Maybe Iran is but a first convulsion (and maybe not even the first) of globalization in the political dimension, which makes it much scarier for those in power, and much more significant historically. I keep hearing people say that the protests there are already far beyond Mousavi and even the election itself. What does that really mean?
But, as I argue in my article, these new guys do not have the technical expertise to run a modern economy, and I must say that even in the five years I have been going there Iran had made great strides in modernising (not all of the oil money was siphoned off).
The new people in control can typically be identified by PhDs (Iranians have inordinate respect for qualifications, particularly Western qualifications) from the Imam Khomeini University in "Strategic Studies" and the like. These are (allegedly) handed out if you get your name right on the title page. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
