Considerations

The ever-excellent Spengler reports some astonising findings on Iran:

Iran is dying. The collapse of Iran's birth rate during the past 20 years is the fastest recorded in any country, ever. Demographers have sought in vain to explain Iran's population implosion through family planning policies, or through social factors such as the rise of female literacy.

But quantifiable factors do not explain the sudden collapse of fertility. It seems that a spiritual decay has overcome Iran, despite best efforts of a totalitarian theocracy. Popular morale has deteriorated much faster than in the "decadent" West against which the Khomeini revolution was directed...

First, prostitution has become a career of choice among educated Iranian women. On February 3, the Austrian daily Der Standard published the results of two investigations conducted by the Tehran police, suppressed by the Iranian media.

"More than 90% of Tehran's prostitutes have passed the university entrance exam, according to the results of one study, and more than 30% of them are registered at a university or studying," reports Der Standard. "The study was assigned to the Tehran Police Department and the Ministry of Health, and when the results were tabulated in early January no local newspaper dared to so much as mention them."

The Austrian newspaper added, "Eighty percent of the Tehran sex workers maintained that they pursue this career voluntarily and temporarily. The educated ones are waiting for better jobs. Those with university qualifications intend to study later, and the ones who already are registered at university mention the high tuition [fees] as their motive for prostitution ... they are content with their occupation and do not consider it a sin according to Islamic law."

There is an extensive trade in poor Iranian women who are trafficked to the Gulf states in huge numbers, as well as to Europe and Japan. "A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women," I wrote in a 2006 study of Iranian prostitution, Jihads and whores.

Prostitution as a response to poverty and abuse is one thing, but the results of this new study reflect something quite different. The educated women of Tehran choose prostitution in pursuit of upward mobility, as a way of sharing in the oil-based potlatch that made Tehran the world's hottest real estate market during 2006 and 2007.

A country is beaten when it sells its women, but it is damned when its women sell themselves. The popular image of the Iranian sex trade portrays tearful teenagers abused and cast out by impoverished parents. Such victims doubtless abound, but the majority of Tehran's prostitutes are educated women seeking affluence...

Second, according to a recent report from the US Council on Foreign Relations, "Iran serves as the major transport hub for opiates produced by [Afghanistan], and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime estimates that Iran has as many as 1.7 million opiate addicts." That is, 5% of Iran's adult, non-elderly population of 35 million is addicted to opiates. That is an astonishing number, unseen since the peak of Chinese addiction during the 19th century. The closest American equivalent (from the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health) found that 119,000 Americans reported using heroin within the prior month, or less than one-tenth of 1% of the non-elderly adult population...

For the majority of young Iranians, there is no way up, only a way out; 36% of Iran's youth aged 15 to 29 years want to emigrate, according to yet another unpublicized Iranian study, this time by the country's Education Ministry, Der Standard adds. Only 32% find the existing social norms acceptable, while 63% complain about unemployment, the social order or lack of money.

Winston Churchill once said that Russia is an enigma of a country. Iran holds that mantle today.

Within the international community, there are two major sets of views on Iran. One debate is on whether Iran is primarily a rational nation-state that acts logically to pursue and preserve its interests or whether it is an irrational, revolutionary movement that aims to spread its ideals throughout the world no matter what the cost. The other question is over whether Iran is a weak, paper tiger that is nowhere as strong as it presents itself or whether it is gaining significant influence and prestige by reaching its tentacles out towards Hamas, Hizbollah, and other Islamist movements throughout the world. Liberals tend to believe that the first sets of points are correct; conservative think that second ones are closer to the truth.

I could cite dozens of studies and articles proving each point to be correct. The truth is that no one knows.

Still, if Spangler's information is correct, then Iran is indeed a revolutionary movement that holds to its ideals even if it means that the government is unable to maintain a viable, functioning country. However, it would also mean that Iran is weaker than American and Israeli conservatives believe. So those on both the left and the right are partially correct. And this might be the worst-possible combination.

A country in the midst of an implosion is like a wounded animal that turns even more aggressive when attacked. When this is combined with Iran's inherent, irrational tendancy to export its ideology, the resulting actions will likely not bode well for the world.

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