Letter from Iran
An interesting travel journal from Geoffrey Wawro of the Naval War College. A small excerpt:

In Frankfurt airport, I witnessed an unexpected phenomenon. The Iran Air flight that will carry me to Tehran is disgorging its Frankfurt-bound load of passengers, Iranians all. As they disembark, the women stop in the departure lounge to remove their hejabs - chador, rouposh, and head scarf - and brazenly comb out their hair before applying makeup to face and nails. Already I begin to doubt the severity of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Backsliding like this in the early days of the revolution would have been punished by black-shirted "morals police." When my outbound flight is called, dozens of homeward-bound women irritably unpack their hejabs and put them on.

...

Back in Shiraz, I successfully penetrated the Madraseh-ye Khan, a serene seventeenth-century theological college. In my diary I afterward wrote, "I have wondered where all the hard-liners are, and here they are." The madrasehs are where the mullahs train; most of the novices are seventeen to twenty-one years old. If not exactly the shock troops - most are too dim for that - these are the foot soldiers of the Islamic Republic; they will become the men who intersperse Friday prayers all over Iran with anti-Western, anti-Enlightenment injunctions or flesh out the lower ranks of the civil service. As I strolled around the courtyard, admiring the architecture and mosaics, I felt eyes boring into me. The boys live five or six to a room along the second story of the stone-walled school. They were peering curiously down at me, my interpreter, and two young Frenchmen who had joined us in the bazaar. "Where are you from?" an English-speaker called. "America and France." Shock! "We don't let Americans into Iran, how did you get in? Have they reopened the embassy?" There was a burble of excited conversation. The youngsters seemed half-scared and half-interested. Gradually they descended from their rooms to crowd around, many sniffling and coughing despite the summer heat. I was shocked by their appearance; all were dirty and rank, their palms sweaty when they shook hands - and this was the Harvard or Yale of Iranian madrasehs. I was reminded of Nasir-ed Din-Shah, one of the westernizing Qajar kings of the nineteenth century, who deplored "the vermin-infested priests who lurk in the corners of the madrasehs." They did seem rather lousy, and I was scratching afterward

Much more by following the link.