[R-G] A Frail Economy Raises Pressure on Iran's Rulers

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

One of the global trends is that energy consumption in the global
South has been and will be going up, with industrial and personal
consumption of growing populations being subsidized to various degrees
(greatly so in countries such as Iran), subsidies that governments
often find it difficult to cut back.  At the same time, neoliberalism
(promoting privatization and deregulation and generally underinvesting
in infrastructure), coupled with low energy prices in the 1990s, has
helped aggravate underinvestment in energy production and distribution
(in the case of Iran compounded by imperialism that raises costs of
foreign trade and technology acquisition).  Essentially, a turn away
from neoliberalism is a necessary if not sufficient condition to
address supply bottlenecks (if the problem is not to be solved by
curtailing consumption), but the New York Times is even more committed
to it than the Leader and reformists of Iran, so it doesn't get a
mention in the article below. -- Yoshie

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/world/middleeast/03iran.html>
February 3, 2008
A Frail Economy Raises Pressure on Iran's Rulers
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

TEHRAN — In one of the coldest winters Iranians have experienced in
recent memory, the government is failing to provide natural gas to
tens of thousands of people across the country, leaving some for days
or even weeks with no heat at all. Here in the capital, rolling
blackouts every night for a month have left people without
electricity, and heat, for hours at a time.

The heating crisis in this oil-exporting nation is adding to Iranians'
increasing awareness of the contrast between their growing influence
abroad and frailty at home, according to government officials,
diplomats and political analysts interviewed here.