Perspectives

Life in Iran. From a book review of “Honeymoon in Tehran,” a new book from the author of “Lipstick Jihad,” Azadeh Moaveni.

It’s the seductive contradictions of the motherland itself. The regime promotes this split by sending mixed signals: it makes repressive laws but sometimes looks the other way when people break them. Although it’s illegal to keep pet dogs, considered ritually unclean according to strict Islamic tradition, Tehran’s ladies who lunch openly sport poodles as accessories. Alcohol is forbidden, but the authorities pretend that the yuppies who descend on a rural market are wholesalers buying grapes in bulk, not the illicit winemakers they really are. Crackdowns do happen, but Moaveni portrays a society whose citizens — especially the young ones — behave as if the rules don’t exist, pushing to see how far the government will let them go.

... And after Ahmadinejad shuts down news papers, censors the Internet and actually enforces Islamic dress codes, there are still gambits of openness. He lifts a ban on women as spectators in soccer stadiums even as the authorities order a 37-year-old mother of four to be stoned for adultery.

The 'Shock and Awe' doctrine

It is instructive to compare the number of people killed on either side after the Israeli attack on Hamas (in bold below) that took place some hours back.

Reason for the Israeli attack on Hamas (from the NY Times):

The air attack came after days of warnings by Israeli officials that Israel would retaliate for intense rocket and mortar fire against Israeli towns and villages by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. On Wednesday alone, more than 60 rockets and mortars were fired, some reaching further than previously. While the Hamas rockets are meant to be deadly, and several houses and a factory were hit, sowing widespread panic, no Israelis were killed or seriously injured in the recent attacks.

Meanwhile over in Gaza after the Israeli response: (from CNN and the NY Times):

Israeli aircraft launched air attacks across Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 155 people, including the Hamas police chief and other officials, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources. Palestinian medical sources said 250 people were wounded in the air raid in Gaza. At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, scores of dead bodies were laid out in front of the morgue waiting for family members to identify them. Many were dismembered. Inside the hospital, relatives carried a five-month old baby who had suffered a serious head wound from shrapnel. Overwhelmed, the hospital staff seemed unable to offer help. At the Gaza City police station, at least 15 traffic police who had been training in a courtyard were killed on the spot. Tamer Kahrouf, 24, a civilian who had been working on a construction site in Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, said he saw his two brothers and uncle killed before his eyes when the Israeli planes bombed a security post nearby.