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This article focuses on the political instability of Iran and the apathy of citizens toward an upcoming election which is known to be unfair. Twenty-five years after the revolution that saw Ayatollah Khomeini depose the shah amid scenes of mass euphoria, Iran is in a dismal mess--economic, diplomatic and political--and there is no obvious way out, short of the clerics stepping down and handing power to the people in a genuinely free and fair election. Though Iran still has 10% of the world's known oil reserves and more gas than any other country bar Russia, its GDP per head was 30% higher under the shah. Shocking events, such as the death in Iranian custody last year of a female Canadian-Iranian journalist after she was beaten up, continue to remind the world how dissidents can be hounded and tortured. Next week's poll puts the limits of Iran's highly qualified freedom into stark relief. Iran also continues to sponsor terrorism against Israel and, unlike the Arab countries, it has yet even to accept Israel's right to exist.

The article reports that since the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, Iran's treatment of women has become a measure of its political climate. The position of women improved dramatically after the election of President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani in 1989. In the parliamentary election in May 1992, nine out often women voters supported candidates endorsed by the president. Lately, however, Rafsanjani's failure to revive the economy, his need to win influential friends and his rift with the country's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have stopped the improvement in its tracks.

Iran's election last week made it clear that the Islamic Republic founded by Ayatollah Khomeini 25 years ago has not evolved as some had hoped into a serious democracy. So the predictable outcome was a victory for the religious conservatives. Iran's leaders insist that they do not want nuclear weapons, and never have. With each new leak, Iran has changed its story. It now admits to having had a secret programme to enrich uranium. Along with Libya and North Korea, it seems to have been one of the main customers of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced Pakistani who ran a global nuclear-smuggling network. The mere prospect of Iran acquiring a bomb has prompted Israel to ponder aloud the case for a pre-emptive strike. If Iran got the bomb, sometime enemies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia might feel compelled to follow suit. In short, though a nuclear Iran may not be worth fighting a war to avert, it is a danger worth averting.