>I've presented such facts as available to me in the English language
>about the social and economic policy of the Ahmadinejad
>administration:
><http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20051205/026706.html>
><http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20060508/037925.html>.
And on reading some of the sources you cite in the second, I learn:
<http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1013/p25s01-wome.html>
>Such uncertainty is manifest across the Islamic Republic, as
>Iranians begin taking measure of their choice: a man who is filling
>top positions with Revolutionary Guard cadres, and insists that he
>will build a pure Islamic government.
[...]
<http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_15511.shtml>
>The government has banned independent reporting on the nuclear issue
>and closed all but a couple of independent newspapers. The
>Revolutionary Guard recently began jamming foreign satellite and
>radio stations in Tehran and other cities; a campaign against
>dissident users of the Internet is planned. Intellectuals who
>attempt to address the West with a message other than defiance are
>quickly jailed like the philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, who tried to
>attend a transatlantic conference in Brussels, Belgium, 10 days ago
>and instead found himself in Tehran's Evin prison. By the end of
>last week he had been hospitalized, friends said.
>
>The rabble-rousing serves Ahmadinejad less than it does Iran's real
>ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has disarmed the democratic
>movement that just three years ago still posed a serious threat to
>his power. This president is his faithful servant; what passes for
>political debate in Iran now occurs in the elite confines of
>Khamenei-controlled bodies such as the Guardian Council.
>
>[...]
>
>Wage increases and other pump priming are fueling double-digit
>inflation. A spike in the price of gold in the Tehran bazaar
>recently forced the government to intervene. A committee of the
>conservative-controlled parliament compiled a list of the promises
>Ahmadinejad has made on his provincial tours and concluded that most
>cannot be fulfilled. According to an official study, success in
>lowering Iran's official unemployment rate of 12 percent will
>require an annual growth rate of 8 percent - something Iran could
>never reach if Western sanctions were imposed.
Elsewhere <http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1766111,00.html> Tariq Ali writes:
>Ahmadinejad reaped the vote against Khatami's miserable record
>between 1997 and 2005. Economic conditions had worsened and Khatami
>was prepared to defend the rights of foreign investors, but not
>those of independent newspapers or protesting students. Manoeuvring
>ineffectually between contradictory pressures, he exhausted his
>moral credit. Contrary to some reports, Ahmadinejad has not so far
>imposed any new puritanical clampdown on social mores. Instead, the
>most likely constituency to be disappointed is Ahmadinejad's own:
>the millions of young, working-class jobless, crammed into
>overcrowded living conditions, in desperate need of a national
>development policy that neither neoliberalism nor Islamist
>voluntarism will provide.
>
>Nor is fundamentalist backwardness exhibited in the denial of the
>Nazi genocide against the Jews and the threat to obliterate Israel,
>a basis for any foreign policy. To face up to the enemies ranged
>against Iran requires an intelligent and far-sighted strategy - not
>the current rag-bag of opportunism and manoeuvre, determined by the
>immediate interests of the clerics.
I think I'll stick with Chavez.
Doug