Iran: ‘Bush honest, Obama dishonest’

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Last week Iran has certainly gazed very closely, with its hand over its mouth, upon the handshake between Obama and Hugo Chavez – that shocked the word. If Iran is next in the conciliatory handshake queue, does that mean it will repaint the walls of Tehran that are covered with anti-American words? More to the point, will Iran be flooded with American cultures in its streets?

In the current climate, in Tehran, under the strict Islamic laws, there is no women’s emancipation; in other words, women must cover from head to toe in public. Drivers must unquestioningly wear seatbelts at all times. And in the papers and on TV there are endless speeches of the leaders and documentaries of Iraq and Iran war seeing that the mainstream media is controlled by the regime.

Having said that, if there is a will there is a way, Iranian people all stretch these rules. Women dye their hair and wear heavy make up. And in their own private homes, they watch satellite TV; they watch Iranian music videos streamed all the way from California and go online to read foreign news and websides.

What is more, majority of Iranian love English football and American Basketball and somewhat see them as their second religion. In football, their favourite players are the likes of Steven Gerrard. But, these are the people who at the end of Friday prayers chant something along the lines of: ‘Death to America, Death to Britain’ and then go and queue at the British and the American Embassies for visas.

Furthermore, Iran now rather has two dilemmas to deal with. One being the Obama’s approach to Iran: proposing to end 30 years of hostility, and the way he addressed to them last month somewhat knocked about the hardline leaders. This odd approach by an American president made the Persian people sit up and question. Many people see it as a mask: to conceal the true nature of the approach. In an online Iranian forum, that I had stumble over earlier today, many people do really sadly regret Bush’s departure and say that at least he was truthful to the Iranian people.

Iran is marking turbulent climate of 30 years since the Islamic Revolution and their father may have diet 20 years ago but he is certainly staring firmly down at them from every Tehran walls. In contestably, Iran is young, full of energy and strongly values its culture, what is more, gifted with huge energy resources. In spite of this, many Persian people can not find work and struggle to feed their families and this is due to the hardline clerics who run the country because their policies are not friendly with the rest of the world and as a result considered outsiders.

The other dilemma that is facing Iran is, and this is no surprise to anyone, the nuclear programme. It is no secret that Iran is heavily investing on long-range missiles – seeing that its military is out-of-date – and the technology to build an atomic bomb.

Every four years Iran holds presidential election and this year on 12th June the people take to the polls. But what is the point of elections when candidates outside the conventional politics are vetoed. Journalists get arrested and accused of espionage for the US. What is more, the current president Mahmoud Ahmadinajad is planning beyond the election by strengthening security tools – as he has done in the past – in order to continue clinging on to power. Iran does not need elections; rather she is in desperate need of democracy.