“Behind the scenes, President Ahmadinejad’s rivals are sharpening their knives,” the London Times wrote on August 26. “The Tehran Chamber of Commerce and Industry warns that almost a million jobs could be lost because the government is unable to pay its debts to private contractors. The Ministry of Labour has coolly announced that the economy is losing an average of 3,000 jobs a day. With double-digit inflation perverting economic activity, state-owned banks cannot attract investors even with annual interest rates of 20 percent labelled as ‘Islamic mutual benefit.’ In its last phases the Soviet Union, having earned the sobriquet of ‘Burkina Faso with missiles,’ was little more than an oil-exporting country with superpower pretensions.
“With Chinese technology the Iranian regime has managed to control satellite television within its borders. Now only programs broadcast by the state can be received. With its control of the media, its megalomania and its ailing economy, Iran resembles the Soviet Union shortly before its downfall.”
Eric Koch’s new book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
While it didn’t happen in the case of the Soviet Union in its last months/years, one might fear that this setting in Iran could be conducive to a distracting foreign adventure. Mobilization cures unemployment.
I wonder whether insurance premiums for the supertankers that run the Straits of Hormuz are going up.
I agee – in our last phase we are always dangerous.
Iran is NOT like the Soviet Union just before its fall. History never repeats itself. The situation is too different. BUT, there are similarities, no doubt. I am sure the Islamic regime will be overthrown one of these days; it is closer to the Shah’s regime before its fall. I personally have a very high opinion of the Iranians.
I have shared your high opinion of the Persians ever since the Battle of Salamis in 480 B.C.
I have never met an Iranian in Canada I didn’t like. They are open, hard working and have a sense of humour. They all despise the regime at home and always seem to call themselves Persians.
I regret I cannot share your view. One Iranian boy once threw a spitball at me when I was a school teacher early in life.
The Iranian-Canadian writer Marina Nemat will launch her new book, “After Tehran,” later this month. It is a sequel to her very successful memoir, “Prisoner of Tehran,” published in 2007 and translated into 13 languages. She was arrested as a teenager for objecting to a fundamentalist high school teacher, held and tortured at Evin prison. Saved from excution at the last minute by a guard who fell in love with her, she eventually moved to Canada and wrote her first book while working as a waitress at the Swiss Chalet in Aurora, Ontario. Her very personal story illustrates the oppression of the Islamic regime.
Yes, she is most impressive. We invited her to speak at Couchiching a couple of years ago but she couldn’t come.