Tehran seems utterly transformed since my first grim wartime visit to Iran in 1988, near the end of a bloody eight-year conflict that left a million people dead.<\/span><\/p>\n Even before landing, and even at 3 a.m., Tehran is vast and sprawling, a carpet of lights sweeping down from the cool heights of the wealthy northern neighbourhoods to the overcrowded poor slums in the south.<\/span><\/p>\n A mother and her two daughters stand on a corner in Jolfa, where young people socialise. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n By day, it\u2019s a chaotic, traffic-choked modern city of more than 10 million (perhaps 15 million, if weekday commuters are included), capital of a nation defiantly proud of its history, culture and heritage and intent on reasserting itself as the region\u2019s most powerful player.<\/span><\/p>\n For much of the Arab world, Iran remains the historic Persian rival and enemy. Israel sees the Islamic Republic as an existential threat, one that has called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Successive U.S. administrations see it as a rogue, terrorism-sponsoring state. According to Human Rights Watch, Iran\u2019s theocracy is engaged in a \u201cbroad-based campaign \u2026 to severely weaken civil society by targeting journalists, lawyers, rights activists, and students\u201d after the 2009 post-election demonstrations.<\/span><\/p>\n As the propaganda war rages and a confrontation looms over its controversial nuclear program, Iran forges ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n Its capital doesn’t look beleaguered. Cranes festoon the skyline. Modern blocks of multimillion-dollar apartments march up the Alborz mountain foothills in prime locations north of the city. Hundreds of thousands are betting on a housing boom. Fuelled by vast reserves of oil and gas, Iran\u2019s economy has boomed even as successive U.S. administrations have attempted to isolate it.<\/span><\/p>\n As far away as Karaj, 30 kilometres to the west, modern new housing complexes, mostly high-rises but also planned communities of single-family dwellings, are sprouting in a fast-growing corridor that resembles the edge cities in the United States. A four-lane highway and high-speed commuter trains bring tens of thousands into Tehran daily.<\/span><\/p>\n As in most of the world\u2019s great cities, talking house prices is standard fare at north Tehran dinner parties full of the upwardly striving middle class.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe borrowed from my family, my wife\u2019s family and the bank when we bought five years ago,\u201d says a middle-class, 30-something engineer, with the near-certain confidence that he got into the market at the right time. \u201cAnd our house has more than doubled,\u201d he says, before adding with a tinge of worry, \u201cso it was worth it \u2013 as long as we don\u2019t get a bubble burst like in America.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s far different from the dark, fearful and partially deserted capital that I remember from 1988 during the so-called \u201cwar of the cities\u201d when Iran and Iraq traded salvos of Scud-B missiles. Then the sickly smell of death wafted from buildings destroyed by the incoming missiles and everyone lived in fear of the next random blast.<\/span><\/p>\n Nearly two-thirds of Iran\u2019s 80 million people are too young to remember either the Islamic Revolution of 1979 or the devastating war with Saddam Hussein\u2019s Iraq that followed. Yet both continue to shape Iran\u2019s world view, even as it attempts to transform its economy from a massive oil-and-gas exporter into a diversified, 21st-century country.<\/span><\/p>\n In less than a decade, Tehran has opened four Metro lines that now whisk more than two million passengers daily on four lines. Two more are under construction. Fares are about 20 cents, less for monthly passes. But, like straphangers everywhere, there are complaints, mostly about crowding, less so about the cars at the front and back of each train reserved for women, although women can also choose to ride elsewhere. And cellphones work even in the tunnels. So, to the irritation of many, near-constant conversations fill the trains.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/A-mother-and-her-two-daughters-stand-on-a-corner-in-Jolfa-where-young-people-socialise.jpg\" "\\"A")
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