Is Tehran Cracking?

It's the Big Story, as far as I'm concerned. This part of the NYT coverage was eye-opening:

The Iranian government had planned for a year to ration gasoline but had postponed the move, fearing unrest. Iran offers the highest subsidies for gasoline in the region, buying foreign gasoline for slightly more than $2 a gallon, according to official figures, and offering it for 34 cents a gallon.

"Iran is in a bind," said Vera de Ladoucette, an energy analyst with Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Paris. "They have acted too late and too harshly," ...

Mr. Ahmadinejad is facing growing discontent over his economic policies and is being blamed for failing to deliver on his promises to improve the economy. He suffered a setback last December when he lost local elections, and he faces crucial parliamentary elections in March.

"The government will have to back down or face consequences," said Ehsan Mohammadi, 32, who uses his motorcycle to work as a delivery man. "There are many people like me, and we cannot support our families with rationed gasoline."

Here's a round-up of Iranian blogger reports, by City Boy (the best blogger on the story, btw) who translates this story thus:

A member of the government has said "[the riots] were not done by the people ... the people are not stupid. This is all done by terrorists, foreigners and American dollars."

Blaming everything on terrorists and foreigners. Did Tehran get Rudy Giuliani's Iraq memo by mistake? Meanwhile, the mullahs are trying to suppress news stories. A British conservative blog draws the following conclusion:

What the Iranian government needs right now is some external threat to unite the people. It had that in the sabre rattling over its nuclear plans, and it helped. We need to remove the obvious threats to Iran so that it can't unite its people (as well as making sure they can a news service that tells them how bad things really are in Iran). In short we need to appear to take the pressure off.

That does not mean we stop working on its nuclear program, it just means we do so quietly and carefully so as not to give the Iranian regime ammunition to unite the Iranian people behind it.

I'd say it means we need to tighten the sanctions, especially on gasoline. If we can economically strangle the theo-fascists, it's far preferable to war. Major photo-gallery here.