[LINK] Iran's Red Provinces?

[rfmcdonald]

Over at Asia Times, Spengler writes about the Iranian presidential elections, explaining the election of conservative Mahmud Ahmadinejad as the defensive reaction of an atrophied rural Iran against the cosmopolitan and secular urbanites who threaten their traditional cultural and economic structures. He makes a very good point; he also forgets that urban Iran and the secular-minded aren't imports from Tau Ceti, that they also came from Iran and emerged as the individual products of Iran's 20th century modernization and their personal experiences of the Shah and the Islamic Republic.

Don't think about the inextricable power of Islam. Rather, think about the Red and Blue states (or départements). Iranians are people, too.