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Judging by what I saw on a 10-day trip to Iran last month, the strategy has worked. Today young Iranians despair of political change. Resigned to the rule of autocratic mullahs, they have turned inward, settling for the opportunity to make a little more money and have a little more fun. Gone are dreams of Che Guevara and a quick, painless revolution, replaced by the allure of pyramid schemes and cheap trips to India. Although it's too late to buy the love of Iran's youth, the mullahs seem happy to settle for torpor. "You have a situation," says my friend Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst in Tehran for the International Crisis Group, "where the majority of Iranians have neither the luxury to risk their livelihoods waging political protest nor the nothing-to-lose desperation and rage that result from penury."
The great buy-off may prove to be a temporary fix, given that the government's beneficence is tied to surplus funds engendered by high oil prices. Polls show that 50% of Iranians plan to vote in next week's presidential election, compared with 66% in 2001. Lower turnout matters in a system that cares about public opinion, but that has long stopped being a concern of the Islamic republic. The regime is cunning enough to dispense new social liberties carefully, with periodic perfunctory raids reminding young people that they are being given freedom and shouldn't confuse it with a right or an accomplishment. But young Iranians probably can't be bought off indefinitely. The hedonism and greed of the moment mask a profound frustration that could still boil over. The question is, Will anyone notice until it does?
The day after surviving the cocktail hour from hell, I attended a practice session of 127, Iran's hottest underground rock band. Because the regime still pretends to oppose the toxic culture of the West, rock music is semi-taboo, so the band rehearses in a soundproof bunker inside an abandoned greenhouse in a low-rise complex of concrete apartment blocks on the outskirts of the city. The band members compare themselves with writers in Soviet Russia--miserably creative, creatively miserable. They sing in English and dress in the uniform of global grunge: long sideburns, faded Converse sneakers and plaid shirts. The band is beloved by young Iranians because its music communicates a despair that has few avenues for expression.
For my benefit they play My Sweet Little Terrorist Song, a sly lament about Iran's inclusion in President George W. Bush's "axis of evil": "I just wanna watch Dylan live./ I won't fly into the Pentagon alive." Some of their songs can be read as cries for political change, but like everything else here, they are ambiguous enough to be easily defendable in a courtroom, should it come to that. As I sat in 127's practice bunker, I caught myself wondering, Where were you when I lived here? As recently as three years ago, it was still somewhat risque to turn music up really loud or wear Capri pants in certain parts of town. Now music like 127's, which offers an artful expression of a dark, complex reality, helps make living in Iran more bearable. Even the murals around Tehran of scowling ayatullahs have been repainted to give them toothy smiles.