Iran is interesting in this regard:
Islamic morals' police have raided and seized those obnoxious symbols of the American way of life -- Barbie dolls -- being sold in hundreds of shops around Tehran. But that's not the only reason that the Bush administration is being warned by intelligence officials that Iran could be on the brink of some huge internal explosion. They detect signs of panic in way Iran's hard-line Judiciary recently has gone on the offensive against those seeking a detente with Washington. The Tehran Justice Department issued a circular declaring that publication of any material favoring new U.S.-Iran talks would be considered a crime. Mohsen Mirdamadi, an Iranian reformist, who chairs the Iranian parliament's Foreign Affairs and National Security committees, and who had denied Iranian official denials of U.S.-Iran talks on Cyprus last April, was named in an official complaint which could lead to his prosecution. And Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, has now publicly ruled out talks with Washington, even after a May 21 colloquium in parliament on the future of relations with America in which officials from both right and left participated. Khameini said any such talks were "an insult to the Iranian people." One pro-detente newspaper the Bonyan, has been closed down and reformist commentator Ahmad Zeibabadi, given a two-year jail sentence. Meantime, the bulk of Iran's population, more than 70 percent of it under 22 years of age, is writhing with frustration, prompting Iran's elected President Mohammad Khatami to say: "This revolution happened because people wanted an Islamic Republic, not an Islamic dictatorship." Stay tuned.
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