By Thomas L. Friedman*

Saturday, June 15, 2002
New York Times:Iran's Third Wave - @ 20:46 PST
Iran's Third Wave
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN


TEHRAN, Iran

Iran has the bomb. I know. I found it.

No, no — not that bomb. This bomb is hiding in plain sight — in high schools, universities and coffee houses. It is a bomb that is ticking away under Iranian society, and over the next decade it will explode in ways that will change the face of this Islamic Republic. It's called here, for short, "The Third Generation."

The first generation of Iranian revolutionaries overthrew the Shah in 1979 and founded the Islamic Republic. They are now old, gray and increasingly tired, a clerical regime clinging to power more by coercion than by any popular acceptance of their plan to Islamize all aspects of Iranian life. The second generation came of age during the 1980's Iran-Iraq war, which left 286,000 Iranians dead and 500,000 injured. This is a lost generation, deflated and quiescent.

The third generation are those Iranians from 16 to 30 who have come of age entirely under Islamic rule. They never knew the Shah's despotism. They have known only the ayatollahs'. There are now 18 million of them — roughly a third of Iran's population — and they include 2 million university students and 4 million recent university grads.

"As with most revolutions, this third generation has no special sympathy for the founders of the revolution — in fact they blame our generation for bringing them a government they feel doesn't know how to run the country properly," observed Mohsen Sazgara, a former aide to Ayatollah Khomeini and now a top reformer. "They are the most significant population group in Iran [until the fourth generation, the 24 million Iranians under 16, comes of age], and wherever this generation decides to go is where Iran will go in the next decade."

Where this Third Generation wants to go is already apparent. While some of them are religious conservatives, most are not. They are young, restless, modern-looking and often unemployed, because there are not enough good jobs. They are connected to the world via the Internet or satellite dishes — and they like what they see. They want the good life, a good job, more individual freedom and more connections with the outside world — and they are increasingly angry that they don't have those things. They embrace Islam, but they don't want it to occupy every corner of their lives.

"They are not anti-religious, but they are anti-fundamentalism — they refuse to be blind followers of anything," says Hamidreza Jalaeipour, a sociology professor. His 19-year-old son, Mohammadreza, nods vigorously in agreement.

The government has already had to ease up in response to them. When I was last here, six years ago, a friend took me to see an Iranian guitarist who had an electric guitar but could only play songs in his bedroom, because pop music had been banned. Today he is giving public concerts of Iranian pop songs and cutting CD's. When I was last here women had to be covered in black robes and their hair could not show. Now the robes are multicolored and many push back their head scarves to show their hair. When the mullahs shout at them, many young women shout right back. The most popular Iranian films today are those that mock the hypocrisy of the theocracy, including one now playing in Tehran about a 15-year-old Iranian girl who has a child out of wedlock and decides to keep the baby, and another about a mother who runs off with her daughter's fiancé.

This Third Generation of Iranians is quite different from its counterpart in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a country getting younger, poorer, more Islamic and more anti-American — as young Saudis react against what they consider a corrupt, irreligious, pro-American regime. Iran is a country getting younger, poorer, less Islamic and less anti-American — as young Iranians react against an anti-American theocracy, isolating them from the world.

When Iran got the telegraph in the early 1900's it helped trigger the first constitutional revolution against the despotic Qajar regime. When telephones and tape cassettes spread around Iran in the 1970's, they became tools through which Ayatollah Khomeini spread his revolution against the Shah. Today the Internet and satellite TV have come to Iran, bringing with them new appetites and aspirations for Iran's Third Generation.

This Third Generation hoped President Khatami's reformist candidacy would satisfy those aspirations, but he proved to be a bust, unwilling to confront the conservatives. No matter. The Third Generation will eventually find a new political horse to ride and, when it does, Iran will change — with or without the ayatollahs' blessings.

Source: New York Times

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Mr. Friedman is a Pulitzer winner columnist writing for New York Times. The above article was published by New York Times of 16 June.