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The social mores are relaxed enough to accommodate even women like Laleh Seddigh, 28, a race-car driver who is the Iranian version of Danica Patrick. Seddigh wears bright pink veils, designer sunglasses and has won a race or two on Iran's racing circuit. State television has refused to broadcast her standing on the podium to receive her prize, but that has allowed Seddigh--in the manner of 127--to protect her radical chic. It's a win-win arrangement: she gets her fast cars and fast lifestyle, and the regime gets a poster girl for its new tolerance. "Women haven't gone after many of their rights here," she tells me. "If they pursue them, so much is possible." She pauses, perhaps realizing she sounds like one of the regime's chador-clad apologists. "Not that it's easy."
Ten years ago, the cultural and material poverty of life in Iran would have sent a privileged young woman like her fleeing to London or Los Angeles. Today Seddigh drives a silver BMW, drinks authentic Red Bull, wears Puma shoes and travels regularly to Europe. Her middle-class friends can afford real Coca-Cola as well as trips to Goa and Malaysia. (It's generally cheaper to travel east.) They meet friends online through the networking website Orkut.com and feel connected through the things they buy, the Internet they're addicted to and their ability to travel to a global community larger than their own. Will they vote? Mostly no. Do they despise the Islamic republic? Pretty much. But their inclination to do anything about it has never been so weak and the distractions never so plentiful. It's easier to lower your expectations when the only life you have known seems to be getting better.
The main reason for that improvement is simple. Thanks to soaring oil prices, there is plenty of money sloshing around. On a Saturday afternoon, I went to lunch at the gleaming kabob palace Nayeb, which is where you go in Tehran to see and be seen--while eating lots of grilled meat. The prices had tripled in my absence, and so had the line for a table. As we wait, I chat with a waiter named Vali Joodi, who tells me he wakes up at 5 a.m. each day to commute from the working-class suburb of Shahriar. Four years ago, he asked his girlfriend to marry him. Once he started tallying what they would need for rent, food and a ceremony, however, he realized he didn't earn enough to support two. Then he discovered that the government offers low-interest marriage loans that can be paid back over a long period. Billboards in Tehran advertise various forms of government loans, all with low interest rates. Agricultural loans go for 11% interest and can be invested in a bank for an 18% return.
Those sorts of handouts buy the state grudging acquiescence even from low-income workers like Joodi. When he married in 2001, the loan was $700; today it's approaching $1,300. Joodi is far from content. He tells me, "I work from 6 a.m. to midnight, come home exhausted and see my family for half an hour before I pass out." But the loan clearly mattered in his life, allowing him to marry at once, which could mean the difference between his continuing to tolerate the Islamic system and revolting against it.