Wampum

Rationing went into force yesterday in Iran. The per-vehicle monthly allotment is 100 liters. Le Monde reports long lines, some resistance (12 stations burned in Tehran). The police report making 80 arrests, also in Tehran.

The plan of record is that rationing will be in effect until October or December. Recall that the mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ran for president of the Islamic Republic on a platform of uplifting the poor. His initial nominees for the Oil and Welfare-and-Cooperatives ministries, Ali Saeedlou (Oil) and Hashemi (Welfare), both deputies in the Ahmadinejad administration of Tehran, were rejected by the Majlis, and this is where he's in trouble, again.

Five months ago I wrote about the limited circulation report by the Majlis on sanctions. Ahmadinejad and Larijani have said that sanctions couldn't hurt Iran, the authors of the Majlis report came to the conclusion that freezing (or seizing) its overseas bank accounts, an embargo on crude oil from Iran, and an embargo on refined petroleum products, gasoline in particular, to Iran, would hurt Iran economically, and therefore socially.

I suppose its time to enter Iran in Marc Lynch's Who'll be the first t'blow? spec-u-race over at Abu Aardvark. Not because the remaining Rehnquist Puchists (aka "the Cheney Gang") are twisting the right knobs in Congress (the S.970 fiasco is really about restarting the arms race with the Soviet fissiles inventory custodian, packaged neatly for the members of the Federal Legislature who let Cheney and Rumsfeld Gates do their thinking for them), because no one in Iran uses uranium in any form to get from point A to points B and C, but for the same reasons many Americans associate failure with the Carter years.

I've no idea if the average '00 or '04 Bush/Cheney voter has buyer's remorse, but I expect I'll see former Speaker of the (6th) Majlis, Medhi Karrubi (Assembly of Combatant Clergy, 1st-Gen revolutionary clergy, as well as a reformer), who offered to make the poor in Iran at least $62 better off, in the news again.

In the US, which in 1942 was, like Iran then and today, a petroleum exporter, the general population (class A) was limited to 4 gallons/week, those essential to the war effort (class B) were limited to 8 gallons/week, and doctors and mullahs clergy, etc. (class C), and members of Congress were not rationed.