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 letter was sent to the regime’s ministry of oil to support the construction of the building of the Jamkaran 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.
Since the 1979 revolution in Iran, the country’s economy has witnessed a sharp decline. Two main factors play the primary role. One is the Iranian regime’s institutionalized corruption and monopolization of the economy by the regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), and the second is the regime’s massive spending on its nuclear and missile projects.
According to the regime’s media, Iran’s per capita income, based on the real global and regional inflation rate, dropped from ten thousand dollars in 1979 to about seven thousand dollars in 2021, and this year it has fallen even lower. Additionally, the people’s purchasing power has shrunk so dramatically that a family in 1978 could afford 74 kg of meat with its minimum wages but now the same family cannot even afford 20 kg. This shows just how sharply the people’s economic power has decreased.
In between some of the regime’s officials’ absurd claims that the Gini coefficient and the class gap have decreased, the reality of the situation is that this is because the richer people and the middle class of society have become poorer. Many of the regime’s social experts have even stated that the middle class has been completely wiped out.
At the same time, the number of people living below the poverty line in Iran has increased greatly over the past year and the intensity has quadrupled.
In 1979, twenty percent of the population lived below the poverty line, while after the end of the Iran-Iraq war, this increased to about forty percent. According to the inaccurate statistics of the regime, this figure has now reached 52 percent, while other figures have shown that about 80 percent of society is living below the poverty line.
As an example, regarding the per capita meat consumption, in 1978 each Iranian consumed about 16 kg of meat in a year, this shrunk to 12 kg in 1988 and now it is just 6 to 7 kg.
The consumption of dairy products has also decreased in the past few years, as with the gradual increase in the price of dairy products, Iranians have used fewer dairy products.
It should be noted that the average annual consumption of dairy products in the world is more than 150 kg per capita, and the World Food Organization (FAO) suggests that this should be around 300 kg for each person in a year. In Iran, according to the regime’s statistics, this was just 70 kg per capita in the past year and it has now reached 50 kg.
This will most definitely have significant side effects on the growth of the next generation. The impoverishment of the people has also had major social effects. In parallel with the decrease in the income level, the frequency of thefts has increased, and more children are being forced to steal in order to survive.
The remarkable thing about this is that among the increased thefts, the subject of the thefts has also changed. The tendency of thieves to steal valuable and protected goods such as gold and jewelry has decreased, with thieves now focusing on stealing low-priced and unprotected or less protected goods such as mobile phones, electrical canal covers, and cables.
Refuse to collect, especially among children has increased as people are desperate to make what little money they can, while the streets of the metropoles are full of street vendors and cardboard sleepers. Nearly all families have been forced to work at different places to be able to support their family members. In such a situation, forming a family and having children is very risky, so many young people are choosing not to get married.
Last week, the Iranian regime’s media reported that the mullahs had been successful in launching a new satellite named ‘Khayyam’. From the regime’s officials to those loyal to the regime, many people expressed their happiness about this ‘homegrown masterpiece’, even before it was launched.
At the same time, the regime’s president Ebrahim Raisi rushed to the stage to praise this ‘Iranian project’, while the regime’s media praised the work of the ‘Young Hezbollahi government.’
In the hope of recovering its lost prestige, dominance, and credibility among the people in society, both in the region and globally, the regime has been constantly fabricating scientific and military successes. This time, however, the tumult surrounding this domestically created satellite did not last long.
Shortly after the regime’s hubbub, the embassy of Russia in Iran announced that the satellite had been built by them, after several requests from the regime.
This announcement was such a disgrace that the regime’s media, like the Fars news agency, were forced to edit their news and publications. To clear up this mess, Issa Zarehpour, the regime’s minister of communications, ridiculously claimed that “since the first day, we had said that the Khayyam satellite was created by Russia.”
The regime’s spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi later said that the regime is planning to order three more satellites from the same model as the Khayyam. On his Twitter account, he wrote, the “construction of three more Khayyam satellites in collaboration with Iranian scientists is on the regime’s agenda.”
The strange part of the story is that some of the state-run media outlets, like the Basirat newspaper, are brazen enough to claim that the regime is capable of sending a human into space. In the past, the regime’s media has reported many times about the launch of satellites of other countries, saying that these events are not a “scientific achievement” at all, so the recent contradictions have caused the regime’s jubilations to be senseless.
On March 22, 2021, the regime’s YJC news agency announced that “Russia launched satellites of 18 countries.” They clearly have no pride in asking and taking help from a developed country to launch their missile. This latest project explains the regime’s wasting of the country’s wealth and resources on warmongering, instead of boosting scientific and industrial development.
Alireza Naimi, the general director of space exploitation and operations of the regime’s Space Organization, announced that it will not be possible to use the images of this satellite for at least 4 months.
This is not the first time that the regime claimed that it has successfully sent a homegrown satellite into orbit. One was reportedly launched two years ago, and a second one earlier this year. The second satellite, Nour-2, was launched into space without any specific usage, but the regime claimed that it had been designed to execute civilian missions.
Neither Nour-1 nor Nour-2, are likely to become operational anytime soon, instead becoming a disaster and embarrassment for the regime. At that time of the launches, the Squadron, part of the new US Space Command, reported that they did observe that any of the satellites had reached orbit.
The more concerning part is while the regime claims that its space projects are in favor of civilian space projects, due to the regime’s nature, we should consider that the regime will likely use these satellites in favor of military operations, especially by supporting its proxy forces with images of their claimed enemies.
Last week, the Washington Post reported that the satellite was designed to expand the regime’s spy and military abilities. The report stated that the Khayyam satellite is based on a Kanopus-V surveillance satellite and includes a camera with a high 1.2-meter resolution.
The huge class gap in Iran is the result of the Iranian regime’s destructive policies. According to Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpaygani, the staff secretary of the regime’s ‘Enjoining good and forbidding wrong’ headquarters, more than 4,000 children of the regime’s officials are living abroad.
The regime’s plan centers on expanding the lives of their relatives into a luxury life conglomerate, comprising not only clothes and planes, but cars, yachts, helicopters, furniture, and real estate. At the same time, the majority of people in Iranian society are struggling for their daily bread, with many of them only being able to afford one meal portion a day. As a result, the luxurious life of the relatives of the regime’s officials is increasing the peoples’ hatred.
One of the main consequences of the increasing class gap is severe malnutrition. One of the ‘blessings’ of this “holy system” is the starvation of the people, who cannot afford to buy even basic food staples, what the regime’s state-run media have now referred to as “luxury food”.
On August 7, the state-run daily Gostaresh News, wrote about these ‘luxury foods’, stating, “One of the main consequences of heavy inflation has affected the nutritional basket of the people. Not only red and white meat but also rice, eggs, fruits, and vegetables, have gradually become luxury items in families’ shopping baskets.”
This daily added, “Point-to-point inflation of edibles reached 86 percent in July; This means that in July 2022, families have to spend 86 percent more than in July 2021 to buy a certain set of food products.”
According to the statistics presented by the regime’s media, with the increase in the price of meat, the meat consumption of the tenth decile of the society is 27 times more than the first decile. This subject has changed the eating habits of most people.
The change in eating habits in Iran is greatly endangering the children, so it is likely that the coming generation will also suffer from malnutrition. The bread consumption in Iran is currently 2 to 3 times more than other countries in the region as that is all many families can afford. That means that people are having to forego calories, along with protein and vitamins needed by the body. Even providing bread is a big challenge for most people, so they are forced to buy it at higher prices, according to the state-run daily Radar Eghtesad.
In July 27, the state-run Shargh daily reported the warnings of the regime’s ministry of health, writing, “Food inflation in Iran has become alarming and the statistical center has estimated the spot inflation rate of food in July to be over 90 percent. Heavy inflation in the food market has followed the warning of the Ministry of Health in Iran and has reported a doubling of malnutrition in some deprived provinces such as Sistan-Baluchistan, Kerman, Hormozgan, and South Khorasan.”
They added, “According to the activists of the food market, this incident has caused a sharp fall in the per capita consumption of the main food items in Iran, and on the other hand, it has led to an increase in the consumption of bread. Apart from this, food items have been removed one by one from the shelves of Iranian supermarkets and replaced by items such as packaged bones, chicken skeletons, and rice scraps.”
The lack of calcium, protein, and nutrients in children manifests itself in the form of osteoporosis, short stature, and other diseases. One of the regime’s nutritionists and diet therapists said, “During growth, especially in children under five and in children at puberty, the first deficiency is protein malnutrition, which causes a delay or decrease in growth, and this decrease in growth will have side effects, especially in later generations. Since growth, especially height growth, is related to the development of societies, the reduction of growth causes disturbance in the development of society.”
Literally, malnutrition has become a deadly tsunami that has engulfed Iran’s nation, especially among the youth and young children.
The Iranian regime’s state-run Kayhan daily, the mouthpiece of its supreme leader Ali Khamenei, recently wrote that the regime needs to deal with the enemy’s proxy media because they are pumping desperation and confusion into society.
In contrast, the reality of the situation is that the regime itself is pumping desperation and confusion into the society with the unbridled high prices of all commodities, the 12 million rial poverty line, and the increase in executions, as well as its repressive measures over the Iranian people.
To create a comprehensive conclusion of this reality, let us sum up the quotes of the regime’s officials and economic experts about the extreme poverty in Iran, which is creating despair across the country.
Farshad Momeni, one of the regime’s economic experts, said, “The population of the people below the poverty line has been doubled.”
The welfare deputy of the regime’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare stated, “Due to the increase of the prices, and the non-proportionate of the wages and the unemployment of two million people due to the pandemic, it has been estimated that until the end of this year the population of the people living below the poverty line will increase up to thirty million.”
Another of the regime’s economic experts, Morad Rahdadi, explained, “The proper wage of the family of four or the poverty line must be a least twelve million rial. If we count generally, you see that about seventy percent of the people live below the relative poverty line.”
Ebrahim Razaghi said, “Some of the numbers are concerning. As an example, the parliament has announced that sixty percent of the people live below the poverty line. Official numbers reveal that twenty to thirty million people live below the absolute poverty line.”
Finally, MP Ebrahim Neko expressed, “I believe that ninety percent of the people in Iran are engaged with poverty in different kinds. Even those who have an income of more than twelve million rials. But they are tasting poverty variously.”
With a comprehensive look at the increase in prices and poverty over the last year, the sheer reality of the situation becomes all too apparent. The price increases for everyday products, as percentages, are as follows: Iranian rice, 188%; liquid oil, 327.5%; solid vegetable oil, 285.8%; potatoes, 173.5%; pasta, 166%; watermelon, 20.1%; carbonated soft drinks, 20.2%; carrots, 20.8%; milk powder, 26%; mutton, 36.8%; beef, 51.1%; foreign rice, 56.5%; box of eggs, 102.6%; and finally, chicken, 103.7%.
Last year the poverty line was around ten million rials, but thanks to the regime’s new ‘Resistance economy’, it has reached now twelve million rials. As a result, close to thirty million people are now living in absolute poverty, while ninety percent of the population is struggling with livelihood problems.
The sharp focus has recently been turned on Iran, once again, because of many bitter events. One such event is the high number of child suicides. As recent as August 7, news about two new suicides spread across the country.
9-year-old Amir Mohammad Abulofai and 12-year-old Farhad Khodayi, from Kohdasht city, Lorestan province, both committed suicide and put an end to their lives. Abulofai hanged himself, while Khodayi ended his life by using a gun.
According to analysis over the past decade, a total of around 250 children have committed suicide in Iran. It should be noted that this is just the number of the victims published by the Iranian regime’s media, so there is no exact number of the suicides of children in Iran, but it is likely to be higher than publicized.
The statistics of the regime’s National Organization for Civil Registration have stated that the fifth most common reason for the deaths of youths in Iran is a suicide, equating to 3.89 percent of the deaths. According to their investigation, 48 percent of the suicides that have become public were committed by boys, and 52 percent by girls. The higher number of suicides among girls is likely due to the regime’s misogyny and inequality against females, and double pressure and repression on the women in the country.
Of the statistics presented, around 45 percent of suicides were related to children between the ages of 9 and 14 years, with another 55 percent relating to the age range of 15 to 18 years.
Among the causes of these suicides: eight percent were attributed to poverty; 26 percent because of educational problems; 28 percent due to conflicts with family; five percent related to emotional relationships; eight percent as a result of rape; five percent were caused under the influence of movies and videos; and, a further 20 percent of suicides were due to forced marriages.
The cities of Tehran, Isfahan, and Hamadan had the highest number of suicides. The high number of suicides among the youths has serious consequences for society across Iran. Primarily, this will make suicide an ordinary behavior and habituation as the last solution for getting rid of the problems these children are facing.
The rate of despair among the country’s youths is high. The regime is not generating enough job opportunities needed to prevent the desperation and destruction of the country’s future, so the number of unemployed youths is increasing year after year.
According to the 2019 report of the Strategic Information and Statistics Center of the regime’s Ministry of Cooperation, Labor and Social Welfare, out of 10.5 million youths aged 15 to 24, 8.1 million of them were neither studying nor engaged in skill training nor employed.
While this is more than enough to push the youths to suicide, the regime has further intensified its repression and the executions of youths over the past few months. This has been executed by stricter laws of hijab against women, including teenage girls, and the spread of narcotics among the youths, especially the younger male population. The majority of the regime’s recent executions were, in fact, related to narcotics cases.
It should be noted that Iranian youths are among the most politically active in the 57 nations of the Islamic world. As the most disobedient segment of the society, they are representing a long-term threat to the regime’s theocracy.
Another question that should be responded to is where the youths and elites of Iran are going. Part of this question can be responded to by observing the participation of the youths in the entry exam of the universities, as reported by the state-run Fararu daily on July 25.
They wrote, “In this year’s exam, there is a 44% decrease in the number of candidates in the math group compared to the national exam in 2012. In addition, in 2019, 24.3% of all candidates entered the math group, but in this year’s exam, this number has decreased to 9.7%.”
Fararu added, “While the number of candidates in the foreign language group in the entrance exam of 2022 has increased by 1383.8 percent compared to 2012. It seems that part of the 1383% increase in the number of candidates in the foreign language group in this year’s national exam is elites who are taking the last steps to move to world-class universities.”
Sometimes numbers lose their mathematical meaning and become heralds of disasters. The number of 200 deaths in the village of Emamzadeh Davud in Iran is just one example. This number is no longer just a simple number written on a piece of paper that the Iranian regime can use to deny and hide the reality of the situation.
The truth is that this number signifies the number of corpses of innocent people, who are now buried below tons of mud from the recent catastrophic floods. 200 decomposing corpses trapped, with the smell engulfing the atmosphere of the local area. The message given from this catastrophic scene is that this disaster is, once again, a product of the regime’s corruption. The situation in the village is so bad that even the regime’s media wrote that Emamzadeh Davud “smells like the Metropol building collapse in Abadan.”
We are speaking about preventable casualties. 200 people who have needlessly died as a direct result of the regime’s misdeeds. Life has become very cheap in Iran, so for any natural disaster, the number of people who die is incomparable with any developed country.
The regime, by using the country’s resources for its nuclear and missile project and the expansion of terrorism, has not left any budget to cover the costs to modernize the country’s infrastructure and prevent catastrophes in natural disasters. It has left the Iranian people defenseless, while the regime would rather focus their efforts on defending dictatorships, like Bashar Assad in Syria. All because of the unstoppable greed of its officials and their families. There is no need to make a precise investigation to find out the truth. Reading the regime’s papers is enough to see reality.
Today, many of the regime’s officials are even asking why, despite knowing about the danger of the floods, people were not informed, endangered roads were not closed, and houses were not evacuated.
On August 6, the state-run Hamdeli daily wrote, “In their suits, they (the regime’s officials) appear only after the flood, which has caused many damages and casualties. Criticizers believe that urban management needs expertise and scientific perceptions, not populist movements, and diving in floods and mud.”
This is why some of the regime’s experts previously warned the regime that the main crisis is not the flood, but the people’s distrust of the regime, and the regime’s illegitimacy.
Regime expert Mohammadreza Haghshenas affirmed this, saying, “The recent flood exposed the people’s distrust of the regime. Society does not believe in the government’s performance.”
On August 4, the state-run Shargh daily wrote, “Now, analysts are gradually starting a discussion that natural disasters may have acute effects on national security, meaning the intertwined security of people and government, in addition to local and regional threats.”
‘National Security’ is the alias for the regime’s existence. While the regime’s officials try to disclaim responsibility, others, like its Friday prayer leaders, are trying to sway the public thought from the main culprit of all these disasters, which is the supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and whitewash his hands.
In his recent speech, Mohammad Ali Shahim, the Friday prayer leader of Pachnar, said, “Forty years of the revolution and the systems management has passed, but we see that we are still not functioning probably in many areas of management. The important thing is the subject of watershed management is the major solution for these floods, but unfortunately the government is not considering any budget for it.”
The regime’s TV tried to whitewash Khamenei’s hands in another way, stating, “People’s lives seem to be the most worthless thing in our time, that is, we just ignore easily hundreds of deaths.”
On August 2, John Kirby, the US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the White House, stated that the US government will not delist the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) while the nuclear agreement, known as the JCPOA, is being revitalized.
In his press conference at the White House press briefing, he said, “The Iranian State is a state supporter of terrorism and they support terrorist networks throughout the region…and when I asked if he (US President) would be willing to lift the FTO designation of the IRGC as a function of negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal the president said no.”
The truth is that the Iranian regime is pressuring the negotiating parties to remove the IRGC from the US’s FTO, to be able to continue its malign activities. This regime has a long history of aggression, against its own people, against neighbors, and indeed against international peace and security.
From harboring al-Qaida, to backing Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, and its militias throughout the region, it has provoked an endless war that has continued for over 40 years.
Therefore, any ease of sanctions and appeasement will be an aid to the regime’s aggressions. The bad part of the story is that since the start of the new rounds of the JCPOA negotiations, the regime has been able to ramp up its illegal oil trade, which is the IRGC’s main financial support.
This year the regime was able to sell more than $25 billion worth of its oil. Compared to the year before its revenue from oil sales has tripled according to the ISNA news agency.
The regime’s tanker fleet includes about 143 ships, capable of carrying more than 102 million barrels of crude oil or fuel and 11.8 million barrels of liquefied natural gas, worth over $7.7 billion per day. This is a significant amount of money pouring out that will greatly increase its foreign currency resources.
Also, this amount of revenue will definitely boost the regime’s malign activities, from its nuclear and missile program to its support of international terrorism.
On August 2, in reference to the regime’s malign nuclear activities, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi said that ‘goods words’ from the regime are not enough to satisfy international inspectors. He then asked the regime to be transparent about its nuclear program, which was “moving ahead very, very fast.”
A day earlier, the US Department of the Treasury (DOT) announced that its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has acted against companies “used by Iran’s Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industry Commercial Co. to facilitate the sale of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of the regime’s petroleum and petrochemical products from the regime to East Asia.”
Under the action, the following companies are being designated: Blue Cactus Heavy Equipment and Machinery Spare Parts Trading L.L.C.; Farwell Canyon HK Limited; Shekufei International Trading Co. Limited; and PZNFR Trading Limited.
DOT also outlined that, in a separate but related action, it was designating two entities “that have engaged in the purchase, acquisition, sale, transport, or marketing of Iranian petroleum and petroleum products, including providing logistical support to the Iranian petroleum trade, pursuant to E.O. 13846”.
These actions alone are not strong enough to prevent the regime from its malign activities, resembling the act of locking the stable door after the horse was stolen. Insisting on negotiating and appeasing the regime’s dangerous nuclear project is not the answer either. The international community and the Western countries must wholly support Iran’s people’s struggle against the regime, which is the only real solution to the issue with Iran and the four decades of crisis in the Middle East.
During the trial of Hamid Noury, one of the Iranian regime’s perpetrators in the 1988 massacre, the victims and witnesses of the massacre all spoke about three equal phenomena that occurred during that fateful period, the death corridor, the death commission, and the death saloon.
During the summer of 1988, more than 30,000 political prisoners, mostly supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), were brutally executed without any fair legal procedures.
In one of his previous speeches, the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei sent a warning to the Iranian people, proclaiming that the God of the 1980s is the same as the God of the 2020s.
Khamenei’s murderous intentions are becoming ever clear these days, judging by the increase in the number of the regime’s merciless executions. It has also become clear why he chose Ebrahim Raisi, who was a member of the 1988 massacre’s death commission, as his president.
Last Friday, the regime executed two people in Dameghan, raising the number of executed people over the past seven days to 32, which is a new record. On average, considering the past few months, the regime is executing 4 people every day.
In its latest statement, Amnesty International has said that the regime has embarked on a “killing spree”, killing at least 251 people this year between January 1 to June 30. Precise numbers for the number of executions are not available, so the official number may be even higher.
Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Diana Eltahawy, said, “The state machinery is carrying out killings on a mass scale across the country in an abhorrent assault on the right to life. The renewed surge in executions, including in public, shows yet again just how out of step Iran is with the rest of the world.”
If this trend of executions continues, the number of executions is likely to surpass the total number in 2021. While the numbers are outrageous, it is not just executions where the regime’s brutality ends, as they have also been implementing limb amputation penalties. Last week, the regime amputated the fingers of a man named Sayed Barat Hosseini, who had been convicted of theft, using a guillotine machine.
This latest amputation came soon after the regime implemented the same penalty against another victim of the regime’s cruelty. Hosseini’s fingers were removed without even being given an anesthetic.
Diana Eltahawy said, “Amputation is judicially-sanctioned torture and therefore a crime under international law. All those who were involved in ordering or implementing these corporal punishments should be prosecuted in fair trials.”
It has been discovered that at least eight other prisoners are currently at risk of the same brutal punishment. Since the regime’s officials regularly enjoy international impunity and are respected by the Western governments’ appeasement policy, this cruelty will only continue.
While the regime has implemented such punishments and performed public executions less frequently over the past years, in fear of being in the agony of a collapse they have decided to increase the pressure on the people and scare them through such brutal means.
The regime’s maniacal hostility towards women who do not stick to their fabricated law of ‘proper Islamic hijab wearing’ is another factor in the regime’s fear of collapse.
It seems that due to Raisi’s failure in saving the stricken regime, Khamenei has had no choice but to increase the repression, facing an insoluble crisis.
In their July 30 publication, the state-run Shargh daily wrote about the regime’s repression of women, stating, “Since two or three weeks ago, a flood had started in the society against the non-proper hijab. In the end, it was not known from which spring it originated, and who was responsible for issuing it. It created bad moods and led to violence, and articles were written, and speeches were held against it.”
They added, “Those who do not wear the proper hijab got lucky, because the natural flood, saved them from further aggression, but experience shows that such floods will not end soon. After a while crisis makers will start a new game.”
The Sharq daily also warned, “Future floods are more destructive because new generations are not complying with us. The fact that the number of those not wearing the proper hijab has increased and the number of participants in Friday prayer ceremonies has decreased are signs of vulnerability to floods.”
This short comment shows clearly why the regime has increased its aggression toward the people, as after four decades, the regime still lacks any solution to solve Iran’s economic and social crises.
One of the main challenges faced by the Iranian regime over the past couple of years is the top-level penetration of highly trained security agents, from various intelligence services in other countries, into its high-profile security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
This situation has become more serious following the elimination of some of the regime’s nuclear scientists, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was regarded as the chief of the regime’s nuclear program.
Bedraggled with corruption, the regime’s IRGC officers have become soft targets and are used as snitches in foreign intelligence services, something that has been admitted by many of the regime’s officials as the main weakness of its security forces.
In July, the regime was forced to dismiss the head of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization Hossein Taeb, due to the weak response of this organization. It should be noted that Taeb was considered one of the most important intelligence figures, who was close to the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and his son.
Last year, Ali Younesi, the regime’s minister of intelligence from 1999 to 2005, warned the regime’s officials of the consequences of their security forces being infiltrated, saying, “In the last 10 years, unfortunately, infiltration in different parts of the country is such that all the officials of the Islamic Republic should be worried about their lives.”
In 2020, Hossein Dehghan, the regime’s former Minister of Defence, admitted that ‘infiltration’ and ‘breaches of security’ were what led to the assassination of Fakhrizadeh. At the same time, Hossein Alaei, a former IRGC commander, emphasized that the regime must examine the weakness that is inherent in the regime’s structure and security apparatuses, which enable such assassinations.
In an interview published by outlets close to Khamenei’s faction, IRGC member Hamid Naghachian, who was once the head of the regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini’s protection team, claimed that Khomeini was poisoned by drugs. Despite this cranked-out claim, his request to intensify the protection and security of Khamenei seems well founded.
The words of the Naghachian came up recently when the IRGC’s public relations team announced that Hossein Marashifar had succeeded Ebrahim Jabari as the commander of the Waliamar Protection Corps, a special unit of the IRGC, whose duty is to protect Khamenei and his family.
Naghachian also repeatedly mentioned foreign influence in the regime as a threat, stating, “We have been involved with infiltration since the beginning of the revolution.”
It is clear that Khomeini’s ‘poisoning’ incident is no longer his subject, Khamenei is now the main subject. Khamenei has personally spoken and warned many times about the infiltration. so is not unlikely that Naghachian now feels that the threat against Khamenei is real.
During the 25th gathering of Friday Prayers’ Imams on July 25, as published by the ISNA news agency, the regime’s interior minister Ahmad Vahidi pointed to the regime’s security weakness and the threat of infiltration, saying, “Today, the enemies are trying to impose their influence on us with new bridgeheads in this area. The enemy has launched an all-out war against us, which has different dimensions; Its security aspect is based on terror, and destruction, and is taking advantage of the wave of dissatisfaction.”
He added, “The infiltration had two parts; Part of it was to disrupt the decisions of officials and managers, and part of it was in the political field. Sometimes some officials said things that were not consistent with any logic. These words were caused by the damage we suffered in the information war.”
