates.
''Parents can't defeat children,'' Mr. Salehi mused. ''Children always defeat their parents.''
And that's what Iran's baby boomers, a wave of 18 million people 15 to 25 years old, are doing. They will transform their country, just as baby boomers in the West changed America and Europe. I don't think Iran's theocracy can survive them, for I've never been to a country where young people seem more frustrated.
The regime's problem is that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini exhorted Iranians to have more children, and they responded -- today, 60 percent of the country's population was born after his Iranian revolution. And these young people are determining social mores and carving out a small zone of freedom for themselves.
In one sense, the relaxation in clothing requirements is superficial, and some Iranian women have scolded me for asking them about head scarves when they are more angry about discrimination in divorce, child custody and inheritance rules. But the clothing rules affect every woman every day and raise the central question in Iran's future: should a few aging male mullahs still determine the most basic and intimate elements of every Iranian's life?
From that vantage point, it looks to me as if the revolution is sputtering. The mullahs are refusing to accept real democracy, but they are giving in to popular pressure in some areas. The draft is immensely unpopular among young men, for example, so this year the hard-liners shortened the service requirement. More important, individual Iranians are reclaiming their individuality and their autonomy -- and how they dress is the best measure of that.
The morals police no longer order women to cover up stray hairs. These days, the fashion is for brightly colored, glittery see-through scarves, worn halfway back on the head.
''It's possible head scarves will be gone in another year or two, the way things are going,'' said Amir Suleimani, a scarf salesman in the Tehran Bazaar. ''God willing.''
No wonder conservative newspapers in Tehran denounce Iranian women for strolling around ''nude.''
The baby boomers include Saghar Tayebi, a 17-year-old in Isfahan who wore a tight manteau with high slits, embroidered jeans and a red headband. Her mascara was hefty and her lipstick bold, and her sleeves were rolled up to reveal lots of bracelets. Lots of hair escaped her scarf. But when I asked her whether she dreamed of wearing Western-style skimpy clothing, she looked aghast.
''We totally reject that,'' she said indignantly. ''We don't want that freedom.''
Conversations with young people like Saghar suggest that youths want to remain good Muslims, and that some are happy enough in an Islamic republic -- but that, above all, they want to laugh and love. Many are not overtly political, nor sure exactly what kind of government they want, but they do know that this isn't it.
''We want fun,'' declared Tannaz Haj Hosseini, a 20-year-old university student who was out with her boyfriend in Tehran. ''There's no joy here.''
I protested that her nail polish and see-through scarf -- not to mention the boyfriend -- underscored the progress in Iran. A few years ago, she would have been lashed
''I don't compare myself with 10 years ago,'' she said. ''I compare myself to what I could have and don't.''
Ayatollahs, look out
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Sex in Ayatollah's country
If, as the poet Philip Larkin observed, sex began in 1963, it has finally reached Iran over the last year.
True, girls and women can still be imprisoned for going out without proper Islamic dress. But young people are completely redefining such dress so it heightens sex appeal instead of smothering it.
Women are required to cover their hair and to wear either a chador cloak or an overcoat, called a manteau, every time they go out, and these are meant to be black and shapeless. But the latest fashion here in Shiraz, in central Iran, is light, tight and sensual.
''There are some manteaus with slits on the sides up to the armpits,'' said Mahmoud Salehi, a 25-year-old manteau salesman. ''And then there are the 'commando manteaus,' with ties on the legs to show off the hips and an elastic under the breasts to accentuate the bust.''
Worse, from the point of view of hard-line mullahs, young women in such clothing aren't getting 74 lashes any more -- they're getting dates.
''Parents can't defeat children,'' Mr. Salehi mused. ''Children always defeat their parents.''
And that's what Iran's baby boomers, a wave of 18 million people 15 to 25 years old, are doing. They will transform their country, just as baby boomers in the West changed America and Europe. I don't think Iran's theocracy can survive them, for I've never been to a country where young people seem more frustrated.
The regime's problem is that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini exhorted Iranians to have more children, and they responded -- today, 60 percent of the country's population was born after his Iranian revolution. And these young people are determining social mores and carving out a small zone of freedom for themselves.
In one sense, the relaxation in clothing requirements is superficial, and some Iranian women have scolded me for asking them about head scarves when they are more angry about discrimination in divorce, child custody and inheritance rules. But the clothing rules affect every woman every day and raise the central question in Iran's future: should a few aging male mullahs still determine the most basic and intimate elements of every Iranian's life?
From that vantage point, it looks to me as if the revolution is sputtering. The mullahs are refusing to accept real democracy, but they are giving in to popular pressure in some areas. The draft is immensely unpopular among young men, for example, so this year the hard-liners shortened the service requirement. More important, individual Iranians are reclaiming their individuality and their autonomy -- and how they dress is the best measure of that.
The morals police no longer order women to cover up stray hairs. These days, the fashion is for brightly colored, glittery see-through scarves, worn halfway back on the head.
''It's possible head scarves will be gone in another year or two, the way things are going,'' said Amir Suleimani, a scarf salesman in the Tehran Bazaar. ''God willing.''
No wonder conservative newspapers in Tehran denounce Iranian women for strolling around ''nude.''
The baby boomers include Saghar Tayebi, a 17-year-old in Isfahan who wore a tight manteau with high slits, embroidered jeans and a red headband. Her mascara was hefty and her lipstick bold, and her sleeves were rolled up to reveal lots of bracelets. Lots of hair escaped her scarf. But when I asked her whether she dreamed of wearing Western-style skimpy clothing, she looked aghast.
''We totally reject that,'' she said indignantly. ''We don't want that freedom.''
Conversations with young people like Saghar suggest that youths want to remain good Muslims, and that some are happy enough in an Islamic republic -- but that, above all, they want to laugh and love. Many are not overtly political, nor sure exactly what kind of government they want, but they do know that this isn't it.
''We want fun,'' declared Tannaz Haj Hosseini, a 20-year-old university student who was out with her boyfriend in Tehran. ''There's no joy here.''
I protested that her nail polish and see-through scarf -- not to mention the boyfriend -- underscored the progress in Iran. A few years ago, she would have been lashed
''I don't compare myself with 10 years ago,'' she said. ''I compare myself to what I could have and don't.''
Ayatollahs, look out
Monday, January 26, 2009
Iran asks Japan to pay for oil with yen, not dollars
Iran has asked Japanese oil wholesalers to pay for their oil purchases in yen instead of dollars, which are currently used for most transactions, industry sources said Saturday.
The request by the National Iranian Oil Co. is believed to be part of Iran's efforts to increase oil transactions denominated in currencies other than the dollar to avoid a possible seizure of its assets by the U.S. government amid tensions over its nuclear development program.
The Iranian state-owned oil company sent letters to Japanese oil wholesalers requesting them to pay in yen, the sources said, adding some companies received such requests through trading houses.
"We have yet to decide how to respond," said an official at one wholesaler. "We cannot find any advantage in switching to yen-based transactions."
Late last year, Iran sounded out Japanese oil firms about switching their payments to the yen or the euro, the sources said.
Tokyo has been reducing its Iranian oil imports amid the nuclear standoff. Still, Japan imported about 28 million kiloliters of crude oil from Iran, which accounted for about 11 percent of Japan's total oil imports, in 2006.
Tehran has refused to halt its uranium enrichment program, despite the threat of U.N. sanctions, saying it only wants to produce electricity. The U.S. accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran has already taken other measures to reduce its dependence on the U.S. currency. Earlier this year, Tehran announced it had started pulling its foreign currency accounts out of European banks to protect its assets from possible sanctions.
Iranian exile speaks out against militia he once supported
| Amir Farshad Ebrahimi |
By Borzou Daragahi / Los Angelese times
July 09, 2009
After eight months, he was dropped off in downtown Tehran, but his freedom was short-lived. Ebrahimi was again arrested, tried and sentenced to prison, shuttling from Tehran's infamous Evin Prison, where demonstrators today are being taken, to other facilities in and around the capital for three years.
Even when he was free again, Ebrahimi was a marked man, prohibited from leaving the country and facing years of scrutiny by security forces.
He had a choice: stay and fight it out with authorities in Iran, or make a run for it.
The hike across the mountainous border with Turkey was long and dangerous. In Ankara, the Turkish capital, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees accepted Ebrahimi's application for asylum. He enrolled at a university, fell in love and moved to Germany, joining the many Iranian dissidents carving out lives abroad.
It was 2007, and Ebrahimi was at a conference of Iranian dissidents in southern Spain when a man claiming to be with the CIA showed him a photocopy of a check made out to Hezbollah and supposedly signed by Khamenei.
Ebrahimi thought the man, who gave his name as David Coberly, was testing him by showing him bogus intelligence. Who would believe that Khamenei, whom Iranians regard as God's representative on Earth, would make a check out to Hezbollah, like a guy paying for new kitchen cabinets?
"Is this a joke?" Ebrahimi recalled asking.
It wasn't a joke, he soon learned, but it was symptomatic of America's misunderstanding of Iran, or maybe its willingness to welcome faulty intelligence in order to make a case against the country.
Ebrahimi had embraced the life of an activist in exile, becoming a valuable asset for Western intelligence agencies and analysts seeking insight on the Islamic Republic. He was in regular contact with Western officials and a circle of neoconservative activists.
He and other Iranian and Western activists enticed Iranian officials to defect to the West. The group played a key role in the defection of Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asgari, a former deputy defense minister who left via Turkey, taking a trove of secrets about Iran's weaponry and technology with him.
But feeling adrift in the life of an exile, Ebrahimi grew homesick. Last year, he and his parents made plans for a rendezvous in Istanbul, Turkey, hoping it would be a fun-filled holiday.
Once again, he found himself locked up, alone with his thoughts in a windowless gray tomb.
They refused to tell him. But he had his suspicions, confirmed hours later when he overheard an Iranian Consulate official outside the door vowing to take him back to the Islamic Republic for his role in the defection of the military commander.
"I was very afraid," Ebrahimi recalled. "I was scared like I've never been scared before."
Then Ebrahimi realized that Turkish authorities had forgotten to take away his cellphone. Quietly, he began calling people abroad: his wife, well-connected Iranian dissidents in the United States.
"I was personally on the phone for several hours that night trying to gain his release," said Kenneth Timmerman, a neoconservative activist who heads the Washington-based Foundation for Democracy in Iran. "Other people were involved pulling political strings. There was a lot of heavy lifting being done in Washington."
Time was ticking away. Once, as Ebrahimi was being taken to an interrogation room, the Iranian official patted him on the back.
"I'll see you in Tehran," he told Ebrahimi.
Early the next morning, an official who said he was from the consulate of a Western government showed up at the airport and demanded to see Ebrahimi.
The Westerner was firm. He had orders from his capital. Ebrahimi was to be placed on a plane back to Germany.
These days, Ebrahimi spends his time writing his blog and working on a memoir he hopes to sell to Western publishers, stepping out occasionally from his ground-floor apartment for a quick smoke.
Recently, he wrote an open letter to his old friend Mojtaba Khamenei, who is said to be the driving force behind the military-led crackdown on the protest movement.
"We have defended our country, rifle in hands, and have killed to save our country from deterioration," he wrote. "In those days neither you nor I ever imagined standing up against our own people, unlike what seems to be your cup of tea these days."
Ebrahimi described the photograph of Neda Agha-Soltan dying in the street last month near a demonstration in support of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
"It reminded me of one of our martyred friends during the war," he wrote. "Don't you see how the nation is being crushed? Don't you see the blood in the streets? How can you watch and not speak a word of protest?"
Friday, January 23, 2009
Israeli claim: Iran elite forces killed in Gaza War
The Israeli sources said the military killed an unspecified number of advisers from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps during the 22-day war with Hamas, which ended on Jan. 18. They said the IRGC officers helped the Hamas regime and Islamic Jihad fire BM-21 Grad rockets from urban areas."We believe there were dozens of IRGC personnel in the Gaza Strip during the war," an Israeli source said. "Some were killed; others went into hiding, and others escaped."
The sources said IRGC sent officers to the Gaza Strip to help Hamas improve the range and accuracy of missiles and rockets. IRGC was also authorized to help establish facilities to produce the Grad and other extended-range Katyusha-class rockets in the Gaza Strip.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Israel: Hamas killing Gazan children

An Israeli government spokesman says Hamas has been killing Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip to make the Israeli army look bad.
Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said in a BBC interview that it is not clear how many of the children killed in Israel's military offensive on Gaza "were killed by Israeli forces, how many were killed by Hamas forces."
Regev made the remarks when asked whether he was personally "proud" with the outcome of the war on Gaza considering the massive number of civilian casualties in the densely-populated area.
Tel Aviv launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27 to put an end to rocket attacks against southern Israeli towns.
Hamas, the democratically-elected ruler of the coastal region, demands a cessation of the Israeli blockade before its fighters suspend rocket attacks.
At least 1,300 Palestinians have been killed and some 6,000 others have been reported wounded. According to Gaza medics, 411 of the dead are children and 98 are women.
Regev's response prompted a shocked Gavin Estler, the News Night presenter, to ask him, "You are not serious that Hamas is killing Palestinian children, are you?"
The Israeli spokesman responded, "I am a 100 percent very serious and this has been documented and I am sure more information will be coming out. And we have no doubt that Hamas ordinance was responsible for many of the deaths."
He added that the Israeli military is convinced that "a large number of civilian casualties were caused by Hamas."
Regev said if a "sustained period of quite" follows the military campaign in Gaza, Tel Aviv would consider the operation as "a job well done."
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Alavi Foundation and the Iranian regime’s web of influence in US
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
From her lips to God's ear: The fury of a bereaved Palestinian mother captures evil of Hamas in Gaza
The collateral damage that has been inflicted on the residents ofGaza is a sorrowful consequence of living under the rule of rocket-firing fanatics. It is because of Hamas, and only Hamas, that Palestinians are suffering.
At least some of them know the identity of their tormentors. A New York Times dispatch captured an excruciating moment that took place in a hospital morgue, where a mother had just found half of the body of her 17-year-old daughter.
"May God exterminate Hamas!" screamed the woman in crystal-clear understanding that the terrorist band's reckless, inhuman actions had brought death to her child.
There will likely be more tragedies as Israel presses an assault on Hamas by air and, now, on the ground. Each will trace to Hamas' refusal to desist, once and for all, from raining rockets onto Israeli soil. And, perversely, each will increase pressure on Israel to stand down prematurely.
Calls for a truce have mounted with the European Union, the secretary general of the UN, Arab countries and others urging both sides to come to an immediate ceasefire.
Both sides? Let's start with one: the bad actor.
All the world knows that Israel would give up the fight in the event Hamas stopped firing and agreed to verifiably disarm. Those terms are both the short-term fix and the long-term solution that the international community should be demanding.
Lacking either one, Israel is waging a high-risk, highly skilled operation to destroy Hamas' capacity to lob missiles at will into Israeli territory, some with a range of 25 miles. The group's arsenal is formidable.
More than 3,000 rockets hit Israel in 2008. More than 500 have struck since Hamas ended a "truce" on Dec. 19. And, 10 days into the offensive, Hamas was still able yesterday to fire several dozen, including one that blasted an empty kindergarten.
The weapons stores must be dismantled and Hamas' supply routes - tunnels into Gaza from Egypt - must be shut, with oversight to prevent Hamas from rearming. Israel and the U.S. are properly seeking such terms.
Hamas' unending barrage had forced hundreds of thousands to live in fear, yet the onslaught drew barely a fraction of the outrage now directed at Israel's exercise of self-defense.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy went so far as to say, revoltingly, that Israel had hurt the cause of peace in the Mideast by sending ground troops into Gaza. There had been no peace - and there will be no peace until Hamas lacks the will and/or the way to attack.
Given no choice but to push in that direction, the Israeli military has done an extraordinary job of targeting Hamas fighters and arms in crowded environments - while holding down civilian casualties. It is up against demented enemies who sacrifice their own people.
DO NOT LET THIS BEAUTIFUL SOUL BE EXECUTED BY THE ISLAMIC REGIME IN IRAN!