According to the state-run Mashregh website, an informed official in the Iranian regime’s Organization of Targeted Subsidies has announced that the payment of subsistence subsidies to 72 million people ended on June 6.
According to statistics, Iran has a population of 85 million. A simple calculation shows that around 84.7% of the Iranian population requires financial help in the form of subsidies. It is surprising that these strange figures can be found in a country that is one of the richest countries in the world and is known for having many natural resources, including energy reserves and their by-products.
The reality of the situation is that since the inception of the Velayat-e-Faqih regime, Iran is traversing the path of death rows, despair, inflation, unemployment, terrorism, nuclear threats, torture, executions, and injustice. This dire situation has clearly resulted from the regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini’s promises in the series of speeches before and after the referendum on the establishment of the Islamic Republic in February 1979.
Free utilities, housing for the poor, full rights for religious and ethnic minorities, and reduced military spending were some of the promises Khomeini made in his speeches. However, more than four decades later, not only have none of these promises been fulfilled, but in many cases, the Velayat-e-Faqih regime has acted in a way that is completely opposite of those promises.
The mullahs ruling in Iran are interfering heavily in the internal affairs of the countries in the region. The formation and financial and military support of many proxy groups, who have nothing else to do but kill and loot, illustrate this fact.
In recent years, Khamenei still had foreign exchange reserves to pay these militant groups, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis, but these reserves seem to have run out, and selling cheap oil to countries like China does not provide enough capital to continue funding them.
Like in previous governments, the cabinet of the regime’s current president Ebrahim Raisi has increased taxes and tariff-imposed subscription fees on many public services, introduced building permits, eliminated imports of essential materials at government rates, and increased commodity prices to make up for his government’s budget deficit.
This has subsequently led to a sharp rise in the price of bread and other essential items for the Iranian people. The corrupt circles of the government, headed by the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, along with the ministers and other incompetent officials, and the unprecedented increase of oppression and social injustice, have tested the patience of the Iranian people, who are rightly outraged with the current situation.
The recent series of anti-government protests across the country is exactly what Khamenei fears the most. In a speech on January 25, 2016, he said that if we do not keep the war outside our borders, we must fight the enemy here in Kermanshah and Hamedan, and other provinces. The domestic enemy he made reference to back then was clearly the people in revolt against the regime, threatening their existence.
This backward regime, based on medieval religious laws, cannot meet the economic, cultural, and political demands of the Iranian people, so their only solution is to rule them brutally.
The reason why this regime has never been at peace in the last 40 years is that war and crisis have been a cover for internal inhuman repression. The current situation of the government is so critical that Haddad Adel, the former speaker of parliament and the father-in-law of Mojtaba Khamenei, said on April 22, 2012, “Everything is in disarray.”
Qassem Saedi, a member of the Iranian parliament, warned that “there are likely to be more dangerous events than the uprisings of 2017 and mid-November 2019.”
These protests and demonstrations are no longer about the bad economic situation. They have turned into political protests. The slogans of ‘Death to Khamenei’, ‘Raisi, mullahs must get lost’, ‘Death to the dictator’, ‘Disgrace to our radio and television’, ‘Khamenei is a murderer, and his government is vain’, to name but a few, have now become common chants at protests up and down the country. This is exactly what has sounded the alarm for Khamenei.
The mullahs, as always and as expected, see the people and their Resistance movement as their potential enemies, and as a result, have used all their military and repressive power to suppress the recent waves of protests, and have dramatically increased the number of executions taking place in prisons across Iran.
