Iran's Talk Is Full Of Fire But Its Economy Is Burning

by Chris Walker - March 11th, 2007 - London Independent

On current trends, Iran will cease to be a net oil exporter in 2015

In the nuclear stand-off between the US and Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talks a good game. But his bellicose words hide a weakness - the meltdown of the Iranian economy. As the situation becomes ever more desperate, so does Mr Ahmadinejad's rhetoric.

It's hard to know what's really going on in an Iran full of Orwellian doublespeak. The Expediency Council is pursuing a 20-year plan to create an "Islamic Economy". At a recent conference of the Elite Society of Self-Sacrificers of the Islamic Revolution, economic discussions were pretty theological with calls for "economic jihad".

And yet, behind the scenes, it is becoming clear that all is not well inside Iran, even in the middle of an oil price boom. At 3.9 million barrels a day, oil production remains stubbornly below its level at the time of the 1979 revolution.

Despite its bellicose attitude towards the west, the reliance by Islamofascists on the government paradign of socialism, assures that the Islamic governments suffer greatly diminished productivity.

As noted in this article, it is encouraging that our government has learned to use the levers of free enterprise to fight against our enemies. What value is there in being a nation of free enterprise if you don't understand and use its principals? That is the one positive that we must hold on to. We must remain a nation of free enterprise. As noted in Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose", free enterprise is the bastion that keeps us the wealthiest nation on earth and that underpins the whole concept of individual freedom.

The use by the Bush administration of the tools of free enterprise in its battle against Islamofascism has been one of the plus signs for the "war on" what Bush calls "terror". Ironically all of Bush's major failings have been when he went against the concept of freedom and embraced socialized programs . . . such as his drug plan for medicare.

The lesson for America is the same lesson that should have been learned with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Socialism does not work. Since those on the left are so upset with Bush this irony seems lost on them. Their bias in favor of a failed economic system is as great a threat to our nation as the danger of Islamofascism when it gets nuclear bombs.