Mullahed Whine

Oh it's all terrible in Iran, with those poor poor mullahs issuing an ever-increasing list of problems, and troubles, and small sadnesses.

According to the BBC website, there is very little that doesn't worry them.

But, as my boss says, don't bring me problems, bring me SOLUTIONS people.

So, Iran. A country with rampant unemployment and prostitution, a brain drain which would require at least $50bn to repair, two million drug addicts sucking up all that lovely cheap heroin from Them Next Door (Afghanistan) and an oil infrastructure so degraded that one of the most oil wealthy countries in the world is going to stop exporting in the next ten years. At which point the already screwed economy is going to start looking sicker than... well, than one of the skinny heroin addicts of Tehran.

But it’s ok, because the Iranian government know what the problems are, and they've got a plan. Over the last few months tens of thousands of women have been arrested for dressing contrary to the principles of the revolution (ie. not wearing the all-enveloping chador), which creates employment for policemen, and religious types. Earlier this month Iranian newspapers printed a list of vices where prosecutions are expected to ramp up, including decadent films, drugs and alcohol. And now they’ve come out hard against rapping, presumable because it's absorbing all that energy which could be more profitably spent on fixing that oil infrastructure. Then, over the last couple of days nuclear talks have broken down as Iran declared any abandonment of Uranium enrichment ‘unacceptable’.

So there you were, it’s all coming together in a brilliantly A-team way – you use the nukes against the poppyfields and then retrain the rappers as hydrocarbons engineers. And the women…?

Um... Ah well, the Mullahs never cared much about them anyway.