“God willing, next year we will try for this not to happen.”So that's comforting. The author meanders for many more paragraphs without revealing a single clue how a country rich in natural gas can't keep the power on. Can't get it out of the ground? Can't transport it? Can't build or properly maintain power plants? No power lines to get the electricity to homes or businesses? He barely seems curious.Eventually it occurs to him how to blame it on (1) Jews, (2) stingy foreign investors, and (3) the refusal to use less energy, but that's not until paragraphs 19 and 22.Regime change is a tempting hope, if only there were some reason to believe the country contained people with a clue what to replace it with. I doubt the problem will be solved by blaiming Jews, demanding charity from foreign investors, or conservation. At some point they're going to have to grasp how non-totalitarian economies work, or just drift back into the stone age--a maddening fate for a people with a rich history and natural resources.
Where does electricity come from, anyway?
As far as I can tell, neither the author of this NYT piece (not paywalled, I think) nor anyone running the show in Iran knows the answer to that question. Paragraph 5 takes us as far as the Iranian president's apology for having to cripple the country with power outages, and his plan for a solution:
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My husband sent this one, too, by the way, with the comment "Iran is going Green, like North Korea."
The Germans, who have their own reasons to wonder how a large country could run out of power, actually asked that question directly.
https://www.dw.com/en/why-is-energy-giant-iran-facing-gas-shortages/a-71110948
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