The Future of Iran

What will Iran's future look like? That is still very much up for debate. If a look at Iran's history proves anything, it is that circumstances within the country can change on short notice.

Many of Iran's young people and liberal-minded citizens hope that the future will resemble the vision of the Green Revolution, a movement which supported opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi against President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad in the 2009 election. The adherents to this movement wanted greater personal freedom, increased civil rights for women, and an end to Ahmadinijad's saber-rattling rhetoric. 

After the election was decided in Ahmadinijad's favor, there were protests in the streets of Tehran, but they failed to attain the critical mass of the protests that led to the 1979 revolution, in which more than 10% of the country took to the streets. The movement was violently suppressed, and eventually the demonstrations ended, though political unrest remains in Iran among various disaffected groups, particularly the young and unemployed. 

The nuclear issue also provides several starkly divided visions of the future. On one hand, there is the Iranian government's official position that nuclear energy is necessary to meet Iran's growing energy needs. This implies a peaceful and prosperous future filled with nuclear reactors but not nuclear weapons.

On the other hand, there is the vision that many international observers guess is in the mind of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which a nuclear-armed Iran can dominate the region, defend itself definitively from enemies like Iraq and Israel, and impose its will on its neighbors. Pursuit of this outcome may lead to a future that still only exists within the minds of hawks in both Israel and the U.S., in which a range of military responses is unleashed upon Iran: from bombing of its nuclear facilities, to air attacks upon its cities, to Israel's ultimate recourse, its own nuclear arsenal.

Whatever the outcome of that contentious issue, the demographics of Iran's population imply that the future will soon belong to the young. More than two-thirds of Iranians are under 30, and a quarter of Iranians are under 15. If this mass of young people is unable to find jobs (which are guaranteed in Iran's Constitution) and starts punching at its political weight, the white-bearded clerics in government might be forced into some serious reforms. These could include allowing private companies to have more of a stake in Iran's economy, allowing more cultural and journalistic freedoms, or softening its stance toward the West.

This is a future that many people, in both Iran and the U.S., could get behind.