Iranian regime economist Hossain Raghfar spoke Monday about institutionalized corruption by the mullahs and called for urgent action to be taken.
He said: “If the process of destruction and weakening of the economy and society in Iran is to be stopped, a fundamental decision must first be made and the ‘emergency situation’ must prevail in the country, because without it, [economic] reforms are not possible.”
Raghfar said that specific solutions are needed to improve the economy but that some don’t want to make changes, like fixing the currency exchange rate that allows the regime’s cronies to make money while the people suffer.
This is far from the first time that he’s made such comments.
In July 2020, he said that the regime uses the people’s wealth to pay its expenses and called on the mullahs to raise the exchange rate so that insiders would not be able to line their pockets by buying at the artificially-set government price and selling at the free market price.
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In February, Raghfar rejected regime claims that international sanctions caused the economic crisis, saying that the problem was instead the result of a “change in attitude” following the Iran-Iraq war that led to the legal violation of people’s rights. He expanded on this later in the month by saying that “800 trillion tomans of foreign exchange embezzlements and various types of energy rents have been provided to large and private companies” many of which do not pay tax because they are subordinates of financial institutions under the direct control of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
In April 2020, he said: “While $20 billion disappeared from the country during a major corruption scandal, today we ask the World Bank to give us $5 billion. Yet, no one is accountable for this.”
The Iranian people live in poverty, while the regime and its affiliates live in unrivalled luxury. The state-run media has begun to warn that this may be the cause of another uprising, which could bring down the regime as a whole.
The state-run Jahan-e Sanat wrote Sunday: “If these deprivations and this deep social distance continue in their present form, soon the affluent strata, the small minority with all the gifts of life living in luxury towers and their magnificent villas and palaces, will not feel safe. Such a situation is like a time bomb planted under the skin of our society. When this bomb explodes, there will be no sign of [the regime].”
