Iranian Activists Express Concern Over Life Of 74-Year-Old Political Prisoner

According to reports by Iran’s state media, a leak in an ammonium tank caused a blast Monday evening in the city of Firouzabad in southwestern Fars province but the blaze was quickly extinguished. 

The chief of the provincial health department, Vahid Hosseini, claims out of 133 injured who were taken to local hospitals, mostly factory workers, 114 were later released after treatment, but witnesses said in social media that 30 to 70 people have been killed in the accident, some of them instantly. 

There are conflicting reports in social media about the cause of the blast, with some saying the tanker was full of nitrogen, not ammonium, hence the high number of casualties. 

Director of Fars Governorate Crisis Management Khalil Abdollahi said on Monday night that the accident is being investigated, noting that nobody died.

Authorities reopened a nearby major road that they had closed after the explosion due to the spread of toxic gas. 

The factory, which went online in August 2020 with over one thousand workers, is a manufacturer of sodium carbonate, a chemical used to build glass, crystal, detergent, cleaning, water purification and in other petrochemical industries. 

Iran occasionally reports fires or explosions at industrial sites that are mainly blamed on technical failures, the result of years of sanctions that have blocked access to new equipment. There have also been many incidents in military sites since mid-2020, with authorities usually blaming Israel.

Since his appointment last year, dozens of politicians, loyal lawmakers and media pundits had said that Hojatollah Abdolmaleki did not have the credentials or the experience to be minister of labor.

For critics of President Ebrahim Raisi, Abdolmaleki became a symbol of forming an inefficient government, with third-rate candidates who had factional ties and hardliner credentials.

In April, even his own ministry staff walked out in an unprecedented protest to demand his removal.

Many had expected his resignation or impeachment by parliament months ago, but finally the worsening crisis brought the agony to an end.

Since early May, there has hardly been a day without some kind of protest in Iran. The government’s move to cut import subsidies for food triggered the unrest, but what people have been shouting in the streets is that they do not want the clerical regime, that they see as corrupt and inefficient.

After food subsidies were stopped and prices for basic items such as bread soared, the situation became worse with the national currency losing value and adding fuel to the inflationary cycle. By June 12, the rial sank to a historic low of 333,000 to one US dollar, an almost 5,000-fold decline since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, when 70 rials could buy a greenback.

On the same day, retail merchants in Tehran and several other cities began shutting their doors and gathering in bazaars to protest soaring prices. A sense of economic disintegration began to solidify after one year of unrelenting bad news.

The Iranian economy began deteriorating in 2018 when former US president Donald Trump withdrew from the Obama-era nuclear agreement known as JCPOA and imposed tough sanctions, but there was always some hope that Tehran and Washington could patch things up.

The election of President Joe Biden strengthened that hope and since indirect talks began with the United States in April 2021, hope became an expectation. But after a year of intense talks in Vienna the process stopped in March, signaling no quick end to economic misery.

That is when the rial began sinking to its historic low and the government appeared incapable of turning things around without a deal with Washington to end sanctions.

Regime insiders in Iran might hope that Abdolmaleki’s replacement, Mohammad Hadi Zahedi Vafa, an Ontario University economics graduate, or the resignation of more ministers can help the economy. However, the mood of many people posting on social media from Iran is desperate.

The overall situation appears to be worse than a simple government reshuffle could address. There are simply too many challenges for officials to be able to make meaningful progress.

A female Twitter user from Iran said after the resignation, “The same way Abdolmaleki resigned, God willing [president] Raisi will realize before it is too late, that without the revival of JCPOA he cannot control inflation, defend the value of the currency…reality is different from slogans.”

Abdollah Otadi told ILNA news website on Monday that rents have risen "terribly" in the last few months, forcing many tenants to sell their car or other properties to afford accommodation even in the cheaper parts of the city. 

The rent increases are much higher than the 25 percent rate set by the government, he noted, adding that “we are witnessing the relocation of many tenants to the outskirts of Tehran.”

Surveys by the Central Bank of Iran published in January indicated that rents in the capital Tehran have increased by more than 50 percent in one year as annual inflation is hovering over 40 percent. 

Home prices rose in local currency because real estate is a major asset protecting savings in a country like Iran where the national currency has lost value almost tenfold since 2017. In countries without an internationally accepted currency, wealth can disappear with devaluation and people rush to protect their capital.

Iran’s rial is hitting new lows against the US dollar daily amid runaway inflation and economic chaos, with one US dollar surpassing 333,000 rials on Sunday.

The drop comes as the last rays of hope for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers are fading away, with multilateral talks in Vienna paused since March.

According to Iranian state-owned paper JameJam, they all had to be vaccinated once again with one of the vaccines approved by Riyadh. 

After two years of pared-down pilgrimage due to Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, this year Saudi authorities will permit one million Muslims from inside and outside the country to participate. About 40,000 Iranians are set to attend. 

Earlier in April, Iran’s national carrier, Iran Air, announced that Iraq does not allow entry to visitors who have received Iranian-made Covid-19 vaccines.

Iraq, with a population of over 40 million, vaccinated 18 percent of its population, short of a 40 percent target set last year by the World Health Organization for January 2022, but has reported about 25,000 deaths. Iran has vaccinated 70 percent and has reported about 141,000 deaths.

Iran has approved at least six homegrown vaccines for production, although some have not completed trials. Most of the 147 million doses administered in Iran are Sinopharm Chinese vaccines, recognized by the World Health Organization.

In January 2021, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei banned the purchase of American and British vaccines, and the state began pushing for homegrown variants. 

In September 2021, more controversy ensued when a former member of parliament alleged that Barakat, the most well-connected vaccine developer received one billion dollars from the state in advance and delivered only a fraction of the quantity promised.

Mehdi Pazouki, one of the Iranian economists who had warned President Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday that the underlying cause of the ongoing crisis is bad governance, and warned Raisi to introduce deep changes or wait for further chaos, said in an interview with Didban Iran website that his administration is the weakest government in Iran's history.

Pazouki criticized Raisi for forming a government by choosing his ministers and aides from among the members of a certain clan, such as appointing a politician [Ali Bagheri Kani] as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator who has always been against a nuclear agreement with the West. He also argued that Raisi has no economic program for the country although he had claimed during his election campaign to have a 7,000-page plan.

Like many other critics, Pazouki also maintained that Raisi's cabinet continues to blame the previous government for the country's problems to cover up its own inefficiency. Mentioning examples from the performance of Labor Minister Hojjat Abdolmaleki, Pazouki said that the minister's counter-productive performance in the area of wages and pensions has led to more unemployment and dissent.

Giving key jobs to non-experts, failing to prevent the effective devaluation of the national currency, being unable to do anything about rising food prices and wasting hefty budgets on “useless organizations” such as The Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution are among the other negative points of the Raisi administration, Pazouki added.

Meanwhile, former vice president Mostafa Hashemi Taba told reporters that the country's situation is getting worse on a daily basis, adding that it was evident from day one that Raisi was not able to stand by the promises he made during his election campaign. Hashemi Taba further said, that those promises were so extravagant that not only Raisi, but no other president could have accomplished them.

Meanwhile, interviews with fuel distribution officials indicated that there is a growing concern among consumers about an imminent rise in fuel prices. Some media in Iran have revealed that customers' gas rationing cards are being recalled and collected at some gas stations and this has given further rise to concerns about possible new rations and new prices. Although officials have tried to deny the rumors, Iranians generally believe based on previous experience that whatever officials deny today will come out to be true the next day.

Reformist political analyst Ahmad Naqibzadeh told Didban Iran that it appears officials are adamant to continue policies that have proven to be ineffective in the past. He added that they are not even willing to correct their wrong policies and call their critics the enemies of the state.

Criticism of Raisi's foreign policy is mainly about his government's failure to successfully carry out the nuclear negotiations in Vienna. Iranian lawmaker Zabihollah Azami said in an interview with Rouydad24 website on Sunday that the government should be held accountable for the opportunities it missed in the Vienna negotiations.

Iranian businesses and economists hoped that the negotiations would lead to the lifting of US sanctions and improving the battered economy, but critics now say the government's mistakes have led to the suspension of the talks since March.