(Note: this was originally written on June 22, 2009.)
Iran, a nation that has spent the last century struggling to make its way into the modern world, now finds itself beset on all sides by massive internal and external pressures. An enormous amount of civil unrest has been ignited during the recent 2009 presidential election, a response to apparent voter fraud that has crippled one of the few stable modern structures found in present-day Iran. A maelstrom of cultural, political, economic, religious, and historic forces conspire to turn one of history’s proudest and most colorful cultures into a volatile powder-keg in the 21st century—and if we have learned anything at all from these past 10 days, it is simply that a fuse has now been lit. What happens next is almost anyone’s guess—will Iran find a way to evolve its own political systems? Will it retain its currently theocratic status quo? Or will the country begin to fall apart altogether? Read the rest of this entry
