Tehran a paradox of rich and poor

updated 9:46 p.m. ET Oct. 4, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran - The shops are full of Western pop music and movies — the latest Harry Potter film, even "The Simpsons." Young women stroll the streets in skinny jeans and short coats, their heads barely covered, arm-in-arm with boys in muscle shirts and spiky hair.

This is affluent north Tehran, where clerics are rare, lifestyles are relatively liberal and Iran's growing isolation from the world is a source of deep anxiety.

Not far to the south, though, in a dilapidated bureaucratic building near the city's government center, and farther to the south in Tehran's sprawling poorer neighborhoods, things are different.

Near downtown, as a hard-line official talks about his dislike of the West and the continued power of the Islamic revolution, the call to prayer echoes through an open window. On a nearby wall, a map showing Iran's closest ally Syria and its top enemy Israel hangs prominently.

It is the paradox of Tehran today — a city and people surprisingly cosmopolitan and far different from Western stereotypes, paired with an ultraconservative government working to consolidate its power and at sharp odds with the West.

Yet, whether modern or strictly traditional, many Iranians share one thing: A strong national pride and desire for respect from the outside world, sharpened by their sense of being under siege.

"The world does not understand us," said Shahryar Eivazzadeh, in his early 30s, who works at a software company in north Tehran. Many young people may dislike the current government but they shudder at the thought of attack by the West, he said.

"Not everything is so bad here," he said of the criticism Iran faces. "It's not that simple."

Surrounded by unfriendly neighbors
In part, the strong nationalism stems from the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and the vivid, frequent references to it across state media. TV images of weeping mothers, exhausted and heroic soldiers and martyred civilians are a stark reminder of how Iran suffered the last time it was invaded.

During key times, such as the recent anniversary of the war's start, hard-liners may deliberately use such images to shore up their influence. But even educated middle-class Iranians say their country sits in a rough neighborhood, surrounded by Arab countries that are not friendly, and that Iran needs ways to defend itself.

Such shared national sentiment aside, much of Tehran feels split.

Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won many votes in the conservative, poorer southern neighborhoods of Tehran, where people responded to his populist call for sharing the country's oil wealth.

Little of that sharing has happened, however, and even former Ahmadinejad supporters in parliament and the media have raised complaints about his economic performance.

In the city's more upscale and modern north, the criticism is much sharper: Some shake their heads in disgust when the president's name comes up.

In one office building the morning after Ahmadinejad's recent speech at Columbia University, a middle-aged employee laughed ruefully and told a friend, "It's better not to know" what Ahmadinejad had said. "We don't deserve such a guy," he said, asking that his name not be used. The hardest-line newspapers, however, were full of praise.

The same divisions play out on the streets.

Even before the 1979 Islamic revolution and during the period immediately after, Tehran's northern neighborhoods, especially the affluent suburbs stretching up into the foothills that ring the city, were a more Westernized bastion, where women often dressed in Western clothes, supporters of the shah's regime lived in villas and even some fast-food restaurants flourished.

The south was home to the poorer and more conservative, many of them economic migrants from Iran's provinces who came to find work and crowded into small apartments, sometimes in neighborhoods with no working sewage systems.

MORE FROM MIDEAST & N. AFRICA

Mideast & N. Africa Section Front

Ahmadinejad: Iran will further enrich uranium Lebanese Cabinet lets Hezbollah keep its weapons Iran whistleblower silenced by deadly salad Israeli police arrest settler leader in West Bank Iranian sect head seeks asylum for beliefs U.K.: Iran confirms release of 5 British sailors Newsweek: Dubai is Persian Gulf's Lehman Bros. NYT: With Iraq foothold, oil giants eye future Dubai debt plan fails to soothe Gulf markets Mideast & N. Africa Section Front   Add Mideast & N. Africa headlines to your news reader: