Iran Update -- Calls for a Cultural Crackdown

You had to have seen this coming a mile away.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's ultra-conservative President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday faced calls from hardline supporters to clamp down on social freedoms allowed under the country's outgoing reformist president.

"Islamic and revolutionary culture have been neglected in the past years," the official IRNA news agency quoted hardline lawmaker Mohammad Taqi Rahbar as saying.

"Even if women remove the small handkerchiefs they wear instead of a proper veil, nobody says anything," he said adding that mixing of young men and women in public also contravened the values of an Islamic society.

Read it here.

Of course, Ahmadinejad has not yet spoken out clearly on this issue and if he does take the hard line could face considerable backlash. Still, the hardliners were his principle backers and have to have some influence in his regime. What will he do?

Stay tuned....