Shadow of A Deal With West Divides Iran's Conservatives

In the video, Mehrjui says that the Ministry of Culture did not respect the screening license it had issued for the movie and promises to stage a sit in with his assistants outside the ministry building in Tehran.

Films, like books and musical production go through an arduous process of censorship reviews by government officials. Without their permit, no film can be screened or music released legally.

Ministry officials said that the screening license issued it in 2019 had expired. But the director argued that that his film is not a perishable commodity and does not have an expiration date. Wednesday evening, the culture ministry agreed to renew the film’s screening license but not for the upcoming Iranian New Year, Nowruz, a time that films can make money.

Mehrjui fears that his latest movie La Minor, would be banned forever, as another one of his films Santuri was banned the night before its screening was supposed to start in 2007. Both of these films are about music and musicians, an issue the Islamic Republic has never felt comfortable about.

After Santuri was banned, the movie's producer has a heart attack and died, some say because the ban meant a huge financial loss for him and Mehrjui. Many social media users now warn that anything could happen to Mehrjui, who is now 81 and as the video shows can hardly tolerate the stress caused by the indefinite delay in the screening of his film.

Mehrjui's first motion picture, The Cow (1969) saved the Iranian film industry immediately after the 1979 Islamic revolution as hardliners who had set fire to movie houses during the revolution were against cinema. However, the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeyni said films like The Cow were good to go on screen. His statement saved Iranian cinema.

Before the revolution, another one of Mehrjui's films, The Circle (1975), that had revealed corruption in blood supply business in Iranian hospitals, created a political controversy that delayed the screening of the movie for two years, but prompted the government to launch the national blood transfusion organization to ensure that hospitals receive clean blood donated by citizens.

After the revolution, Mehrjui who had gone to live in Exile in France, returned in 1986 and made The Lodgers, which also became controversial as many viewers and critics believed the film depicted the story of Iran's transition after the revolution.This was the story of a house on the verge of collapse with many tenants from various walks of life. At the end of the movie as the man living on the top floor put too much burden on the roof by making a roof garden, the building collapsed as soon as a pigeon sat on the water tank on the roof.

In the 1990s Mherjui became a national celebrity by making his trilogy about the problems of Iranian women: Sara (1992), Leila (1996) and The Lady (1999). The Lady depicted the story of a woman let down by her husband. While her husband is away, poor families in the neighborhood occupy her house while she is still living there. The film was frowned at by the government as another attempt to portray the revolution in a bad light, and was banned after a few days in cinemas.

Regardless of the popularity of his films, the government and its censorship apparatus never left Mehrjui alone. The latest attempt by the government to indefinitely delay the screening of La Minor, is seen by many viewers and film industry activist as another blow against an artist that has done nothing other than doing his job of showing the Iranian society to itself.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the chairman of the Assembly of Experts, who is in the list of Iranian politicians sanctioned by the US, has spoken about the approaching Iranian New Year on March 20 and warned that “It would be a miracle if we can fill the people’s bellies.”

Jannati was echoing President Ebrahim Raisi’s call two days ago when he said the government should lift everyone from poverty in the two weeks remaining to the New Year.

The comment led to a lot of ridicule on social media by Iranians who said the Islamic Republic has plunged millions into poverty over the years and now the president wants to eliminate poverty in two weeks.

Jannati and other senior clerics appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to constitutional bodies that control decisions and elections are seen as responsible for electoral manipulations that have narrowed popular choice even further in the past two years.

The Guardian Council in charge of vetting candidates for elections, eliminated all serious challengers to Ebrahim Raisi last June, making it all but certain that Khamenei’s choice for the post could breeze through, albeit in an election with the lowest turnout.

As Jannati called for bread for the people on the eve of the New Year, the parliament decided to hand out 1.3 million barrels of oil to government entities and individuals to export as they see fit, without a clear mechanism of accountability.

Afteb News, a Tehran website somewhat critical of the government published the headline, “Raisi’s Help to Economic Mafia” on Tuesday. It said the decision to allow various ministries and departments to enter the oil business creates the danger of massive corruption, enriching the “economic mafia” of regime insiders.

Iran’s oil and gas reserves belong to the state and the Iranian National Oil Company has always been the sole proprietor managing production and exports, even before the 1979 revolution. In the past three decades some of its operations have been ceded or leased to ‘private operators’ that are mainly quasi-state, semi-private entities owned and run by regime insiders, notably by the Revolutionary Guard.

Overall annual inflation has been hovering around 40 percent and food prices have risen much faster. Just over the weekend, the parliament eliminated a $9 billion subsidy for food imports, which will drive prices even higher local media and economists warn.

Amid these hard circumstances, the public hopes that a nuclear agreement will be reached with the United States, which can lift sanctions and at least marginally improve their livelihoods. Negotiations to restore a 2015 nuclear agreement have been going on for almost a year, so far without a result, except diplomats heralding progress on daily basis.

Raisi who assumed office last August made generous promises to the people to resolve the economic crisis with or without US sanctions. Seven months later there is little improvement, except more oil exports to China without any visible financial improvement in the government’s huge budget deficit or higher salaries for tens of millions of citizens, whose purchasing power has been wiped out by inflation.

Pundits have been warning of a social explosion in the coming months if there is no tangible improvement. So far, people from different professions including teachers have been holding protests with an increasing antigovernment mood.

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 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.