As the Iranian economy is in ruins, and more and more people are falling below the poverty line, instead of finding solutions to rectify the problems, the Iranian regime is too busy with internal disputes over who has the bigger share of power.
The top officials are focused on ensuring that key posts in the government are filled with people they know and trust to push forward with the same ideologies. As a result, family members and close friends are often preferred than people who hold genuine qualifications for the roles.
officials are appointed to many ministries, governorates, and other high-ranking government positions simply because they actively contributed to the regime’s suppression of protesters and dissidents.
Currently, the ministers and governors who have been appointed to the administration of the regime’s president Ebrahim Raisi are either loyalists to supreme leader Ali Khamenei, officials who have served in cabinets of previous presidents, or have strong ties to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
The Minister of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare, Hojatollah Abdolmaleki spoke to the state-run Keyhan daily on November 3 and accused the heads of previous governments of many security and economic crimes. He claimed many were involved in cases of corruption, with some already having convictions against them.
Corruption and looting in the Food and Drug Administration of the Ministry of Health are also some of the cases acknowledged by government officials.
In a quote from Abdolreza Mesri, the former Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, in the Aftab-e Yazd daily last month, it was revealed that a former manager of the Food and Drug Administration was also the CEO of a state-owned company, which he used to conduct his crimes through. He imported medicine through his pharmaceutical companies, but then through his state-owned companies purchased the medicine from his private companies at 1,050 times the price.
The fact is that cases of corruption and looting of the Iranian people’s property, as well as nepotism and comradeship in government positions, are common. They are not limited to one administration and have become a common denominator of all administrations.
The state-run Jomhouri-e Eslami daily stated in their November 3 publication that this culture adopted by the regime ‘has dominated appointments in significant sectors of the Islamic Republic for many years’.
Corruption and nepotism are completed institutionalized when it comes to the regime. These factors, along with the inhumane repression of Iranian society are what binds the regime officials and leaders together in their desperate attempt to seize and hold onto power in an already fragile regime.
This is what meritocracy means under the rules of the mullahs, where Khamenei and institutions linked to him are sitting at the top and continue to loot the country’s wealth. And it is this corrupt nature of the regime that is backfiring against it, manifested by continued protests across the country by all walks of life.
