It has been a bad year for Iran so far: not only did the government have to make a humiliating U-turn on its covert nuclear programme, but its democracy has been exposed.

When the unelected and unaccountable guardian council rejected the nomination papers of thousands of reformist candidates, the result of last week's election became a foregone conclusion. Despite protests, the hardliners have recaptured power. Not that they had ever lost it: President Khatami and his elected reformist supporters were never permitted to share real power with Ayatollah Khamenei and his supra-constitutional council.

At best, President Khatami was allowed to create a slightly less repressive environment where some element of dissent was permitted, and artistic creativity encouraged.

But every time a meaningful legislation to break the shackles of theocratic dictatorship was passed by parliament, it was blocked by President Khamanei who exercised not only the right to approve legislation, but also controlled the judiciary and the law enforcement agencies.

President Khatami was thus checkmated at every turn. Although he has shown his personal popularity in a series of elections, his supporters have become disenchanted with his inability to deliver, or stand up to the guardian council. After seeing his many attempts to modernize Iran squashed by Khamanei, he was widely expected to resign at some point. By choosing to stay on, he has conferred a certain legitimacy on the system.

But perhaps the recent manipulation of the election might turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Iran. Thus far, by including the reformists in the power structure for cosmetic effect, the hardliners ensured that criticism for all the many ills in the country would be apportioned equally among both groups.

However, now they have made themselves the sole target of popular resentment. This polarization may well see the beginning of a mass movement by a population that is sick and tired of being fed sermons instead of decent food.

In Pakistan (and elsewhere, I suppose), we tend to be highly selective in choosing targets for our criticism. Despite the elimination of even the token parliamentary opposition that existed in Iran, there has been curiously little critical comment in our media.

Perhaps the clerics' biggest sin has been the complete devastation of the Iranian economy. In the last quarter century since the Shah's ouster, they have impoverished a nation endowed with enormous reserves of oil and gas. Granted, Saddam Hussein's attack on Iran in the immediate aftermath of Khomeini's Islamic revolution did not help matters.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranian and Iraqi lives were lost in that pointless war. The image of young Iranian boys being sent ahead of regular troops to clear a way through minefields is still a chilling memory.

Nevertheless, since that war, the Iranian economy has continued performing poorly as untrained clerics assumed control of the levers of power. Since they were largely unaccountable, their inefficiency and corruption went unpunished, and the economy continued stagnating.

Although literacy rates are high and per capita GDP is far more than South Asian levels, Iran is far from attaining its potential, given its enormous mineral wealth.

One major reason for its poor economic performance is its leadership's perceived efforts to export its brand of Islamic revolution. This has isolated it in much of the developed world and has incurred debilitating sanctions.

Its recently exposed efforts to develop nuclear arms is a case in point. Who would ever believe that an energy-rich country like Iran would need nuclear power plants to generate electricity?

Judging from the spate of excellent recent Iranian films that have created a buzz in the cinematic world, the people remain energetic and highly creative. But in an increasingly youthful population, frustration over the stranglehold the clerics have over public and personal lives is growing.

Young Iranians, like young people everywhere, want the good life. They want unfettered access to the Internet and satellite TV; they want the latest CDs and DVDs; they want to wear what kids in Tokyo and New York are wearing; and above all, they want jobs.

The Iranian religious establishment is failing in delivering on any of these demands. Unemployment is rampant, and there is widespread disenchantment over Iran's place in the world.

This growing disconnect between what the people want, and what the leadership thinks they should have, or indeed can deliver, has profound implications for the future.

In 1985, the Iranian parliament named Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri as the next Supreme Leader to succeed the ageing Khomeini who, for still unexplained reasons, revoked this decision before his death.

After spending years in jail and house arrest under both the Shah and the Islamic government, Montazeri remains a committed democrat, insisting that the Supreme Leader should be chosen by the people, and subject to the law.

He accuses Iran of being a dictatorship, and says the only "difference with the pre-revolutionary era was that some clerics have replaced the Shah." Although the revolution did rid Iran of the Shah, it has saddled the country with a clique that has become accustomed to power and wants to cling to it, invoking Islam to justify their ambition.

When they pontificate about the need to prevent 'godless, western influences and ideas', you can rest assured that they want to block any genuinely democratic notions from taking root as this would threaten their grip on power.

Revolutionary history teaches us that revolutionaries make poor managers: once they have seized power and swept out existing institutions, they have only succeeded in weakening the nations they have led. Partly this has been because the rest of the world has ganged up on them, but mostly because they do not understand the working of the modern world economy.

Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and the rest of an illustrious band of 20th-century giants may have changed the course of history, but they were also responsible for millions of deaths by execution and starvation after they came to power.

In the comfort of our drawing rooms, we eulogize their achievements, but shy away from criticizing their revolutionary excesses and managerial incompetence. There is little doubt that Iran's Islamic revolutionaries have taken their people along the same predictable route.