Conventional wisdom says that the Democratic Party’s chances in next year’s midterm election will mostly depend not on terrorism, not on healthcare, but on simple economics. If the economy is improving, they’ll do OK. If it’s not, they’ll get hammered.
Juan Cole suggests this dynamic may be playing out in Iran as well, where this weekend’s demonstrations have grown ever bigger and more violent. Ideology may seem to be at the forefront, but the economy is probably playing a big role in the background:
Richard Spencer of the Independent reports from Dubai on the darker side of Sunday’s events, as crowds went on rampages, setting fire to banks, government buildings and even a local police station….
The report of attacks on banks makes me think that there is an economic dimension to this uprising. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s profligate spending had provoked very high inflation last year, up to nearly 30%. Although the government maintains that inflation is now running 15%, that is still a hit that average families are taking, on top of the high prices of last year.
….Moreover, as as Robert Worth recently reported, the government has been threatening to remove subsidies from staples. I was in Egypt in January of 1977 when President Anwar El Sadat stopped subsidies under pressure from the IMF, and it threw the country into 3 days of turmoil from Aswan to Alexandria. Iranians have been upset by this talk of no more subsidies and it may have fed economic anxieties already inflamed by the high inflation (in fact, removal of subsidies is essentially a form of price inflation for consumers).
More at the link.
