The view from Tehran

The view from Tehran

Lexington

What might Ayatollah Ali Khamenei be making of America’s noisy Iran talk this week?

HERE in Iran I have been finding it hard to make sense of all the strident utterances about the Islamic Republic emanating from America’s capital this week. Being Supreme Leader, I need to understand what my enemy is thinking. Being an ayatollah, I can modestly say that I am something of an expert in textual exegesis. Nonetheless, I confess that I’m puzzled.

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Let Romney be Romney

The Republicans

The Republican front-runner should be talking about jobs above all

IT WAS not, to be honest, all that super. Only ten states voted on March 6th, compared with the 21 that voted on the last Super Tuesday in 2008; and they delivered a mixed message. Mitt Romney, the front-runner, won six of them. His nearest rival, Rick Santorum, won three, and came within a percentage point of wresting the main catch of the day, Ohio, away from him. The remaining state, Georgia, went to its native son, Newt Gingrich: maybe just enough to prevent his campaign from dissolving in its own bombast. Ron Paul, a strident libertarian, won nothing, but his campaign will soldier on to the end.

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The dream that failed

Nuclear power

A year after Fukushima, the future for nuclear power is not bright—for reasons of cost as much as safety

THE enormous power tucked away in the atomic nucleus, the chemist Frederick Soddy rhapsodised in 1908, could “transform a desert continent, thaw the frozen poles, and make the whole world one smiling Garden of Eden.” Militarily, that power has threatened the opposite, with its ability to make deserts out of gardens on an unparalleled scale. Idealists hoped that, in civil garb, it might redress the balance, providing a cheap, plentiful, reliable and safe source of electricity for centuries to come. But it has not. Nor does it soon seem likely to.

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