Iran International
Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi has tried to defend his dismal economic performance by blaming his predecessor, but that tactic seems to have run its course.
Former President Hassan Rouhani and his aides are increasingly challenging Raisi’s claims that he inherited an empty treasury with no foreign currency reserves and a mountain of unpaid bills.
In a speech to former government officials and aides in his office in Tehran July 18, Rouhani claimed that there were billions of US dollars in cash in the Central Bank of Iran when his is administration handed over the treasury to the new administration in August last year.
It should be noted that Iran had already increased its oil exports from the end of 2020, after the incoming Biden administration signaled its intention to return to the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA, which would mean lifting sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump in 2018. Therefore, the Rouhani administration had about 8 months of higher oil sales when it handed over the treasury.
Economy minister Ehsan Khandouzi finally admitted to reporters on July 20 that the country had a “good cash reserve” of foreign currency when the current administration took over but also claimed that the cash reserves were earmarked for “paying for services” and could not be used for importing goods and “solving the country’s’ trade problems”.
The economy minister’s admission contradicted claims by various government officials during the past year that the Rouhani administration had handed over an empty treasury.
Two months before handing over the government, former vice president Es’haq Jahangiri, had told reporters that the incoming administration would be in possession of the “most unprecedented foreign currency and gold reserves”.
Officials of the Raisi administration claim that his government has not resorted to printing money and has even succeed in reducing the monetary base by 0.5 percent in the three-month period ending June 21 in comparison with the same period the previous year.
Monetary base (MO) is the total amount of a currency that is either in general circulation in the hands of the public or in the form of commercial bank deposits held in the central bank's reserves.
In a tweet Thursday, the former governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), Abdolnaser Hemmati, responded that the Raisi administration’s repeated assertions of not having borrowed money from the CBI to offset its budget deficit were not true as the administration had withdrawn from the accounts of government-owned companies to make payments.
“Tweaking statistics doesn't solve problems and [their effects] come to light within a few months. The outcome of the government’s financial and monetary policies should reveal itself in people’s lives,” he wrote.
In the same speech Rouhani claimed that his administration could have removed US sanctions in 2021 had the hardline parliament not passed the ‘Strategic Action to Eliminate Sanctions and Defend Iranian Nation's Interests’ bill on December 1, 2020, which prevented his government from concluding an agreement with world powers to restore the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The Raisi administration has so far failed to restore the deal and lift the US sanctions which considerably affect the country’s crude oil exports and squeeze the government for foreign currency. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said the Biden administration would keep using its authorities to target Iran's exports of energy products.
As a result, some come up with far-fetched conspiracy theories, as one ultraconservative politician said that inflation (at 55 percent) is a plot being directed from outside the country.
Hassan Beyadi, the secretary general of the ultraconservative political group Abadgaran Javan [Young Developers], told Etemad Online news website on July 22, that he has no doubt about "some Iranian gangs" cooperating with foreign-based circles that direct price increases in Iran.
The pro-government politician, however, did not offer any explanation about how he thinks prices could be manipulated from abroad.
The comment by Bayadi was in sharp contrast with a report on the government owned news agency ISNA that explained price rises in Iran are coordinated with President Ebrahim Raisi and endorsed by him before they are announced.
In a report about the government's pricing policy, ISNA, the Iranian Students News Agency quoted the chairman of the Organization Protecting the Rights of Consumers and Producers, Hossein Farhid Zadeh as saying that price increases are first confirmed by special offices at the Ministries of Industry and Agriculture as well as the government's Economic Commission and finally endorsed by President Ebrahim Raisi.
Meanwhile, in an interview with the conservative Nameh News website, Beyadi said that based on feedbacks people are not happy with the performance of the "revolutionary" government and the parliament.
Explaining Iranian conservatives' assessment of the two bodies' performance, Beyadi added that the executive and legislature lack coordination and fail to take interests of people into account. He argued that the divide between the people and the Iranian establishment is widening in a dangerous and warned that popular dissatisfaction is a threat to the country's security.
Beyadi whose political organization played a key part in bringing former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power in 2005 and 2009, charged that solving people's problems is not the priority of any government ministries.
Beyadi said that not only the people no longer believe what the officials say, but they believe the opposite of official statements. He added that prices are rising in Iran because no government organization is controlling them.
Beyadi’s remarks are an example of unfounded statements Iranian politicians often make. Almost every economist argues Iran’s economy is too much controlled by the government and over-regulated.
Another conservative commentator, Mohammad Mohajeri told Etemad Online that even conservative politicians find it difficult to defend the government. He added that they so confused by the government's weakness they can neither defend, nor support it, or even keep silent.
Mohajeri explained: "Conservatives cannot defend the government because they know that its performance is not defendable, and the public will not accept such a defense. At the same time, they cannot criticize it because they are part of it and share the responsibility for the current situation. The third solution for them is to keep silent."
However, the public is not likely to accept silence as a response. Mohajeri noted, "As we get closer to the [2024 parliamentary] elections, the conservatives in the parliament will intensify their criticism of the government to garner the voters' support." He added: "The elections in 2020 and 2021 were extremelylow-turnout. If the government does not change its behavior, the next election in 2024 will be even more lackluster."
A video from a CCTV camera was released on media showing a car, which apparently was following Majid Abdolbaghi’s vehicle as it went into the parking lot, stopped in front of a building, as one man started shooting with a handgun from the front seat and another one got out of the car and started shooting from behind the car. According to reports Abdolbaghi succumbed to injuries after he was taken to hospital.
The Metropol twin towers collapsed on May 23 burying more than 80 people under the rubble, with about 42 bodies recovered. Soon after the collapse it became apparent that the owner and builder, Hossein Abdolbaghi, was a powerful and politically well-connected businessman who had disregarded regulations and building codes, backed by officials, who might have had their own financial interests.
Following the incident, Iranian media initially reported that Abdolbaghi, who was reportedly connected to Iran’s top security official Ali Shamkhani, had been arrested, but the government later announced that he had died in the collapse. The public did not believe the claim and many said that he escaped and corrupt officials, who had allowed him to violate building regulations, wanted him to disappear.
In June, reports came out that a physician who refused to cooperate in the alleged coverup had died mysteriously.
Earlier in the week, Iran’s prosecutor general issued an indictment against 20 people accused in the case of the Metropol incident.
Bokharai also warned in an interview with the moderate Rouydad24 news website that excessive restrictions on society is likely to lead to revolts. He further warned that the government-fabricated bipolarity might lead to conflicts between ethnic groups.
The sociologist said the government's strict control over the media leaves no room for critics of hardliners dominating the government.
During recent weeks the government has unleashed its so-called chastity squads to crackdown on women who do not wish to observe compulsory hijab. Patrols and roadblocks by the morality police and vigilante hardliners have led to a series of confrontations in the streets and on public transport with women who are seen as not fully covering their heads and bodies.
In several social media videos men and women are seen confronting each other and pushing one other out of trains and buses as government’s forced hijab enforcers try to intimidate women for their “lose headscarves”.
While Iranian reformists and some well-known regime apologists call these conflicts “social bipolarity” between two groups of people, many Iranians on social media point out that this is in fact a conflict between the government and those who oppose it. They accuse the apologists of portraying a political problem that is occurring because of the despotic and totalitarian nature of the Islamic regime as a divide between two segments of the Iranian society.
Although the conflict is wider than the issue of hijab, most recent cases, including the one in a video posted by moderate cleric Rahmatollah Bigdeli on Twitter, involved intimidation by government hardliner supporters linked to the IRGC and other parts of the core of the fundamentalist regime. At least in one case a young woman who argued against compulsory hijab with an enforcer was arrested and the woman who confronted her and was pushed out of a bus, was praised by several religious officials and the state television as a hero.
Ahmad Abdollahi a religious official in Esfahan charged that women who are against the idea of compulsory hijab are the same women who keep dogs as pets and get rabies from their dogs!
Reformist activist Majid Tavakoli says, "Bipolar divisions are created by the government to give the sense of power and supremacy to its supporters who fight for the regime's survival." Another Twitter user argued that "A bipolar conflict takes place between two equal forces. But when one side has all the power and the other side is absolutely powerless, what the latter does is resistance."
Bokharaei said that such bipolarity might also occur in economic and cultural spheres as the government highlights and boosts divisions between insiders and the rest of the population. Pointing out that clusters of people are being formed at both ends of this bipolarity, and the government is constantly supporting one of the poles against the other, the sociologist warned that the escalation of these divisions might pose a danger for the clerical regime far more serious and detrimental that it could ever imagine.
Bipolar situations give way to disillusionment and eventually push society toward a quick implosion, he warned.