Iran is Dying

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.