Persian gulf

Iran | Its ruling clerics may hate America, but Iran's restive population disagrees | Priya Abraham

Iran’s reigning mullahs and the reformists who would mend the regime’s theocratic ways finally have something in common: Iranians don’t like either of them. That will likely mean thick voter apathy when the country elects a new president on June 17.

For most of the country, disillusionment with the government is escalating. Frustrated by repressive Islamic laws, Iranians elected current president Mohammed Khatami in 1997, hoping he and his reformers would create more democratic rule. But power still resides with unelected clerics. The reformists have accomplished little.

The result might surprise many Americans. Seventy percent of today’s Iranians are below the age of 30 and have scant memory of the anger that spawned a U.S.-hating Islamic theocracy in 1979. These Iranians are not simply against their own regime; they are probably the only broadly pro-American population in the Middle East.