IRAN: Law and order, just a warm-up act

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Before a turbaned cleric led Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran’s head of law enforcement took the stage, delivering a blistering condemnation of America, which recently played host to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and promising another wave of pressure on Iranians who adhere to Western cultural ways.

‘In the so-called cradle of the free and open society -- the U.S. and Columbia University -- they asked our respectable president, ‘Why aren’t boozing, homosexuality and debauchery allowed in your country?’’ law enforcement chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghadam told those gathered for Friday prayers and politics at Tehran University.

He said that a ‘collapse of ethics’ in the West had led to a disintegration of the family. He praised the Iranian government’s crackdown on ‘thugs and gangs’ over the last six months.

‘Thanks to enforcing law and order, we are witnessing a dramatic reduction in homicides,’ he said. ‘Despite the nagging of the West-toxified critics who want Iranians to abandon their Islamic and national values and embrace rotten Western values, the wrongdoing of the thugs has decreased.’

He also told Iranians to expect even more law and order on the streets.

In the near future, he warned, security officials will crack down on such threats to public safety as vendors selling Western CDs and movies, small-time drug peddlers, reckless motorcyclists who dart in and out of traffic and knife-wielding ‘vagrants.’

— Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran