Iran Is Burning

Article By Writer Michael Kraft Author: Michael Kraft
Published: July 2, 2007
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Well the gas stations seem to be, and thats a start.

Iran’s president is learning that when you run your control with the fuel of hatred to motivate, what will happen when they no longer feel happy with you?

What happens is they take to the streets burning gas stations and looking for violence, the same way you made them look against your enemies is now all for you.

Perhaps the lesson of spending your time, resources and energy breeding hate and not developing technology or your economy is about to be learned.

The same lesson will soon come for Hugo Chavez who spends billions buying off other nation, buying military and submarines, giving gas away for free, partnering with FARC and other known cocaine selling terrorists. He will soon leanr that driving all international business out of your country in the name of your revolution will leave you alone with nothing.

I think Fidel has learned this lesson as the leader of a country that cant afford shoes but has triple helpings of “revolutionary thinking”.

Read about the people who have a great military and plenty of hatred towards others, but not the tools of a nation that wants prosperity.

By Ramin Mostaghimand Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times

They have endured religious police, political repression and international isolation.

But a quota imposed on the purchase of subsidized gasoline sent Iranians to the streets Wednesday, where they torched at least 12 gas stations, damaged government-owned banks and department stores and shouted slogans against the president, Iranian news agencies and witnesses reported.

To limit rapidly increasing consumption of gasoline, the Iranian government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began enforcing a rationing program Wednesday that limits most motorists to 26.4 gallons a month at the subsidized price of 42 cents per gallon.

Although Iran possesses huge reserves of crude oil and natural gas, it lacks enough refineries, forcing this energy-hungry country to import more than $4 billion of refined petroleum a year. Last year, Ahmadinejad’s conservative government proposed a complicated gas-rationing system, but did not implement it on schedule this year amid public fury and technical problems. In March, it raised the price of the subsidized gas 25 percent.

But despite worries voiced by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and security officials, Ahmadinejad’s government revived the plan this week, putting it into effect with only two hours’ notice.

“We live on an ocean of oil,” said Kambiz Rahmati, 25, an electronics engineer working in a computer market in Tehran. “Why should we pay a high price for gasoline or suffer

rationing?”
State-controlled television announced the plan late Tuesday night, sending masses of people into the streets. Motorists honking their horns in protest rushed to fill up in the hours before the plan went into effect. Crowds gathered, and as the clock struck midnight, melees erupted. Angry mobs in the capital set gas stations afire. A spokesman for the fire department told the daily World of Industry newspaper that 21 gas stations were torched. Others said at least a dozen were burned.

Witnesses said demonstrators chanted slogans against Ahmadinejad. Scuffles broke out between pro-government Basiji militiamen and the protesters.

Rioters smashed windows of stores and government banks.

Government officials branded the demonstrators “hooligans,” and said about 80 had been arrested.

“I saw a looter carrying a television set on his shoulder from a shopping mall,” said Nasser Eimani, a Tehran resident. “A Basiji intercepted him and a fight broke out.”

Scenes of the burned gas stations appeared on national television, although the Supreme National Security Council issued a directive to newspapers ordering them not to publish “provocative” photos or articles regarding the unrest.

The capital’s normally frenetic traffic eased today as motorists stayed home to conserve gasoline or waited in long lines to fill their tanks at stations guarded by police. One officer said he had not slept since he was deployed early Wednesday morning.

Under the rationing scheme, Iranians will be able to buy fuel above the quota, but at much higher prices that will be announced later in the year, officials said.

Ramin Mostaghim reported from Tehran, and Borzou Daragahi from Cairo.

Iran see gas shortages and burning of the gas stations by angry mobs