Annas [Archives:2004/713/Press Review]

16 February 2004
Main headlines
– Horrendous crime in the city of Ibb, a child strangled to death, the accused an entire family
– Presidential visit to Riyadh to settle the border crisis
– Preparation for the journalists conference continue amidst possibilities of postponing it, parliamentary differences on the journalists law
– Physicians and pharmacists intend the election of their union next March
Dr Saeed al-Assali discusses in his article the question whether he experiment of the state based on religion is approaching its end saying no doubt Iran has been during the second half of the twentieth century the focus of the world attention and seems to continue to be so at least in the major part of the 21st century. Perhaps the success of the Islamic revolution in 1979 was the most important event in that year and maybe its sudden downfall would be the most important one the first half of the 21st century would witness.
The Iranian revolution was looked at as a beginning to other revolutions in the region and that would lead to a radical change in the political regimes in the area and would result in an effect in the regional and world orders. But a thing of this kind did not happen as the Iranian revolution was besieged in its very own place and surely the failure in the attempt of exporting it represented the beginning of the end of the Iranian revolution.
What is going on in Iran nowadays is in fact one of the phenomena of conflict between supporters of the two camps; supporters of the religious state and those of the democratic state. It is obvious that the trend of the conflict is tilting in favour of supporters of the religious state due to partiality of the Islamic republic constitution to them, but that would not last long.
The Islamic republic did not achieve any progress in economy and this failure will make lose the support of many segments of the Iranian people, especially the middle class and city residents. In the near future the Islamic republic would resort to narrow the space of freedom and practice suppression under pretext of preserving the regime. This in turn would make it lose the support of many people who are still thinking that the religious state could realize justice even if it failed to realize democracy. So what is now happening in Iran represents the beginning of the end. We have also to call the attention that what is happening now in Iran and what would happen in the future would not restrict its impact on Iran or the Shiite but the conflict would affect all Islamic movements because it would prove that the slogan of establishing an Islamic state similar to the state of the Caliphate is not a possible matter.
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[archive-e:713-v:13-y:2004-d:2004-02-19-p:press]