£400m Funds Released By Britain Received, Being Used: Iran Central Bank

Dehbashi said in a tweet on Wednesday that the complaint by the institute for the works of Ruhollah Khomeini as well as his grandson Hassan for publishing lies and insulting Ahmad Khomeini was rejected.

In February, he tweeted the picture of Ruhollah Khomeini disembarking from a plane in Tehran in February 1979, after a 15-year exile, explaining what happened to those who accompanied him on the flight.

In the post, Dehbashi had said that the reason for Ahmad Khomeini's death was "drug abuse", which led to a barrage of criticism against him.

He later deleted the post but said in reaction to critics that he heard the allegation from Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was the most influential man in the Islamic Republic, second only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Khomeini's son, Ahmad, who also accompanied his father in the return journey and was his confidant until the ayatollah's death, died in a mysterious incident in 1995 that was reported as a heart attack.

Another journalist, Emadeddin Baghi, quoted regime insiders as having said that former deputy intelligence minister Saeed Emami had confessed to Ahmad Khomeini’s killing.

Emami was also accused of having independently organized the "chain murders" -- a series of 1988–98 murders and disappearances of Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic.

Homayoon Sameh Yeh Najafabadi, who is a member of the parliament's health committee, told ILNA on Wednesday that “today medicine has become very scarce in the country, not special medicines but very ordinary medicines. Therefore, people have to go to several pharmacies for one prescription”.

Criticizing those who claimed to be able to control the prices of medicines, he added that the Health Ministry should have devised a detailed plan for controlling the prices before submitting the budget bill to parliament.

Many officials from the Health Ministry appeared before the parliament and said there would be no problem with the high cost of medicines because the insurance companies would cover the higher in prices, and that there won’t be any pressure on patients once subsidy for imports of essential goods are eliminated, Najafabadi said.

The lawmaker said in addition to medicines, the prices of wheat, flour and bread have also increased, expressing hope that the government has a plan in this regard.

In March, the parliament decided to scrap an annual $9-14 billion subsidy for essential food and medicines, despite warnings of more inflation and hardship.

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.

During a meeting with Iranian counterpart Mohammad-Reza Gharaei Ashtiani, Wei attributed Wednesday much of the world’s insecurity and wars to US “hegemonic” actions, according to the account given by the official news agency IRNA.

China is one of the world powers in year-long talks trying to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the US left in 2018. Beijing has been gradually increasing its commercial and even military presence in the Middle East.

“The common security challenges and threats can be combatted through interaction and cooperation among the independent countries that are opposed to unilateralism in the world,” Wei noted. He said that closer ties between Iranian and Chinese armed forces, who conducted their first trilateral naval exercises with Russia in 2019, would help thwart such challenges and in fighting ‘terrorism.’

Ashtiani described US policies as the root cause of growing crises and said multilateralism was needed as a counter. He highlighted Iran’s policy of developing ties with neighboring and Asian countries.

The Chinese defense minister also met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, and with Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri.

"We pursue strategic relations in accordance with mutual political trust regardless of international developments," Raisi said, noting that “successful implementation” of Iran’s 25-year strategic agreement with China, signed March 2021, was a priority.

Speaking to Shargh newspaper, Spokesman of the Customs Organization Ruhollah Latifi said Iran's daily gasoline exports averaged 5.3 million liters in the previous Iranian calendar year. Annual revenues from selling gasoline amounted to $732.6 million, around 38 cents per liter, he said, referring to the Iranian calendar year which ended on March 20.

In 2021, according to OPEC figures, crude oil sold for around $78 per barrel which puts the price of one liter of crude at around 49 cents, higher than the price of gasoline, Shargh's Maryam Shokrani wrote.

Latifi told Shargh that nearly half of all gasoline exports -- at around 39 cents and a total of $244.6 million -- were made in the last month of the year (February 20 to March 20). These figures show that despite the spike in international prices of crude oil and gasoline in March, Iran's gasoline sold at the same rate as before.

Mostafa Nakhaei, spokesman of the parliament's energy committee also told Shargh that the parliament had received reports that in the one-year period from March 21, 2020, gasoline had sometimes been exported at prices as low as 5,000 rials, one-third of its subsidized domestic price – an incredible two US cents per liter or around 10 cents a gallon. ($1=280,000 rials)

Why so cheap?

Bulk gasoline prices in the Persian Gulf region were above 80 cents a liter in this period.

Unlike crude oil, gasoline exports are not sanctioned by the United States, and it is not clear why Iran sold the refined product so much cheaper than international prices.

One explanation can be the desperate need for cash dollars as international banking transfers are out of question amid American banking sanctions. It could also be due to shadowy middlemen and networks handling most of Iran’s fuel exports who take substantial cuts and reduce government revenues. Some of these middlemen are people well connected with top officials, as previous scandals from early 2010s revealed.

As the news emerged on Wednesday some Iranians began commenting on social media that in 2019 the government suppressed protests to a hike in fuel prices by killing hundreds of people while it is ready to export gasoline at two cents a liter.

Nakhaei said that some lawmakers have demanded a probe into the export of gasoline at such low prices and the loss the oil and refinery industries have incurred because of that. "Apparently the government only endeavored to raise the gasoline export figures at any cost," he said.

More oil exports with no visible impact

Officials of the government of President Ebrahim Raisi have repeatedly boasted that they have succeeded in raising oil exports by as much as 40 percent despite sanctions imposed by the US in 2018 when Donald Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. They also claim that they are now even fully repatriating the revenues from oil sales.

Many Iranians ask why they can see no change in economic indices despite increased oil exports and repatriation of revenues as the government claims, especially with very high fuel prices since the invasion of Ukraine.

An informed source in oil ministry on Tuesday told the government mouthpiece, Iran newspaper, that the reason for not being able to experience any prompt effect of the money coming into government coffers from oil sales was that it takes 90 days to receive the payments from buyers.

But the government claim about higher oil exports goes back to all of 2021, not just the last three months.

Mohammed al-Halbousi, who arrived in Tehran at the head of a parliamentary delegation Wednesday, said the country’s Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi had attended the latest round of talks between Tehran and Riyadh, which was held in the in Baghdad last week. Al-Halbousi made the remarks in a joint press conference after meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf.

“We see negotiation and understanding as the solution to problems between neighbors,” al-Halbousi said. “Many problems require dialogue and consultation”. Diplomatic relations between Sunni Muslim-ruled Saudi Arabia and predominantly Shiite Iran were broken off in 2016, with the two supporting opposing sides in conflicts in both Syria and Yemen.

During his one-day visit, al-Halbousi was also scheduled to meet with President Ebrahim Raisi, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani, and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

Halbousi's visit to Iran − his second since 2018 when he assumed office − took place as factional discussions continue over forming a new Iraqi government several months after parliamentary elections. Halbousi’s Sunni alliance is part of a parliamentary bloc in which it is allied with Muqtada Sadr’s Shiite party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, but the process of forming a government is hindered by the complexities of sectarian arrangements and opposition from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Shia parties close to Tehran.