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The Economic Question Iran's Election Campaign Hasn't Answered
(Wall Street Journal) Ray Takeyh - Whatever the ballots are marked in Iran's elections on Friday, the theocratic state's vetting bodies will make sure that all but the most reliable loyalists are disqualified from public office. Iran's parliament will remain in the hands of conservatives. The Assembly of Experts will be manned by elderly clerics. The problem for the Islamic Republic is the fact that its leaders have no vision for how to meet future economic challenges. Iran today resembles the Soviet Union of the 1970s, a regime that avoided economic reforms and hoped that oil money would save it. That was a regime that indulged in imperial ventures with obvious costs but hard-to-discern benefits; a regime shielding itself in an ideology that convinced a few and inspired no one. This dilemma cannot be resolved by another round of circumscribed elections.