Iranian Anticipation

"I was so happy when I heard about the nuclear agreement because I think that life will be better in Iran."
"It will be good for all the young people."
Nasim, 32, business consultant

"We know we are the lucky ones who have jobs. Of the people we know, 90 percent are happy about the nuclear deal."
"Everybody is expecting things to change and new jobs to come."
Naghmeh, 36, Tehran

"Every Iranian with contacts abroad is being approached by people who want to do some business here."
"But none of them, so far, is ready to put money in anything serious. We are having a lot of tasting and seeing and researching -- but not anything material in terms of doing business."
Majid Zamani, chief executive, Kardan Investment Bank, Tehran

"The slogan 'death to America' no longer echoes widely among educated Iranians. As a professor at Tehran university, I would tell you that less than ten percent of students support the slogan 'death to America' -- and many of those ten percent are thinking of political careers."
"But even among that ten percent, I'm not sure how genuine their anti-American sentiment is."
"Future historians will refer to the nuclear deal as a landmark. They will write that post the nuclear agreement, this happened and that happened."
Sadegh Zibakalam, professor of political science Tehran University

Women flash the “V for Victory” sign as they celebrate on Valiasr street in northern Tehran after the announcement of an agreement on Iran nuclear talks. Photograph: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

Pity that Professor Zibakalam couldn't be a little more precise, about what he imagines history will write post-agreement. Delineating 'this happened' and 'that happened'. Prophesying the future, to imagine the downfall of the Ayatollahs whose Islamist psychopathy predicts nuclear devices as convincing arguments leading to the conquest of the Middle East as the central power for the Republic. And as for 'that happened', perhaps a mushroom cloud over the State of Israel.

Of course, a complimentary reciprocation would also have occurred and the fate of Tehran might fit into the latter category of historical documentation. Should the power of the mullahs prevail regardless, they might conceive of denying that Israel was responding to an attack with a similar attack. The destruction of Tehran could compete as a reality with the wholesale destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust; neither having occurred according to Iranian history.

It is sad that Iranians have been forced by circumstances leading to the economy-crushing sanctions to live lives of strictured opportunities. University graduates working at entry level positions in service industries, or worse yet, unemployed and miserable. They might be surprised to learn that this is a situation similar to what occurs in many Western countries as well, with no constraining economic sanctions on their aspirations.

But Iran's domestic corruption and mismanagement is a story all its own; one it can share with the disabled countries of the African continent which still complain bitterly as is their right about the malign oppression of imperialism, whose constraints they themselves replaced with corruption, bleeding their populations dry and offering no compensation for their citizens' well-being. With Iran's affairs under the dominating clerics death stalks dissenters and heretics in capital punishment.

The enterprising young Iranians who cannot find satisfaction in their country of birth exit to migrate elsewhere. Those who remain and are unemployed can depend on no government social safety nets, no security benefits or job re-training. Whatever funds the state captures through its black market sale of oil and gas as one of the world's largest possessors of both those natural petroleum resources is slated not for improving the public weal, but for funding terrorist groups and its illicit nuclear program.

Despite which, those who consider the Islamic Republic of Iran's agenda unuseful in administering the affairs of the country appear few in number and commitment. As yet, none of the sanctions has been lifted, not before Iran demonstrates its commitment toward curtailing its nuclear program to convince the U.S., Europe and China to 'terminate' embargoes. Even as Europe and China are champing at the bit to do just that and get into that lucrative market once again.