Government corruption in Iran has looted around 80 percent of the national income and the Iranian people’s wealth. Unlike other countries where the free market has created a healthy economy, a ‘free market of corruption’ in Iran is devouring the national resources for the regime’s interests and at a heavy expense to the public.
Most people who attempt to confront this situation are threatened with prison and are introduced as the enemy of the people and God.
In the vision of the Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, a ‘good government’ is the type of ruling that finances the regime’s interests from its malign activities in the Middle East to its missile and nuclear projects, and of course the regime’s propaganda apparatuses.
This has created a double standard, in politics as well as in the market. Money and influence play the main role, which is mostly controlled by the Revolutionary Guards and the institutions affiliated with the supreme leader’s office.
Evidence has shown that no part of the country’s economy, culture, or social life is exempted from this situation. Due to the vast expansion of governmental corruption, sometimes, regime officials and the state-run media are forced to expose part of it in the hope to prevent the people’s reactions and upheaval.
In an interview with the Ham Mihan newspaper, Babak Darabi, the social adviser of the regime’s Minister of Oil, confirmed that the Ministry of Oil was providing financial assistance for the Jamkaran Mosque, stating that this mosque is one of the bases of Shia and has deficiencies.
Before Darabi’s recent comment, he revealed in a letter that he had requested 50 billion rials from the ministry of oil to complete the construction of the building of the mosque.
The Jamkaran Mosque, located six kilometers east of Qom, is one of the most famous mosques in Iran and has long been a sacred place.
Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian regime’s founder, tried to turn Jamkaran into a religious hub by allocating a large budget for the mosque and appointing a group of mullahs close to him to advance this project. This was the line followed by regime officials in the following periods.
As Hashemi Rafsanjani once quoted the regime’s current supreme leader Ali Khamenei saying, “Ahmadinejad (former regime president) came to me and requested that a highway be built from Jamkaran to Khomeini Airport so that if Imam Zaman (Leader of the Time, leading the whole world under the same religion) appears, he will not be stuck in Qom traffic!”
The same policy once founded by Khomeini, followed by Ahmadinejad, and now continued by the regime’s Ministry of Oil, is spending more than 50 billion rials advancing the project and is wasting the Iranian people’s wealth, while many of them are being pushed to poverty and are surviving on leftover food from piles of waste.
According to a report from the Ham Mihan newspaper, “The Ministry of Oil has allocated 50 billion Tomans for the reconstruction and development of the Jamkaran Mosque. It is also supposed to allocate funds for the construction of 700 houses for Jahrom clerics to help Salehiya Seminary in Kazerun and to help Shahcheragh Shrine in Shiraz. These are only part of the mentioned budget. A budget whose philosophy has been to spend in the less privileged and generally weak oil-rich regions of the country.”
Darabi’s explanation makes it clear that the Ministry of Oil’s social responsibility budget is more at the disposal of the regime and its programs than helping the well-being of oil regions. These regions have been involved in multi-dimensional problems for years, from drinking water and sewage issues to pollution and dust storms, along with the lack of basic infrastructure.
In its report, the state-run Ham Mihan newspaper revealed another letter in which the representative of Kazerun asked for financial support for the Salihiya Seminary in Kazerun, with the oil minister responding that “it should be proposed to the working group with a favorable opinion.”
If this 50 billion was spent on poor families, it would cover costs for more than 50,000 families and support the life of at least 200,000 people and save them from poverty. With the poverty line in Iran reaching around 10 million rials, many of the downtrodden in Iranian society are relying on much lower amounts than this to survive.
