From Danny Postel's article on "Iranian liberalism" in "The Liberal" online

"I should be clear, however, that the parlance of “revolution” is far from the lips of Iranians today. Iranians are understandably turned off by revolution-speak, given the “revolutionary” regime they’ve been living under since 1979, but also – and this is critical – because of the general failure of the revolutionary Left in Iran. “The leftist, anti-imperialist ideas of the 1970s have given way to a more pragmatic discourse about economic and political dignity based on Western models of secular democracy”, observes the Iranian journalist Afshin Molavi. “Iranian youth largely dismiss the radical ideas of their parents’ generation, full of half-baked leftism, Marxist economics, Third World anti-imperialism, Islamist radicalism and varying shades of utopian totalitarianism. ‘We just want to be normal’, is typical of what hundreds of students have told me. ‘We’re tired of radicalism’”.