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Is Iran Next?
Thursday, January 10, 2002 By: Juan Paxety
Reza Pahlavi,the son of the shah, has become one of the more interesting figures from Iran and is pushing secular democracy. That he may be succeeding is outlined here by Franklin Foer. It is secularism, not liberal Islam, that is now sweeping Iranian society. Instead of turbans, the rage among young Iranians is Major League Baseball hats. Googoosh, a Barbra Streisand-like diva of '70s Iranian pop, has recently resurfaced as an icon, thanks to satellite broadcasts and smuggled recordings. Men have begun to don the necktie, a once-banned symbol of the shah's modernizing influence.
And Pahlavi himself writes this op-ed piece in The Washington Post. Behind a benign facade of electoral process and claims of an Islamic version of democracy, the Iranian regime remains one of the world's most cynical oppressors and an enemy of democratic values.
So, maybe Iran is next.
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