NEWS: IranÂ’s Summer Driving Season Starts With A BangÂ…Literally

POLITICS: Iran’s Summer Driving Season Starts With A Bang…Literally

LetÂ’s say that youÂ’re the President of a country that has, to put it mildly, a rather mixed public image around the world. When you campaigned for the job, you stressed economic prosperity and traditional religious values. After winning an election that many claim was rigged, you find that the job really isnÂ’t as easy as you thought.

First off, you have a nasty habit of saying really stupid things that offend a whole lot of people around the world. People even call you a warmonger based on your foreign policy. Plus, your economyÂ’s not doing so hot, and the disparity between the rich and the poor keeps increasing. Even though your country has some oil stored up and your government spends a shit-ton of money subsidizing gasoline production, you have to import a lot of gasoline to keep up with demand because damn do your citizens love their cars (and public transportation just ainÂ’t what it could be.) YouÂ’re worried that this disparity might lead to budget woes and even another gas crisis.

So, what do you do?

Well, if youÂ’re President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, you come up with the brilliant idea of introducing gasoline rationing that limits Iranian citizens to buying 3.5 liters of gasoline a day for their privately-owned vehicles. You decide to go ahead with this program before hundreds of thousands of Iranians have received the ration cards they now need to purchase gasoline. Oh, and you give everyone, including the police, gas station owners, and the car-owning public, only two hours notice before implementing the new restrictions.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Shortly after the rationing was announced, Iranians took to the streets in Tehran to protest. These protests, the first major ones since Ahmadinejad took office, turned violent as gas stations were vandalized and set on fire. Police attempting to quell the protests wound up being pelted with rocks by crowds chanting, “Guns, fireworks, tanks, Ahmadinejad should be killed.”

Yeah, I donÂ’t get the fireworks part either. Maybe it sounds cooler in Farsi.

IranÂ’s government decided that the best response to these protests was to tell everyone to shut the fuck up, ordering the press not to publish negative stories about the gasoline rationing plan and turning off TehranÂ’s mobile phone text messaging network to try and prevent angry motorists from organizing more protests.

Some of you might be saying, “Wait, Iran? They have to ration gasoline in fucking Iran? Don’t they have so much oil they might as well make smoothies out of it?”

While Iran does have massive oil reserves, due to under-investment Iran lacks the ability to refine enough of that oil into gasoline to meet demand. So while Iran exports more than half of the oil it produces, they have to actually import about 40% of the gasoline they consume.

Making matters worse is that Iran has been heavily subsidizing the price of gasoline, which up until now was selling inside Iran for around 1/5th the price that it sells for in other countries in the region. This has led to both overconsumption and a lucrative black market as people can make a tidy profit smuggling cheap gasoline out of Iran.

Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Parliament claim this new rationing program will help prepare Iran to deal with possible future sanctions on gasoline imports that the UN or the US might impose to try and stop Iran from developing nuclear energy (or nuclear weapons, depending on who you listen to). However, Ahmadinejad has already been losing popularity amongst the same working-class Iranians who (theoretically) voted him into office, as his economic policies have failed to curb inflation and unemployment, or to bring about the equitable distribution of oil wealth he promised during his campaign. Many of Ahmadinejad’s supporters are already blaming his hard-line foreign policy stances with increasing U.S. sanctions and making the economy worse, and gasoline rationing is a true “fuck you” to those same supporters. Maybe John McCain won’t get to bomb Iran after all.

At least IÂ’m happy that I donÂ’t have to live with a President that breaks campaign promises and fucks things up by making poorly thought out decisions. I canÂ’t imagine what thatÂ’s like.

Michael Totten has had some very interesting pieces about what the hell is about to erupt over there too.

Ah, it's called preparing for war.

WWIII is coming this summer, didn't you know?

Everyone in the middle east seems to be aware of it...

Im no christian, but didnt the bible say the end of the world would start in the middle east ?

Christmas is coming too... more people will give a shit about that I bet.

Yes, and who is the leader of our nation again?

Dick Cheney right? Aww man we're fucked.

blah blah blah, tell me something else we didn't expect

What? Dick Cheney? I thought it was Jesus.

The phone call
Bush- Maumoud, we almost ready, how anout you?
Ahmadinejad- Almost, just let me REALLY piss off the commoners first.



Just Kidding obviously.

I love the way you make use of sarcasm. The introductory paragraph leaves me wondering wether you're speaking of Bush or Ahmadinejad, and that alone is *muah* bravissimo

The article in it's entirety illuminates the fact that both leaderships on either side of this conflict are working hand-in-hand to bring about a desired result. However, the great war machines of the past are now kaput. The American Soldier on the ground is fighting for his life, and the life of his brothers and nothing more. All the propaganda of Freedom, Demoracy and what-not goes flying out the fucking window the first time your convoy gets hit with an IED or you come under enemy fire.

Shame on all the nations of this world who place their sons and daughters in harms way to further their political gains. No cause in this world is worth the loss of life that we suffer over this petty bullshit.

Stupid humans

Looks like the people of Iran are as upset with their president as Americans are with Bush; they're just more pro-active about removing him from office.

This is great news. I doubt it will lead to, yet another, Iranian revolution but it can't hurt.

If that ever happened, though, I think burning down gas stations would be a pretty rational response

It is still pretty dangerous for any regime for this kind of thing to happen. A lot of revolutions have started with such small incidents. May not happen this time, but Iranians are pretty big on over-throwing their leaders.

Also, it wasn't the religious fundamentalists that started the last Iranian revolution anyway. It was just regular pissed off Iranians, like the kind that are burning down gas stations.
The fundamentalists just showed up at the end of the revolution and stole all of the glory.

On top of that, despite the oppressive crazy regime that is in power now, they are still no where near as high on the counter revolutionary jackboot scale as the Shah was. That dude was pretty good at putting down revolutions, and eventually even he couldn't stop them.

no we're not, we're just keen on over throwing foreign controlled puppets and then foreign nations trying to overthrow sovereign regimes

problem arises when those sovereign regimes are corrupt beyond all the shits in this world that won't flush (and just as annoying)

from what I hear, things are more or less calmed down

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Even if this doesn't lead to regime change (which I doubt it will), it's a sign that Ahmadinejad is losing popular support due to his complete inability to deliver on any of his domestic policy promises. Which is the kiss of death for a "populist" politician like him, and makes it harder for him to push his more unpopular agendas (like cracking down on fashion violations, or inviting more sanctions with their nuclear program).

I'm hoping that the Supreme Leader pushes Ahmadinejad into early retirement, which might lead to a resurgence of the reform movement.

"It's the economy, stupid" applies in Iran as well as the U.S.

At this point there will be no revolution; the people are protesting and demonstrating against Amadinejad, not the highest authority in the regime( which is the Supreme Ayatollah). At most the Ayatollah will step in and remove Amadinejad, or assume power for a time in the event of his death...

At least I'm happy that I don't have to live with a President that breaks campaign promises and fucks things up by making poorly thought out decisions. I can't imagine what that's like.


HEY OHHHHH

Dead Kennedys - Kinky Sex (Makes The World Go Around)

I disagree. It looks like it's hurting a good deal, what with all the violent protesting and all.

Personally, I'm hoping for a peaceful regime change, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

And now we know why Iran needs peaceful nuclear power.