<\/p>\n
The death of a glamorous 20-year-old woman in a high-speed car accident in a canary yellow Porsche in Tehran has stirred up anger about the growing wealth gap in Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n An immediate media buzz led curious social media users to an Instagram page set up by friends of Parivash Akbarzadeh<\/a>, and this soon became a clearing house for all manner of sentiments regarding Akbarzadeh\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Followers of her personal Instagram page increased from 20,000 to 40,000 in just a few days, while users shared 18,000 comments. Stunning photos decorating the page contrasted with many comments expressing hatred and disgust.<\/p>\n \u201cYou should have known this day would come after you walked around outdoors looking like that,\u201d wrote a user named Sara. \u201cYou got what was coming to you.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Akbarzadeh had her supporters. Many regarded her as a celebrity. They mourned her and honoured her life through comments and poems, and attacked those who spoke ill of her. \u201cYou savages are the lowest of the low, circling her grave like a bunch of drooling hyenas,\u201d wrote Nasser. \u201cGet bent, you aren\u2019t worth a fraction of what she was.\u201d<\/p>\n The passenger in the Porsche, Mohammad Hossein Rabbani-Shirazi, died a few hours after the accident. He had purchased the car just a few days earlier and had allowed Akbarzadeh to take him for a spin.<\/p>\n But his identity added further drama because he was the grandson of Ayatollah Rabbani-Shirazi, once an aid to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Revolution.<\/p>\n Ayatollah Abdolrahim Rabbani-Shirazi took part in the revolution and then acted as the representative of Khomeini in three of Iran\u2019s provinces and sat on the body tasked with writing a new constitution. He was also a member of the Guardian Council, the Islamic constitutional watchdog, until his death \u2013 ironically in a car crash \u2013 in 1982.<\/p>\n This regime connection to the fatal accident in a Porsche, the symbol par excellence of Tehran\u2019s rich kids<\/a>, further inflamed many social media users and may have prompted an intervention by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini\u2019s successor as Iran\u2019s supreme leader. On 26 April, Khamenei strongly criticised young Tehranis flaunting luxury cars as a sign of \u201cemotional insecurity\u201d and accused them of being \u201cintoxicated by pride in wealth\u201d. He called on the police to produce \u201ca plan for confronting all of the different aspects of insecurity facing society\u201d.<\/p>\n Nor was Khamenei the first to speak in such terms. Whether he knew it or not, he was echoing the words of someone he has kept under house arrest for four years<\/a> for supporting street protests after the disputed 2009 presidential election.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re opposed to this kind of unabashed affluence,\u201d Mir Hossein Mousavi told voters in the poor southern Tehran neighbourhood of Naazy Abad in March 2009, in the first speech of his presidential campaign. \u201cWhen the wealthy parade their luxury cars in front of the less fortunate, it constitutes an oppression of the working classes.\u201d<\/p>\n The increasing sight of luxury vehicles<\/a> has brought the issue of inequality onto Iran\u2019s streets. Just past the prominent overpass on grand Mir Damad Avenue, I run into Yaqoub. He\u2019s 40-ish and dressed in a tattered shirt that seems tailor made for his face. Yaqoub\u2019s appearance illustrates the Tehrani colloquialism of \u201ccarton-sleeper\u201d because with the most basic lodgings in the capital beyond his means, he has to sleep in a cardboard box.<\/p>\n \u201cI swear to the eighth Imam [an 8th<\/sup>-century Shia leader whose shrine is in Mashhad<\/a>, Iran], I haven\u2019t eaten for a whole day. I have no work and no money. When I panhandle, no one gives me anything. I\u2019m not old enough for them to feel pity for me yet. People slap me around and tell me to go get a job.\u201d<\/p>\n If an empty belly weren\u2019t enough, Yaqoub has nicotine craving to nurse. He fishes a packet of cheap Farvardeen cigarettes out of a pocket, strikes a match, and takes a drag.<\/p>\n \u201cI swear to God, it\u2019s debilitating,\u201d he says. \u201cWell, I was only a kid then, but I well recall that during the revolution they spoke of the oppressed, \u2018the revolution of the barefooted\u2019. Look at me, and there are thousands like me in this town, a million even<\/a>. How is it that we don\u2019t have something to eat or a place to lay down our heads?<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then when you look up, all you see are magnificent towers along this street. May they live happy lives. I don\u2019t begrudge them their wealth, but maybe a bit should flow down to us. I am illiterate, have no money, and no family. Where am I to turn? Wasn\u2019t the revolution supposed to help us, the destitute?\u201d<\/p>\n Contrasting Yaqoub\u2019s life with the well-to-do today raises a question: How did the 1979 revolution affect the economic inequality that existed during rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi?<\/p>\n The fatal Porsche crash in north Tehran triggered heated debate on social media, but not for the first time. Just last year, the unabashed display of wealth on an Instagram page called #richkidsoftehran rankled a lot of Iranians. Photos showed young people lounging around in opulent Tehran penthouses, or in deluxe villas in the wealthy neighbourhood of Lavassan or on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Other pictures showed them in the latest model Porches and Maseratis. Throughout they are dressed in well-known western brands, their eyes exuding carelessness and pleasure – everything the 1979 revolution was supposed to banish.<\/p>\n