The Economist has an interesting article today on the growing conflict between the conservative clergy that runs Iran and the reformers who want to drag the country out of the gutter. Despite the three decade US project to discredit and isolate Iran, the country is hardly a backwater. There are plenty of educated and cosmopolitan Iranians who are rapidly losing interest in the antics of the Ayatollah and his minions. Indeed, Iran very well might be an exemplary state right now had we not inflicted the Shah on them, prompting the Islamic takeover in 1979.