Iran regime’s officials: Before it’s too late, make a final decision about completing the JCPOA and lifting the sanctions
Many experts around the world have warned that the Iranian regime could already have enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. This potential event may actually be a reality considering the recent remarks made by the regime officials.
On September 6, Mohammad Eslami, the head of the regime’s Atomic Energy Organization, said that they are seeking to become a hub for designing and building nuclear power plants.
He explained, “We intend to provide various services in the field of nuclear technology, including the development of nuclear power plants and nuclear power generation.”
He further stated that the regime plans to convert 20 percent of its energy portfolio into nuclear power.
These plans are in stark contrast with the regime’s previous claims that they do not intend to increase their uranium enrichment. Adding to this, what could help the regime and provide the financial support for such projects is the weak nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Here again, experts have warned that the deal will provide the regime with $275 billion in the first year of the deal. Due to the regime’s support of terror and the export of its revolution, this amount of money will likely favor the regime’s dangerous goals.
In an article published by the Washington Post, on September 6, entitled ‘Are al Qaeda and Iran really at odds?’, the newspaper wrote that, “the debate about the Islamic Republic’s collaboration with al Qaeda is far from over.”
They added, “American officials (mostly those advocating for a nuclear deal with Iran) have repeatedly and falsely asserted that the Iranian regime maintained an antagonistic relationship with al Qaeda, placing members of the world’s most dangerous terrorist group under house arrest.”
It should be noted that this is a false claim. Muhammad al Masri, who was one of the heads of al Qaeda, was gunned down on the streets of Tehran in November 2020. Under house arrest, this would never have happened. The regime is giving the members of terror groups free hand in their operations.
The question remains as to why the counterparties of the regime, in the JCPOA, are playing such a weak card. One of the viewpoints is due to the energy source crisis in European countries. The hope is that the Iranian regime can support Europe’s energy shortage, but this scenario does not fit reality.
The regime is using most of its produced gas for domestic consumption, while the rest of the gas has been burned and wasted for over four decades due to the regime’s worn-out oil production facilities. The same applies to oil because the regime lacks the proper infrastructure to export significant amounts of oil to Europe.
The only reason for such behavior in support of the regime, and for reviving the JCPOA at any cost, is the goal of helping an inhumane regime to overcome its demise, even while the regime shows signs of weakness in the negotiations.
In an article entitled ‘The government and the opposition to lifting sanctions’, the state-run Jomhouri Eslami daily warned those who eco against the revival of the JCPOA and wrote, “It is not clear how they will respond to the huge losses that have been caused to the country and the nation due to the delay in lifting the sanctions. The public’s expectation from the statesmen is to put an end to their ifs and buts and make a final decision before it’s too late to complete the JCPOA agreement and lift the sanctions.”
In an article published by the state-run daily Setareh-e Sobh on September 6, Ali Khoram said that the regime must accept the poison chalice of a new agreement with the conditions of the Western countries to overcome the deadly crises.
What he reveals in his remarks though, is one of the regime’s dangerous ambitions, which is its expansion of meddling in the Middle East.
He stated, “With the end of sanctions, Iran will have a more open hand in regional balances and issues, and Iran’s role in the region will not be opposed and attacked as easily as before. From an international point of view, great powers will count on Iran’s role and influence in the Middle East as a strategic country. Therefore, the speed of revitalization of the JCPOA is in favor of Iran and it can synchronize itself with the changes in the region and take a more effective role.”
In conclusion, any new deal with Iran will only endanger future global peace and security.
Education Has Become One of the Main Indicators of Class Inequality in Iran
UNESCO advises countries around the world to allocate between 4 and 6 percent of their GDP, and between 15 and 20 percent of their public budget, to education services. On the other hand, the Iranian regime only allocates 1.5 to 2 percent of its GDP and 10 percent of its budget to its education services.
In developed countries, the Ministry of Education usually plays a vital role in a country’s development and destiny, and the government places special emphasis on its education system, implementing both short and long-term programs to ensure that its education system takes advantage of all available technological resources. This is not the case in Iran.
According to Article 28 of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Iran also signed in 1993, all member countries have committed to providing free education to children by creating equal opportunities. Also, according to Article 30 of the Constitution of this regime, the government is obliged to provide free educational facilities equally to all children throughout Iran.
There are almost two weeks left until the beginning of the new academic year in Iran. Each new school year is a combination of excitement, promises, planning, and high hopes for most children and parents around the world, however, the beginning of the school year in Iran has become challenging for most families.
Many parents have tried to pay the back-breaking costs of school fees, uniforms, stationery, books, and school services by reducing everyday expenses in their lives. School costs are now more than the monthly salary of a normal worker in Iran.
The purchase of elementary school books will be between 36 and 53 thousand rial based on the prices for the new academic year. The price of the first high school book is 89 thousand rials, and the price of the second high school book is 105 thousand rials. The total cost of stationery now exceeds one million rials.
According to the state-run website Fararu, the estimated cost of purchasing 17 items, including notebooks, pencils, backpacks, rulers, etc. is 1.2 million rials. According to this report, in 2022, people chose backpacks for their children with a price of less than 150 to 300 thousand rials, whereas a high-quality backpack costs at least 1,500,000 rials.
In short, these expenses show that, contrary to the promises of regime officials, education is not free and is used as another tool to extort families, the majority of whom live below the poverty line.
The regime’s Ministry of Education has approved the fixed tuition fees of non-government schools to increase by 38% in the new academic year. Tuition rates start at 4 million rials in areas such as Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province and reach around 35 million rials for schools in Tehran.
As mentioned in the education circular, this amount is just a fixed tuition fee. Families are expected to pay different amounts to the school throughout the year. A similar scenario has been implemented for private schools.
Education officials have constantly claimed that it is forbidden and illegal to receive tuition fees from parents who send their children to public schools. However, the story has a different face in practice. Under the pretext of ‘helping the school’, ‘budget deficit’, ‘lack of equipment’, etc., school administrators force parents to pay various amounts at the time of registration.
In many provinces, the parents are forced to pay the amount determined by the school, otherwise, their children will not be registered.
This is something that the schools in Iran have been pulled into it forcibly. In an interview with a state-run TV network, the director of one of the secondary schools pointed to the budget deficit they are facing and said, “When we have problems with water and electricity and education is not taken care of, what other solution do we have but to ask parents for help.”
Despite the exorbitant costs, public school education does not provide a promising future for children. Around 80 percent of the graduates in the national exam are children from private schools, which has created a vast inequality in the field of education.
Iran: Corruption and a Starving Nation
Four years ago, the Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei denied the regime’s corruption in a public meeting, stating, “Systematic corruption? No, that one who sees corruption systematically, he himself is corrupted. They are speaking in such a way as if all are corrupted.”
In a recent interview with the state-run daily Asr Iran on August 31, regime MP Ahamad Reza Bigi spoke about a much broader corruption scheme in the regime’s banking system, compared to the recently revealed corruption in the Mobarakeh Steel company. He said, “When people hear the news of 92 trillion rials of misuse and embezzlement in Mobarakeh Steel, they quickly generalize it to the entire system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
In regards to the corruption in the banking system, he added, “If the report of the investigation of the banks, which is currently being carried out in the parliament, reaches the public’s knowledge, it is not known what consequences it will have about the weakening of the people’s trust in the government and the system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Bigi also emphasized, “Our prediction about the corruption and embezzlement of the banks according to the report of the investigation is devastating. The numbers and embezzlement that we are receiving from the (parliament’s) investigation of the banks are much more shocking than those of Mobarakeh Steel.”
In his conclusion, he stated that there is no difference between the regime’s different factions, and both the so-called ‘reformists’ and ‘principlists’ are all involved in this systematic corruption.
Discussing the wider corruption of the regime, which has affected all parts of the country’s economy, the state-run daily Shia News wrote in their August 30 publication that the regime’s housing ‘mafia’ has affected the prices of housing in around 360 neighborhoods of Tehran.
The same day, the state-run daily Eghtesad News confirmed the staggering price increase for housing and wrote, “In small cities, a 70-meter unit has reached one billion rials, the middle and poor classes can no longer afford housing.”
The situation has become so dramatic that state TV has been forced to report it.
On August 28, the state-run daily Sharq rejected Khamenei’s claims about nonsystematic corruption and wrote, “This is not an exception but a rule in private or government companies, and in the structure of the country’s administration. First, this corruption is political rather than economic in nature. That is, it is because of the political construction and distribution of power that such corruption has arisen.”
They added, “Second, the continuation of such a situation will take down all the pillars of power. Third, due to the construction of power in the Islamic Republic, it is only possible to solve this problem with a political will formed by the leaders of the branches. Because others do not have enough power, responsibility, and authority for this great struggle.”
The daily went on to count some of the many reasons for the regime’s self-created corruption, like the government-controlled private sector, multi-currency market, prescriptive pricing, lack of serious supervision, a selective administration that is not based on competence and experience, etc.
The corruption has caused an acute bread shortage and spiraling prices, which has brought people out onto the streets many times. There is no sharper marker of a devastated economy than the price of bread and other basic commodities.
In their August 28 publication, the state-run daily Khabar Online wrote about the devastated economy and gave an example of the situation of the country’s groceries. They stated, “The daily fluctuations in the price of basic commodities have endangered the life of local grocers these days; The grocers who survived until now by credit are about to lose this important income vein.”
Concerning the staggering prices of basic commodities, the daily further added, “This government increased the price of each kilo of rice by 80 thousand rials and increased the price of one liter of liquid oil from 25 thousand rials to 66 thousand rials.”
Iran: State-Controlled Statistics and Corruption
In any country, data and statistics play an important role in assessing and monitoring the status of its social, cultural, and economic development. In the era of data-driven decision-making, one of the main duties of any government is to provide easy access to official data and statistics, especially in regard to the government’s economic and financial actions.
This is important to provide a healthy environment for everyone in the fields of education, economics, and health, among others.
Iran, under the rule of the Iranian regime, is one of the ratifying countries of the United Nations (UN) International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Under this covenant, the regime is obliged to recognize the right of the Iranian people to access government data and statistics, and the right to oversee data collections and reports by governmental and non-governmental entities.
At present, the regime is withholding its data and has left its statistical system underdeveloped in order to allow its leaders and officials free rein for corruption and embezzlement. There is no independent data collection channel in Iran, which absolves the possibility in outsiders reporting on the regime’s actions.
The only entity responsible for statistics is the regime’s Statistical Center of Iran (SCI), which of course is controlled by the corrupted people.
The conflicts of interest, and the provided statistics by the regime’s different entities, have created much discomfort and pain and are endangering the lives of the Iranian people. The latest example is the water stress and crises in many different parts of the country.
Deliberate conflicting statistics, besides the regime’s special priorities, have resulted in ineffective policies in water management. As a result, many rivers and lakes have completely vanished from the country’s map. Currently, no one in Iran trusts the regime’s statistics, and this has generated a sense of deep suspicion among the people.
In recent years, many reports about conflicting statistics and their devastating results have been reported by the regime’s media, in fear of the people’s outrage. The latest drama that has been exposed is the unbelievable corruption scandal involving the Mobarakeh Steel company. This company has been found to have embezzled more than $5.25 billion.
The Mobarakeh Steel company’s financial violation is not the first example of the corrupt structure of state-owned companies, and it won’t be the last. It also highlights the vague and non-transparent mechanism of the state economy, which provides the possibility of financial violation and deviation by denying transparency.
One of the most famous cases which have created the ground for such corruption is the issue of the pricing market. The regime has created a multi-currency market, and it is natural that corruption and rent-seeking can easily occur in such an environment, while there are no accurate statistics or supervision of the cash flow in the country.
In 2009, Iran joined the ‘United Nations Convention against Corruption’. Recently, the regime’s Ministry of Economy claimed that the financial statements of state-owned companies had been published on the so-called Kodal website, but despite this, no positive results have been obtained in the field of transparency.
The ranking of the Transparency International Organization, since 2012, shows that the regime has been in the third decile and there has been no noticeable change in the field of the regime’s transparency.
272 Cities in Iran Face Water Stress
Over the past few days, the Iranian cities of Shahr-e Kord and Hamedan have witnessed major protests due to water scarcity. Videos published on social media have revealed the dimensions of the disaster, with hospitals and other major public health services being severely hit by this crisis. As these cities are considered two of the most important water catchment centers of Iran, in theory, they should not be facing any water scarcity.
To understand the water stress crisis, we should explain first the word crisis. Experts say, “A crisis is a situation in which a system or parts of it are disrupted (or threatened to be disrupted) and sudden or destructive changes in one or more basic system variables cause the instability of the entire system.”
This water stress crisis has now impacted various levels in around 272 cities across Iran, has disrupted the daily life of the people, and is endangering their health.
Depriving people of safe drinking water will cause the transmission of diseases such as cholera, typhoid, polio, hepatitis A and diarrhea. This disaster has occurred due to the Iranian regime’s policies, and a regime who are lacking in providing the people with safe and clean potable water.
The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) explained water stress as follows, “Water stress or scarcity occurs when demand for safe, usable water in a given area exceeds the supply. On the demand side, the vast majority—roughly 70 percent—of the world’s freshwater is used for agriculture, while the rest is divided between industrial (19 percent) and domestic uses (11 percent), including for drinking. On the supply side, sources include surface waters, such as rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, as well as groundwater, accessed through aquifers.”
Does the question remain as to what is causing this water scarcity? According to experts in this field, water scarcity is often divided into two categories: physical scarcity, when water scarcity exists due to local ecological conditions; and economic scarcity, when there is insufficient water infrastructure. The two often come together to create water stress.
Experts have stated that even when there are some natural causes for a region’s water stress, like global warming, whereby for every 1 C increase in the global average temperature, this causes a 20 percent drop in renewable water resources. However, human factors have clearly played the main role in this problem, by not providing clean water and safe sanitation.
Mark Giordano, an expert on water management at Georgetown University in the U.S., said, “Almost always, the drinking water problem has nothing to do with physical water scarcity. It has to do with the scarcity of financial and political wherewithal to put in the infrastructure to get people clean water.”
The main human factor in Iran is the regime’s priorities, projects that not only do not benefit the people but are also against the people’s interests. These include the nuclear projects or missile and drone programs, the malign activities in the region, the financing of proxy forces, and the spread of terrorism, which all cost a lot of money and wastes the national capital in the process.
Of course, when service provision and the welfare and comfort of the people are not a priority, the result will be a crisis of water stress and scarcity.
Atabak Jafari, the CEO of the regime’s Water and Wastewater Engineering Company, said that 272 cities are facing water stress and that the number of villages that need mobile water supply has increased greatly in summer.
According to him, in May of this year, 4,953 villages in the country were covered by mobile water supply, but this increased to 6,000 to 7,000 villages in the summer months. Anoushirvan Mohseni Bandapi, the head of the Center for Air Quality and Climate Change, has recently said that by 2040, Iran’s water stress will likely exceed 80%.
According to the Hamshahri newspaper, currently, the provinces of Sistan and Baluchistan, Tehran, Khuzestan, Khorasan Razavi, East Azerbaijan, and Alborz respectively have the highest water stress in Iran, while around 53% of the country’s dam capacity is empty.
Iran Regime’s President Ebrahim Raisi’s Attendance at the UNGA77 Is a Violation of Human Rights Principles
On June 19, 2021, Amnesty International in a statement announced that the regime’s current president Ebrahim Raisi should be investigated for crimes against humanity during the 1988 Massacre of political prisoners.
Short after this statement, on August 5, 2021, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard in her tweet said: “On the inauguration day of #Iran President #Raisi lets remember the 1000s victims of the 1988 repression, disappeared and extrajudicially executed and recall President Raisi role.”
On June 29, 2021, the UN investigator on human rights in Iran Javaid Rehman called for an independent investigation of the state-ordered executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 known as the 1988 Massacre, and the role of the regime’s present president famous as the ‘Butcher of Tehran’. At that time Raisi was Tehran’s deputy prosecutor and a member of the infamous death commissions who ordered the executions of the political prisoners in one-day trials, while most of them has ended up their sentences. Rehman said that his office has gathered many testimonies and evidence. In fear of the exposure of the regime’s crime, the regime destroyed many times mass graves of the victims while Rehman said that he was concerned about the reports coming from Iran. On January 27, 2022, prominent former UN judges and investigators called on UN human rights boss Michelle Bachelet to investigate the 1988 massacre, including the role of Ebrahim Raisi. The letter sent to the Bachelet was signed by some 460 people. Now, in August 2022, victims of the 1988 massacre file suit in New York City against Raisi. The suit was filed in federal court last week in the names of two people tortured in 1988 and a third person whose brother was executed. In a press conference on August 25, 2022, the members of the Iranian Resistance, the National Council Resistance of Iran (NCRI) outlined a federal lawsuit branding Raisi ‘a mass murderer who has no place at the United Nations upcoming 77th general assembly.’ Former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Mr. Steven M. Schneebaum, Counsel for the plaintiffs, also joined the press conference. In their professional insight, they shared their opinions on why Raisi could be prevented to step on US soil and attend the UNGA. Mr. Scheebaum said: “In the summer of 1988, Raisi and his cohorts literally determined who would live and who would die, and as many as 30,000 people were taken out to be executed, to be hanged sometimes in groups as large as 12 after hearings. “The prisoners were asked basically one question: Do you repudiate your opposition to the regime, which is to say, in 90% of the cases, do you repudiate your membership or your support for the MEK?” The greatest obstacle the lawsuit faces is the question of immunity, which should be used to prevent Raisi to enter the US. Mr. Schneebaum believes the structure of the regime’s government helps him to question the immunity that should be applied to him as the “heads of state.” A US State Department document on the subject notes that most privileges and immunities “are not absolute,” and the 1978 Diplomatic Relations Act replaced most of the more outdated laws on the subject. According to the new provisions, some protections only apply to officials from nations that have ratified the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations or to whom the U.S. president has granted privileges and protections. And Mr. Schneebaum believes that he can use these aspects to go ahead and prevent Raisi from entering US soil, while according to the regime’s government structure he is not the ‘head of state’ and the “US government has, generally speaking, honored the absolute immunity of and this is the important term heads of state.” He explained: “Our argument is that Ebrahim is not the head of state of Iran. He may have the title of president, but he is not the leader as Ayatollah Khamenei is the supreme leader and is, therefore, the head of state of Iran and indeed the Iranian constitution.” At the conference Judge Michael B. Mukasey said: “In 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, known as OFAC, imposed sanctions on Ebrahim Raisi based on his participation in what has become known as the ‘Death Commission’, ordering the execution of thousands of political prisoners. In 2021 the U.S. State Department imposed immigration restrictions on him based on a finding that he was a senior Iranian official involved in the commission of serious human rights abuses. “It is anticipated that if Raisi comes to the United States, he would be subject to the jurisdiction of United States courts and could be served with the complaint in this case, which presents claims under two federal laws – the Torture Victim Protection Act and the Alien Tort Statute.” Finally, he added: “Diplomatic immunity does not mean impunity.” Last year similar complaints were filed in England and Scotland, avoiding him to attend the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow.On the inauguration day of #Iran President #Raisi lets remember the 1000s victims of the 1988 repression, disappeared and extrajudicially executed and recall President Raisi role https://t.co/fdSApp942U
— Agnes Callamard (@AgnesCallamard) August 5, 2021
Iran: A Destroyed Country
Under the rule of the mullahs, Iran has become a rickety country, like a house that desperately needs to be renovated from the ground up. This is what one of the regime’s state-run dailies, the Ebtekar, wrote in their latest publication, “Do not let the country become rickety.”
The truth of the situation is that this has happened a long time ago. The Iranian regime has run the country into the ground and as a result, there is nothing left for the Iranian people, and the regime is no longer able to rectify its mistakes.
The Ebtekar daily explained, “For years, various crises have plagued the country. It seems that we are slowly getting used to living in a crisis. There are various reasons why we are stuck in the middle of such a crisis.”
They added, “An important factor of overflowing crises or at least the aggravation of these crises is the erosion of the country’s infrastructure. The country has become rickety in different areas. Various sectors are declining due to a lack of investment. The air fleet, industry, civil infrastructure, etc. have all been destroyed.”
Education
In an interview with the Madreseh Press website, Esmail Ola, a member of the faculty of Farhangian University, said, “The education system with about 15 million students and one million teachers is in a situation where teachers, students, and families, are not satisfied. Part of this dissatisfaction is the result of the political and economic conditions prevailing in the society, education has never been able to become one of the priorities of the policy-making, budgeting, monitoring, and decision-making system.” According to official statistics, there are 935,000 students who have dropped out of school across Iran, children aged between 6 to 18 years who have had no choice but to abandon their education due to various problems.The state of the country’s roads
According to the Central Insurance Research Institute, “Iran ranks second among 190 countries in the world in terms of unsafe driving accidents. Statistics show that 9 people are killed for every 10,000 cars in the world; While in Iran, this equation leads to the death of 37 people. This year, only in the first 9 months of the year, 13,142 people died in traffic accidents and 244,646 people were injured.”The condition of hospitals and medical centers
Research has found that 477 hospitals in the country are not in good safe condition. Old, dilapidated, unsafe hospitals are endangering the safety of patients and medical staff; A problem that has been talked about for a long time after many catastrophic incidents that have taken place. This sector is often forgotten due to budget shortages and of course the lack of serious determination to correct it by the regime.Housing situation
An expert of the Social Welfare Studies Office in the regime’s Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare stated, “The most important challenge of housing poverty in urban areas is the lack of access to affordable housing and the most important challenge of housing poverty in rural areas is poor housing, the main cause of which is the type of ‘materials’ used for construction.” They added, “Based on this, the rate of lack of access to affordable housing in urban areas is 49% (9.5 million households) and the rate of poor housing in rural areas is 40% (2.4 million households). Considering a family of four in each average household, nearly 50 million are living in housing poverty in Iran.”Environmental crises
Looking at the environmental situation in Iran, it is apparent that all the environmental factors in this country are in crisis and turmoil. Over the last forty years, more than 20 million hectares of pastures have been changed, and many animal and plant species are now extinct. Regardless of the ecological strength of the land, unbalanced and unsustainable agriculture has developed. More than 86 billion cubic meters of renewable water is harvested in the agricultural sector, while the yield gap is about 60%; meaning that only 40% of the yield potential of plants in Iran is converted into harvestable yield, and of this amount, about 30 million tons are turned into waste. Unsettled agricultural conditions have caused the most damage to water resources, causing the drying up of wetlands, soil erosion, land subsidence, desertification, soil salinization, and the emergence of new fine dust centers. The use of poisons and chemical fertilizers in Iran’s agriculture is far beyond international standards, the neglect of the expiration date of poisons increases their shelf life and is now considered a factor in threatening people’s health.Poverty line
The Social Security Organization of the regime reported a few months ago that, “At least 30% of Iran’s population now lives below the poverty line. However, unofficial statistics say that this part of Iran’s population reaches 50% of the country’s total population, which means something around 42 million Iranians.”Unemployment
The regime’s Statistics Center published the results of the labor force census plan this spring (2022), according to which 2.13 percent of the university graduates of the country were unemployed. During this period, the graduates of higher education centers have equated to around 40% of the total unemployed people in Iran. Hojjatollah Abdolmaleki, the regime’s Minister of Cooperatives, Labour, and Social Welfare, recently said, “According to official statistics, we have about 2.4 million unemployed people, 2.2 million people with partial or unstable employment, and about 2 million people who are desperate to find work in the country, who are not part of the active population.” He further added, “Also, currently 9.7 million people are facing low-income employment and 4.5 million people have informal employment and do not have insurance.”Addiction
The former director general of the research and training office in the regime’s anti-narcotics headquarters stated, “There are 4,4 million constant and non-constant drug users in the country, and with their families, about 15 million of the country’s population are affected by the consequences of the drugs.” According to the General Department of Public Relations and International Affairs of the Forensic Medical Organization of Iran, the number of drug abuse deaths in 2021 increased by 15.2 percent compared to the previous year, and this year so far, addictions have killed 5,342 people.Human Rights
On 16 December 2021, the regime was condemned in the United Nations General Assembly, the highest international authority, for the 68th time due to the violation of basic human rights and the high number of executions, especially the execution of teenagers and children, as well as torture and cruel treatment of inmates in Iranian prisons.Tehran Confuses International Bodies With Mysterious Stats
On July 19, the Iranian state media launched a new wave of propaganda, claiming that Iran is among the world’s wealthiest states. The Jahan-e Sanat daily reported that “Recent statistic surveys show that Iran’s economy has been ranked as the 14th world’s great economy.”
They added, “According to the International Monetary Fund’s studies, Iran’s Gross Domestic Product’s value has reached $7.1 trillion in 2022. Iran’s $7.1-trillion economy is still far from the developing and welfare indicators; however, it has placed above countries like Mexico, Turkey, Spain, Sweden, and Saudi Arabia.”
This significant report attracted audiences spontaneously. Particularly, those economists and politicians who closely follow the financial news about Tehran, including the rampant inflation, unprecedented poverty, the government’s stellar debts to the banking system, systematic corruption, and massive budget deficits.
However, these reports fail to tell the whole truth about the current situation in Iran. In reality, citizens across the country are left to rummage through waste bins to make ends meet, families’ food baskets have shrunk, and many youths are forced to either sell their body organs to afford their relatives’ expenditures or are driven to commit suicide.
What the people of Iran are experiencing on a daily basis is completely different from the results of so-called ‘studies’. It begs the question, what is the source of these misleading reports? This distinction between reality and the stories from international bodies is rooted in Tehran’s mysterious banking system.
The government has officially declared that the USD trades for 42,000 rials. In reality, any USD is trading against 300,000 rials in the bazaar, showing a sharp depreciation in the Iranian national currency’s value.
In this respect, the mullahs have completely misguided the international bodies, including the IMF, in accounting for the GDP value. In other words, Iran’s real GDP should be calculated based on the rial’s valuation provided by experts, such as Prof. Steve Hanke, who offer a weekly #CurrencyWatchList.
The Iranian government has routinely refused to join the Financial Action Task Force in order to hide its corrupt and fraudulent stats. Due to the mullahs’ and Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) untransparent and tax-exempted institutions, it is impossible to obtain an actual estimation of Iran’s economy. Aside from these facts, the state media has revealed Raisi’s massive budget deficit. On August 18, the Abrar daily wrote, “The Raisi government experienced a 200-trillion-rial budget deficit from March to June 2022.” Notably, this deficit only accounts for four months, not the whole year, indicating that the Raisi government’s deficit is far higher than this amount. In a nutshell, the mullahs have tried to fish in muddy water, inspiring their disappointed forces about a ‘shiny future’. They can no longer defuse society’s volcanic situation and the ongoing socio-economic protests. As the government faces financial dilemmas and has been entangled by public hatred, the mullahs are still funding extremist groups and proxy conflicts in the Middle East at the expense of Iranian citizens, as they sink society into further poverty and misery.The Iranian rial is yet another central bank junk currency. By my measure, the rial has depreciated against the USD by 55.45% since Jan 2020, which is why #Iran takes the 8th place in this week's Hanke’s #CurrencyWatchlist. The Iranian rial is in the tank. pic.twitter.com/enwY8EItP8
— Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) August 23, 2022
Iranians Call for Prosecution of Raisi, Instead of Welcoming Him at UN
In its damning report in October 2018, titled ‘Blood-Soaked Secrets’, Amnesty International declared, “Between late July and September 1988, the Iranian authorities forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed thousands of prisoners for their political opinions and dumped their bodies in unmarked individual and mass graves.”
In July 1988, the Iranian regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini issued a secret religious order (fatwa) for the execution of prisoners who steadfastly supported the opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The fatwa later engulfed other political dissidents when the regime cleansed the prisons of MEK members and supporters.
According to survivors and eyewitnesses, the regime formed commissions comprising judicial authorities, intelligence officers, and interrogators to purge dungeons of political prisoners. The regime claimed the commissions were established for ‘pardon’, while prisoners and rights activists and groups have since referred to them as ‘Death Commissions’.
For decades, the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre, including Iran’s current president Ebrahim Raisi, have enjoyed impunity. Not only do they enjoy this impunity for being off the hook for their atrocious crimes against humanity, but it has allowed and encouraged them to shed more blood to strengthen their authoritarian theocracy.
Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei awarded Raisi, infamous as the ‘Butcher of Tehran,’ and appointed him as the judiciary chief. During his tenure, Raisi upheld hundreds of death sentences against political activists, women, juvenile offenders, prisoners of conscience, followers of ethnic and religious minorities, and smugglers—contrary to the regime’s penal code.
Judicial authorities were also actively involved in a bloody crackdown on hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters in November 2019. Following gas price hikes in mid-November, citizens took to the streets across the country, urging authorities to cancel the hikes. The regime then responded to people’s demands with violence, killing at least 1,500 defenseless demonstrators and bystanders. Authorities also detained thousands of protesters and subjected them to inhumane torture and ill-treatment by Raisi’s agents.
As Amnesty reported in September 2020, “Widespread torture including beatings, floggings, electric shocks, stress positions, mock executions, waterboarding, sexual violence, forced administration of chemical substances, and deprivation of medical care. Hundreds were subjected to grossly unfair trials on baseless national security charges. Death sentences issued based on torture-tainted ‘confessions.’”
As was expected, Raisi and his agents were awarded yet again. In a forged election in 2021, Khamenei’s affiliates paved the path for Raisi’s presidency. Even the regime’s official statistics show the 2021 Presidential election received extraordinary apathy in the regime’s age.
Khamenei appointed Raisi to counter domestic and foreign crises, including ongoing protests and anti-regime activities, breathtaking sanctions, and financial failures. However, Raisi has failed to strike fear into society despite his notorious background as an executioner.
In their socio-economic rallies and marches across Iran, citizens routinely chant slogans, such as: “Death to Raisi,” “Raisi; shame on you, let go of the country,” “Raisi is a liar,” and “The sixth-grader government [of Raisi] would collapse soon.”
Raisi has also lost significant numbers of Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) supporters, not because he fought ‘systematic corruption’, but because he has failed to satisfy the ‘mafia’ with adequate political-economic incentives. Today, not only do the people curse Raisi on the streets, but even Khamenei’s appointees in the Parliament and other government offices explicitly slam Raisi and his cabinet.
From the international standpoint, Raisi’s government has failed to push Tehran’s interests through a new nuclear deal with world powers. Instead, the regime has been forced to withdraw from some of the ‘red lines’, such as delisting the IRGC, closing the International Atomic Energy Agency’s probes, and lifting all sanctions.
In recent months, the U.S. Department of Justice has foiled the mullahs’ assassinating attempts against former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, pushing the regime into an awkward corner and making new hurdles for engaging with it.
Raisi has been desperately trying to brag about his attendance at the UN General Assembly as a victory to ease domestic and foreign failures. On the other hand, Iranians around the world have warned the international community, particularly the U.S. administration, that they should take a firm approach toward Iran’s mass murdering, terrorist regime.
The Iranian people expect that the US will avoid granting a visa to Raisi and his IRGC lieutenants to prevent them from staining American soil, spreading hatred beliefs, and masterminding more terror attempts. They have launched a “#NoVisa4Raisi” campaign, backed by a long slate of dignitaries from the trans-Atlantic, to ensure that the Iranian delegation will be denied entry to the U.S next month.
Iran’s Regime Honors Terrorism and Protects Its Perpetrators
Famous for its support of global terrorism, the Iranian regime is continuing its threats and acts of blackmailing, without facing any serious firmness. The regime’s supreme leader often uses social media to represent the regime’s dangerous nature, as seen in a tweet about two weeks ago stating that the regime, with the help of its proxy forces, “is able to crush the enemy.” He has even publicly praised the slain mass murderer Qassem Soleimani, who was a prominent figure in the foreign wing of the regime’s global terrorism.
The regime’s support of terrorism is even worse than first thought. In an article published recently by Epoch times, Ms. Clare M. Lopez, a former career operations officer with the CIA, and Founder/President of Lopez Liberty LLC, revealed that the Iranian regime has significant ties with different terrorist groups.
In an exclusive interview with Epoch Times, she stated that “Ayman al-Zawahiri was Al-Qa’eda’s key contact with the Iranian regime since well before the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Documents captured in the Osama bin-Laden raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 reportedly revealed much about the AQ-Iran-Taliban jihad alliance.”
Lopez also revealed that one of the Al-Qa’eda leaders, Seif al-Adl, is living under the regime’s protection, specifically the regime’s IRGC/Quds Force/MOIS.
It is no secret that the Al-Qa’eda has often led its operations mostly from Iran, but the strangest thing is the silence of the world, not only in regards to this fact but in reference to many other cases.
The Iranian regime has consistently shown that it has no fear of harming Iranian dissidents and the people of other nations on its soil. A clear example of this was the latest attack on Salman Rushdie in the U.S.
In a recent interview with Fox News, Alireza Jafarzadeh, the deputy director of the U.S. Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said that the regime in Tehran will go to any lengths to try to kill dissidents, even at American soil.
Jafarzadeh said, “Since the start of the uprisings in Iran in 2017, Tehran stepped up its terror plots abroad, particularly against our movement because of the increase in its appeal among the protesters.”
Shortly before this comment, on August 10, the US Justice Department announced charges against a regime operative named Shahram Poursafi, a member of the IRGC, who attempted to assassinate John Bolton, following many of the regime’s threats to kill Mike Pompeo, the former U.S. Secretary of Department of State.
The international community’s wrong policies of soothing the regime and turning a blind eye to the mullahs’ malign activities have created a culture of impunity for the regime, which allows them to continue to spread its acts of terrorism beyond its borders.
Basic common sense suggests that instead of inviting the regime’s contempt, the world should demonstrate a modicum of firmness.
The US government, therefore, must deny the regime’s president Ebrahim Raisi a visa to attend next month’s meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. Permitting his travel and turning a blind eye to this situation will only encourage the regime to scheme more terror plots.
In his latest visit with Sweden’s ambassador to Iran, the regime’s Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian asked the Swedish government to release Iranian national Hamid Noury, a former prison official convicted by the Swedish court for his involvement in Iran’s 1988 Massacre. The sad part is that the Swedish ambassador instead, to express his firmness and defending justice and the independency of law, promised the regime’s foreign minister to deliver his message to his government, clearly highlighting a sign of weakness.
On August 22, in his latest press conference, the regime’s spokesman of the foreign ministry blatantly said that “in connection with Mr. Noury and Mr. Assadi, the same follow-ups continue at different levels and have never stopped. It is one of the priority cases and issues of the diplomatic system. It is necessary that both the government of Belgium and the government of Sweden act on their own responsibility in this regard.”
It is now a necessity that the Western powers need to intensify diplomatic, economic, and military pressure against the ranges of the regime’s malign activities.
The right message to the regime must be a firm policy, whether it will harm other people and nations, especially against Iran’s own people and their legitimate Resistance. This regime must feel the suffering and the higher costs of its terrorism, or else it will continue to expand its terrorism without mercy.
