Iran Exporting its Women?

Redstate has a link to Spengler at the Asia Times Online that has an interesting money quote, buried deep in the article:

The new Persian Empire masquerading as an Islamic Republic is a wounded beast. The rural misery and urban squalor that drive Iranian women into the brothels of Dubai and Brussels contrasts sharply with neighboring Azerbaijan, whose economy will double in size by 2010 as new oilfields come online, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Half of Iranians do not speak Persian, and half of those speak Azeri. Azerbaijan's oil wealth is a giant magnet; it must attract either the largest national minority in Iran, or the military attentions of Iran itself. If a Kurdish state asserts itself out of the ruins of Iraq - a long-delayed justice for that ancient and resilient people - Iran's Kurds will be tempted to throw off the Persian yoke.

The Iranian Kurds I know would love to get the hell out of the Islamic Republic. Azerbaijan may be a strongman-republic, but it is prospering and Tabriz is a hotbed of discontent according to some recent refugees.

With a leader like Ahmedinejad neglecting the economy to do a Hugo Chavez strut around the world capitals to get UN GA adulation, what the average Iranian wants is lost in the static. The Iranian prez needs the bomb and he, like Kim Jung Il, needs it soon.