TEHRAN, Iran — Twice now, the mass protests roiling Iran have reached even her deeply conservative neighborhood. Shahrzad, a 36-year-old teacher who lives with her parents and acts as their
Iran’s theocratic dictatorship has gone to great lengths to shore up its crumbling domestic legitimacy with a facade of democratic process. But today’s presidential election will be a tightly controlled exercise in political choreography that offers little real choice for the long-suffering Iranian people and even less hope for meaningful change in Iran’s hostile policies.