Government Unable To Fill Bellies, Iran Ayatollah Warns

Hardliner media say supporters of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are behind the allegations and rumors on social media and some websites about the French-born Jewish journalist and political analyst Catherine Perez-Shakdam's alleged connections with Iranian officials to gather intelligence for Israel.

Social media has been awash with allegations that Perez-Shakdam, a Jew who converted to Shiism, gathered intelligence for Israel. A Telegram channel run by Ahmadinejad supporters recently claimed she had 'infiltrated' Iranian media and regularly contributed to Khamenei's English-language website.

Where others faced obstacles, Shakdam repeatedly appeared on the state-run English channel, Press TV, as a commentator, wrote articles for state-affiliated media including the Revolutionary Guards-linked Tasnim News Agency and even the English website of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Fantasies

Tasnim news agency Monday quoted an "informed source" that Shakdam had been in Iran a total 18 days on five visits. "The claims are journalistic fantasies and an untrue propaganda and political script," the source told Tasnim, which is linked to the IRGC. Other state media, including the official news agency IRNA, offered a similar account, citing a judicial official.

Fars news agency Sunday slammed claims that Shakdam had been a "regular contributor" to Khamenei’s website, pointing out she had just contributed a few articles and opinion pieces between 2015 and 2017.

Shakram - who has also contributed to Russian state media (with blonde hair in a picture by-line), the BBC, and the Huffingdon Post - roused the Ahmadinejad supporters with a November blog post for The Times of Israel in which she wrote she had tried to "blend in" and hide her "true motivations" when visiting Iran during the 2017 presidential election, when she interviewed Ebrahim Raisi, then a candidate.

Belly of the beast

“I nevertheless walked right into the belly of the Beast – invitation in hand, by the request of the very government whose motto calls for the death of all Jews and the annihilation of Israel,” Shakdam wrote. She said holding a French passport and her former marriage to a Yemeni Muslim gave her “a free pass to many Islamic countries.”

In the past few days Ahmadinejad supporters have also claimed that Shakdam had close or intimate relations with dozens of officials including Yadollah Javani, the managing director of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) weekly, Sobh-e Sadegh, and Hamidreza Moghadamfar, Deputy chief of the organization that publishes Khamenei's works and runs his website.

In a statement to the media on March 1, Javani said he never knew Shakdam or been connected with her and alluded to the allegations in a note in Sobh-e Sadegh this week in which he said enemies have targeted the IRGC to discredit it among Iranians.

Abdollah Ganji, the former managing director of another IRGC-linked publication, Javan newspaper, also wrote in Hamshahri newspaper Sunday that Shakdam could not have been an Israeli spy as claimed.

Ganji argued that an infiltrator would not learn methods of infiltration and form connections with key officials only to expose herself and the intelligence organization behind the operation for no reason.

"Where in the world will a woman establish intimate connections with a hundred people to gain their trust to extract information and spy and then destroy all the bridges after building trust?" he wrote about unsubstantiated claims of some media outlets that Shakdam has confessed to having established such relations with Iranian officials.

The Washington Examiner quoted a Justice Department official as saying on Monday that the department possesses enough evidence to indict the Iranians but the Biden administration is resisting any public measures for fear that it could derail the Vienna negotiations with Tehran, which apparently are in final stages.

The source noted that “the seriousness of the conspiracy and the evidence warranted public indictment without delay”, adding that the IRGC also tried to recruit an assassin on US soil.

The intelligence community was aware of the plot since its early stage, and a full-time Secret Service protective detail was assigned to Bolton earlier this year or in late 2021, with significant FBI assets deployed for assistance.

The plot is also believed to have prompted national security adviser Jake Sullivan to warn Iran of severe consequences if it attacks Americans.

Iran has imposed sanctions on dozens of Americans, many of them from the US military, over the 2020 targeted killing of Qasem Soleimani, and threats have been made against former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other former Trump administration officials.

In January, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei lashed out at former US president Donald Trump and others for Soleimani’s killing, saying they “will pay for their crime.”

Falahatpisheh, the former chairman of parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, told Rouydad24 website on Monday that there could be legal action against Putin by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

He said Putin fears that if he can’t win the war, there will be a day when he and his commanders are put on trial by the Russians themselves, like what the Yugoslav people did to their political leaders.

Falahatpisheh said the prospect of this invasion is dark, because there is the ambition of a great dictator named Putin, adding that he has already played all the possible cards to keep himself in power, such as changing the constitution for lifelong rule.

He claimed that the mission of Moscow’s top negotiator in Iran nuclear talks in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, was that no agreement would be signed before the invasion of Ukraine. Even after that Russians have demanded a US guarantee that Ukraine sanctions would not hurt trade with Tehran, something France calls blackmail.

Iran's top officials’ including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi have expressed support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine blaming the United States for the crisis while hundreds of Iranians on social media have been expressing anger at the invasion and criticizing the government’s position.

The idea to eliminate the subsidy emerged after hardliner president Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) assumed office in August and could count on backing from conservatives and ultra-conservatives in control of Iran’s parliament.

The subsidy was introduced in April 2018 when former US president Donald Trump signaled his intention to withdraw from the Obama-era nuclear agreement with Iran known as JCPOA, and Iran’s national currency began to nosedive. Prices for imported goods skyrocketed and the government decided to provide cheap dollars to importers of essential goods to keep prices low.

But the measure proved to be controversial as reports emerged of large-scale corruption. Many entities applied to receive the cheap dollars for importing food, animal feed and other essential goods but ended up importing luxury cars or nothing at all. Some have charged that billions of dollars went to waste at a time when US sanctions slashed Iran’s foreign currency revenues, making US dollars crucial for the survival of the economy.

Hardliners picked up the banner of opposition to the subsidy, also as a weapon against centrist president Hassan Rouhani. Once they formed a majority in parliament in 2020 and took the presidency in 2021, they made it a priority to scrap the indirect subsidy.

However, it was not an easy decision to make. Annual inflation has been hovering around 40 percent for more than a year and food prices have risen much faster than that. Consumption of many food items such as meat and fruits have sharply declined as the impoverished middle calls had to slash spending amid declining purchasing power.

Politicians and reportedly security agencies have been concerned that eliminating the subsidies, with no prospect of lower inflation, would lead to political unrest, endangering the entire regime.

The danger could not be underestimated. A hike in gasoline prices in November 2019 led to serious nationwide unrest with authorities deciding to use brute force to suppress protesters. Security forces were ordered to shoot live ammunition, killing hundreds of unarmed people.

Perhaps for this reason the parliament itself did not vote to eliminate the subsidy, rather it agreed to allow the presidential administration to do as it wants. Some Iranian newspapers said the legislature decided to pass on the buck to the government.

But this is not the end of massive subsidies the state provides to consumers. While the 9 billion dollars was a heavy burden on the government’s budget of around $40 billion, Iran provides massive energy subsidies, which are called “hidden subsidies.” These take the form of cheap gasoline, electricity and gas, which are regarded as domestic resources, offered to an underpaid population, much like the old Soviet system, where housing and energy were cheap, but people earned small salaries compared with their counterparts in many other countries.

The energy subsidies were estimated to total around $60 billion annually before the Iranian currency lost its value against the US dollar. The Raisi government would love to eliminate these subsidies too and they have started reducing the gasoline subsidy on an experimental bases in the free trade zone on Kish Island. By raising prices, the government will earn around $5 billion more annually.

Currently a gallon of rationed gasoline sold by the government is around 22 US cents, while unrestricted gasoline is 44 cents. This is multiple times cheaper that the going rates in other Persian Gulf oil producing countries.

Eliminating these subsidies will lift a drag on the economy, but the question is that it might backfire amid high inflation when people have lost so much of their purchasing power.

During a Monday session to discuss next year’s budget bill, the lawmakers approved some notes and clauses that will require banks and credit institutions to give two percent of their total proceeds from the electronic banking system transactions to strengthen the cyber police, also known by its Persian acronym FATA.

The unit was established in 2008 to help fight cyber crime but it plays a major role in censoring the internet by blocking thousands of websites and social media apps in a bid to control the flow of information. The unit is usually controlled by an IRGC official.

In cooperation with the Central Bank of Iran, the treasury will collect the money and give it to the Law Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic, which will spend it on different sections of the cyber police across the country.

Transaction fees in Iran are small but an estimate shows FATA can receive at least $10 million from the scheme approved by parliament.

The allocation of the additional budget to FATA police, which is the most important force in monitoring cyberspace has increased speculations about the possibility of approving a controversial bill to further restrict access to the Internet.

Iranians were outraged last week when a group of 18 hardliners in a parliament committee claimed that they had ratified a bill to further restrict internet and social media access.