To the rose garden of martyrs

Even during my time in Tehran nearly three decades ago, a jagged chasm had opened up between the people and the regime. The revolutionary fervour had paled; resentment with an oppressive cleric regime, clothed in religious righteousness, muscled by a ruthless security system and supported by shadowy financial structures was evident. The invasion of private space, the curtailment of personal freedoms, economic hardship and growing estrangement from the world deeply troubled the people, heirs to a rich and highly sophisticated civilisation.

- NAVTEJ SARNA

A close friend observed that these children of the revolution would come out on the streets again but My friend is no longer with us but from on high he would have watched his compatriots being shot dead on the streets of Tehran, Karaj, Kermanshah... not by an enemy force, or an occupying power, but by their own guardians.

And yet, as I write, nobody quite knows what is going to happen in Iran.

Will the “loaded and locked” US war machine, now looming over Iran, unleash its spleen on the Ayatollahs? Will Donald Trump, turbocharged by his machismo for technological blitzkrieg, rain hell on Iran? And what then? Retaliation and counter-retaliation by Iran and Israel? Civil war, ethnic divide and disintegration? Chaos in the world’s crucial cockpit?