TEHRAN: They slice through traffic on their motorbikes, racing each other at breakneck speed with one hand holding a mobile phone. They listen to heavy metal, read Gunter Grass and admire Tom Cruise. They don't go to the mosque the way their parents did, and they have given up on politics.

A third of Iran's 65 million people are aged between 15 and 30, struggling to find jobs, queuing for visas, and frustrated with the theocracy they have inherited.

As Iran this week marks the 25th anniversary of the revolution that toppled a monarchy and delivered religious rule, members of the "third generation" won't be celebrating an event that they don't even remember. "It was a futile revolution," says Sohrab, who is as young as the Islamic Republic. "It brought nothing but harm for the people."

He speaks amid the roar of traffic and choking pollution in the working-class district of Shoosh in south Tehran, a place where the revolution enjoyed enthusiastic support in 1979.

Now Sohrab and his friends blame the religious establishment for Iran's troubles. "You cannot accuse anyone else," he says. "The revolution was in their hands, they made it happen. They were responsible. They started with a slogan of Islam, but they betrayed Islam."

He complains about the social restrictions; the risks of speaking out publicly against the theocracy; the inflation that eats away at his wages; corruption, and his country's pariah status.

He worries about friends who have turned to drugs. More than a million young Iranians are addicts, and hundreds of thousands of young men are in jail for drug offences.

With the religious leaders so deeply identified with politics, young people are turning away from religion, he says. "After all this, do you expect us to go to mosque and listen to them?"

Like his peers, he wears his hair long and slicked back with gel. Hoping for real change, Sohrab, along with millions of other young Iranians, voted for reformists four years ago in parliamentary elections. But the reformist majority was overruled in a system that gives final authority to appointed ideologues.

"They know how to fool us" he says. "I had a lot of enthusiasm at the time. But I won't vote again ... Even if my father becomes a candidate, I won't vote." At Tehran University, where student unrest in the 1970s helped force the Shah from power, Islamic militancy lost its appeal long ago.

"The ideas of that time are now outdated," says Hooshang, an electrical engineering student. "Politically, we can't speak out. If we speak freely, they'll compile a file on us."

Some students who have dared to speak out have been imprisoned or summoned to court. One of them, Ahmad Batebi, appeared in a dramatic photograph on the cover of the Economist in 1999, holding up the bloodied T-shirt of a classmate beaten by vigilantes. Batebi was convicted of endangering national security, and remains behind bars.

Apart from student leaders and a few young journalists, most Iranians are tuning out of politics. They are focusing on finding a job or an emigration visa, or the next heroin fix.

Journalists say the leadership hopes to follow China's example, easing social and economic restrictions while holding on firmly to power. The baby-boom generation now coming of age poses a daunting challenge to the survival of his theocracy. -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.