Iranians Lost Trust In Government, Two Opposing Politicians Say

Nouri said that the revision of textbooks and educational content will be carried out for the next academic year in 2023 because the books were being printed when the order was issued.

About 200 titles of books from all grades of elementary to high school have been sent for revision, he said, adding that some of them will be revised by the professors at the Farhangian teacher training university and some by the country's educational research and planning organization. 

Earlier in the year, Ali Khamenei said that the content of some schoolbooks that is not practical and does not benefit the students should be removed. 

In the last few years, some changes and edits in students’ textbooks, including removal of an illustration of some girls from the cover of the third-grade math book and adding anti-American and pro-Russia materials, led to controversy among Iranians. 

A conscious ‘Islamization’ of primary, middle and high school books started soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The process has applied to literature, art and all illustrations in the teaching of history. Last year textbooks were revised to play down historical rivalry between Iran and Russia, particularly in the 18th and early 19th century, reflecting Tehran’s current desire for closer relations with Moscow.

President Ebrahim Raisi has also permanently cancelled the implementation of UNESCO 2030, a United Nations document calling for gender equality in education that Khamenei had suspended in 2017. Former President Hassan Rouhani’s administration had adopted the document as a UN member state and was planning its implementation when hardliners lobbied Khamenei to suspend it.

In response to a question about earlier remarks by the country’s foreign ministry spokesman, who had expressed Iran’s readiness for prisoner swaps as part of the agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, he did not rule out such a possibility. 

“We have a duty to follow up on the problems of our citizens anywhere in the world and support them, but relations between countries can be very effective in this field. The level of relationships and the quality of relationships are effective in this field,” he said.

He noted that such exchanges work much more easily with Islamic countries and neighboring countries, especially with countries with whom Tehran has agreements in this regard, but “these relations and contracts do not exist with a country like the United States, and things must be done diplomatically.”

Earlier in the month, foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Iran is ready for swift agreements for prisoner swaps with the US, regardless of the result of talks to restore the JCPOA.

A few days earlier, the spokesman for the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Relations Committee Mahmoud Abbaszadeh Meshkini said, "I don't know specifically whether there is going to be an exchange of prisoners between Iran and the United States, but in international relations this is customary and it is not unusual for some prisoners to be exchanged between the two countries.”

On the sidelines of a ceremony for a national project to export liquefied gas via sea on Tuesday, the head of National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC), Jalil Salari, said that the quota of 250 liters was "a very high number" considering that fact that most Iranians do not consume that much petrol per month. 

All Iranians who own a car have a 60-liter quota of gasoline at the heavily subsidized rate of about five US cents a liter, but were also allowed to buy 250 liters more at about 10 cents, which is again heavily subsidized, at about 37 cents a US gallon. 

According to Jalili the new quota system will be implemented throughout the country soon. 

Some people in social media have described the move as a prelude by the administration of Ebrahim Raisi to increase the price of gasoline, despite repeated announcements by the government that the price of gasoline would not increase in the current Iranian year, which started on March 21. Such a plan had been earlier piloted in Sistan and Baluchistan province, leading to a whopping rise of gasoline prices to about 150,000 rials – or about 50 cent a liter – in the black market. 

Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani, the secretary of Iran’s Headquarters For Enjoining Right And Forbidding Evil, tasked with promoting the clerical regime’s interpretation of Islamic morals, confirmed the move in an interview published on Tuesday, adding that the subway CCTV cameras are programed to use face recognition technology to take a photo of the unveiled women. 

He added that the photos will be matched against the database registered for the women’s national ID cards to identify them and then a ticket with a significant fine will be sent to them. 

Golpayegani had previously said that about half of the Iranian women currently do not observe the mandatory hijab rules. 

In recent months the Islamic Republic’s government and security agencies have intensified their efforts to pressure women into abiding by the hijab laws and several rounds of anti-hijab civil disobedience campaigns followed. The patrols by the “morality police” have increased on the streets and videos of violent arrests of women and girls as well as confrontations between people and hijab enforcers are surfacing on social media every day.

Authorities are hailing those who harass women for their insufficient hijab and security forces stepped up detention of women in the streets for their loose hijab.

While conservative camp thought the disclosure would discredit the ‘Reformist’ government, the details of the case have affected the reputation of many of its figureheads, including clerics.

In a belated report on the case, IRGC-linked Fars news agency tried to cover up the corruption case at Mobarakeh Steel Company (MSC), claiming that a major part of the figure involved is about the difference in the price of steel at different times. The report further claimed that Iran International and BBC Persian have been putting gasoline on the fire to disturb the Iranian public's mind.

Moderate news website Rouydad24 observed in a report that hardliners at the Iranian parliament initially launched the investigation and published the results to discredit the reformists.

Rouydad24 said in the report that "The hardliners in parliament who disclosed the corruption case never thought that anyone would read a 300-page report to find out about the damning details. They thought people would only listen to their rhetoric about the case."

But social media activists published a ten-page document including the names of tens of Iranian hardliners and individuals and organizations linked to them who had received hefty sums from the Steel Plant. These included many media outlets, such as news agencies, newspapers, websites and even the state television that operates under the supervision of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

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Reports also indicate that several social media influencers were also paid possibly to turn a blind eye to the illegal payments by the MSP. Saba Azarpeik, a whistle blower on social media later said that she was offered large sums of money to stop writing about the case.

When the disclosure backfired, it was revealed that many Friday prayer imams were paid by the steel plant. None was seen to refute the reports. Also, newspapers such as the IRGC-linked Javan and Khamenei-linked Kayhan did not try to deny having received money from the MSC. Those who issued denials in the reform camp included a newspaper publisher who said he had received hundreds of billions of rials (tens of thousands of dollars) for writing only three articles about the steel plant.

According to Rouydad24, even some of the lawmakers involved in the investigation were themselves implicated in the corruption case.

The Majles (parliament) that had initially ordered, conducted and published the results of the investigation tried to distance itself from the matter and sent the case to the Judiciary for further investigation.

Iran's Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said subsequently that a special court and a special prosecutor have been tasked to launch an investigation into the case. However, no further action seems to have been taken, at least in public, to address the concerns, other than President Ebrahim Raisi's order to fire the MSC managers who violated the law.

To explain the magnitude of the money involved in the case, 3.5 billion dollars, some Iranian social media users reminded that Elon Musk's investment on the Spex project this year was $2 billion.A study conducted by social media researcher Mohammad Rahbari said some 17,000 tweets in Persian were posted by Iranians on the MSC corruption case in less than one week, adding that half of "liked" posts were those that criticized the government and reiterated that Iran was plagued by systematic corruption.