Khamenei Slams Unemployment, Corruption, While Activists Arrested
Unemployment is the cause of all social ills, Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei told a group of handpicked workers Saturday, while at least nine activists were arrested.
Unemployment is the cause of all social ills, Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei told a group of handpicked workers Saturday, while at least nine activists were arrested.
Strikes have spread in Iran this week, with workers in more than 100 businesses and plants demanding better pay and work conditions, as Iran’s economy reels under US sanctions, government mismanagement and corruption.
Khamenei, who is the ultimate authority in deciding about an agreement with the United States over Iran’s nuclear program and end sanctions, emphasized the urgency of boosting employment and ending corruption.
However, under tough financial pressures, due to US oil export sanctions, Khamenei’s call for lowering unemployment remains more of a slogan. The same applies to corruption, when under his watch the Revolutionary Guard and religious foundations have monopolized the economy and overwhelming government control has led to the emergence of embezzlements and nepotism by officials.
“I have reached the conclusion that the cause of most [social] ills is unemployment. Addiction, corruption, crime, divorce, and the destruction of families are related to unemployment,” the 83-year-old autocrat said.
His enumeration of Iran’s deep social problems was also a rare admission by Khamenei, who usually praises the achievements of the Islamic Republic, ruled by him for 34 years of its 44-year existence.
While praising workers as the backbone of the country and insisting that they are loyal to the regime, his security forces Friday arrested at least nine labor and teachers activists.
Several teachers’ union activists were meeting at the home of their spokesman Mohammad Habibi when security agents stormed the residence and arrested them. They were taken to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, where most political prisoners are kept.
Habibi himself was arrested April 5, just two months after he was released from a previous detention.
He has been persecuted for years, with agents storming his home in 2017 and confiscating his electronic devices. In recent years, he has been twice terminated from his teaching position under the pretext of “unjustified leaves of absence,” while he was in prison.
Khamenei railed against corruption in his speech, saying that if an official does not have the courage to fight corruption, he also does not have will to stand up to “foreign bullies.”
In another rare admission, he said some workers’ protests were justifiable. “Protests against late payment of wages, protests against wrong privatization…these are helpful in informing the regime and the government,” about the prevailing condition in the country.
Khamenei not only faces labor unrest, but also the wrath of many Iranians who see him as ultimately responsible for rising poverty and more restrictions on individual freedoms. Protesters who occupied the streets in 2022 often shouted harsh slogans and even insults at Khamenei.
His hardliner loyalists who control all three branches of government since 2021 have proven inept in making a dent in the economic crisis and the rising political opposition to the regime. Khamenei must know by now that his regime’s legitimacy has been badly damaged.
In an attempt to show that he is on the side of ordinary people, Khamenei said not paying wages on time “is oppression of workers.” Similarly denying them health insurance and job security are also acts of oppression.
He praised the workers for their loyalty to the regime, but reiterating his usual argument about a foreign conspiracy, he said that “foreign ill-wishers” tried to pit the workers against the regime, “but they stood against that, and this is very important.”
The US confiscated Iranian oil on a tanker at sea in recent days in a sanctions enforcement operation, three sources told Reuters, and days later Iran seized another oil-laden tanker in retaliation, according to a maritime security firm.
As oil markets remain jittery, the cargo seizure is the latest escalation between Washington and Tehran after years of sanctions pressure by the US over Iran's nuclear program. Iran does not recognize the sanctions, and its oil exports have risen since 2021, after falling sharply during the Trump administration.
Tehran says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes while Washington and its allies in Europe and the region suspect Iran wants to develop a nuclear bomb.
Washington has not said anything about the tanker seizure.
Maritime security company Ambrey said the US confiscation took place at least five days before Iran's action on Thursday. "Ambrey has assessed the seizure by the Iranian Navy to be in response to the US action," it said in an advisory to clients.
"Both tankers were Suezmax-sized. Iran has previously responded tit-for-tat following seizures of Iranian oil cargo." However, the tanker Iran seized belons to a Chinese company.
The sources familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue, said Washington took control of the oil cargo aboard the Marshall Islands tanker Suez Rajan after securing an earlier court order. The tanker's last reported position was near southern Africa on April 22, ship tracking data showed.
The vessel's Greece-based manager, Empire Navigation, and the US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Reuters.
The US Navy said Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday, the latest seizure or attack by Tehran on commercial vessels in sensitive Persian Gulf region .
Iranian state TV said on Friday the tanker ignored radio calls for eight hours following a collision with an Iranian boat, which left several crewmen injured and three missing. "Before using force, we tried to call the vessel ...to stop but they did not cooperate," Iranian deputy navy commander Rear Admiral Mostafa Tajodini told the broadcaster.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was aware of the Gulf of Oman seizure and reaffirmed support for international maritime law, a UN spokesperson said on Friday.
Last year the US tried to confiscate a cargo of Iranian oil near Greece, which prompted Tehran to seize two Greek tankers in the Gulf. Greece’s supreme court ordered the cargo returned to Iran. The two Greek tankers were later released.
As Iran’s oil illicit oil exports began to rise after President Joe Biden’s election in 2020, many US lawmakers began criticizing the administration for lax enforcement of sanctions. Some have accused the Biden team of having been soft on Iran with hope that negotiations to revive the JCPOA nuclear agreement would succeed.
The multilateral talks reached a deadlock last September and the US began imposing more sanctions on individuals and companies involved with Iran’s nuclear and military programs.
A bipartisan group of 12 senators on Thursday urged President Joe Biden to remove Treasury Department policy hurdles that have prevented the Department of Homeland Security from seizing Iranian oil shipments for more than a year.
In 2020, Washington confiscated four cargoes of Iranian fuel aboard foreign ships that were bound for Venezuela and transferred them with the help of undisclosed foreign partners onto two other ships which then sailed to the US.
With reporting by Reuters
Raisi, who arrived in the province on Thursday,tried to use his trip to Khuzestan as a publicity stunt but popular anger at the government's poor economic performance and repression led to a backlash.
According to media channels affiliated with the Haft-Tappeh complex, Raisi was snubbed by the workers who are among thousands who are on strikes across the country.
Strikes by Iranian energy, petrochemicals and steel workers as well as other sectors are gaining momentum with new plants joining the nationwide industrial action this week.
Strikes are nothing new for the Haft-Tappeh workers as they have staged numerous rounds of action after the privatization of the complex in 2015. Workers have been protesting for deteriorating working conditions and late payments of wages since 2017, leading to periodic weeks-long strikes in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 over unfulfilled promises by officials.
Workers at the once thriving sugar mill reportedly boycotted Raisi's visit. Turnout for his reception ceremony was so low that authorities had to transfer security forces and members of Basij – a paramilitary volunteer force working under the Revolutionary Guards – from the nearby cities such as Shush to create a crowd for the president, journalist Roozbeh Bolhari cited a channel of Haft-Tappeh workers.
The efforts turned out to be ultimately in vain as the city’s officials could not gather enough people to be able to take wide angle shots from the ceremony and were forced to use closeup images at the end.
The company has at least 5,700 formal and contract staff but in the photos and videos of Raisi’s speech among the workers there are hardly more than 50 people apart from the security forces and the president’s entourage, which included more than 10 ministers of his cabinet as well as several deputies. According to the worker' social media channel, about 20 young people who were not employed in the company were lured into the crowd with promises of employment.
State media tried to portray the visit to Khuzestan as Raisi’s response to letters by the workers of the company who had called for better work conditions and salaries at par with the rising prices.
The aim of the visit was obviously propaganda as Raisi toured industrial centers in the province, telling people that he is there to see whether or not his orders given during the previous visits have been implemented. It was the seventh time that Raisi visited the province since he took office in 2021, and he said during his speeches in the provincial capital Ahvaz that “If necessary, I will travel to the province 70 times to solve its problems.”
Addressing the people of Andimeshk, he said, “Today, you people should know that despite all the sanctions and threats by the enemy, with your help, the movement towards progress and independence of the country, especially economic independence, continues.”
However, a large number of the province’s citizens criticized the visit on social media, trending a hashtag that is roughly translated as the province is thirsty for action, implying that they are fed up with propagandistic gestures.
The grievances of the people include lack of drinking water in the province, suffocating air pollution, projects that have been inaugurated but never fully implemented, and general poverty in a province that produces almost all of Iran's oil.
A large number of users sarcastically tweeted that “Mr. President, welcome to the most polluted city of the world!”
In reaction to Raisi’s visit, Zaynab Molaei-Rad, the mother of ten-year-old Kian Pirfalak, who was shot dead by plainclothesmen during protests on November 16, 2022, in one of the cities of the province, slammed the president. "This is the land of the brave. It takes a big heart to step here. Lest a vulture enter here on false pretext and promise, we will clip its wings," she said on Instagram.
The family car carrying Kian, his parents, and three-year-old brother Radin was targeted by plainclothesmen in Izeh, a town of around 100,000 in the east of the oil-rich province. Kian’s father was also seriously wounded in the shooting and is still in hospital. Authorities claim the family car was attacked by “terrorists”.
In a statement Friday, the ministry denied any indication that poisonous substances had caused the illness of students and said samples taken from the scene of the incidents examined by “the most reliable laboratories” in the country had not yielded any suspicious materials.
The report followed months of demands by people on social media and even some newspapers for the government to tell the public what was happening to schoolgirls.
The ministry attributed the hundreds of hospitalizations to stink bombs (stinkpots) often used for creating unpleasant smells by pranksters, pepper sprays, tear gas and similar substances used by students to disrupt classes. It even mentioned spurious causes, such as gas fuel leak from vehicles and urban gas, smoke from trash burning outside schools, and mass psychogenic illness resulting from stress.
However, some of the students had to be hospitalized for up to a week due to the severeness of their symptoms but most others were released within hours. In some cases, symptoms have lasted for weeks.
It also claimed that nearly all the students hospitalized following the incidents had recovered by simple treatments such as oxygen, saline and dextrose intravenous injections, and sedatives to treat anxiety.
A considerable number of students had faked illness after other students in the same class or school said they were ill, and the most reported cases of illness were in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
The poisonings started in the religious city of Qom in central Iran November 30, but the intelligence ministry claimed that the first incident had taken place in Noor, Mazandaran Province, much earlier on November 6, and spread to other provinces in late February.
Many Iranians believe that the attacks which mainly target girls’ schools were perpetrated by the regime itself or a network of extremists who wanted to scare girls and keep them away from schools and called it “state terrorism”, but the ministry denied the existence of any such network.
The ministry tried to blame social media for the incidents, saying that suspicious networks spread rumors.
Naturally, once the attacks began, thousands of people began discussing it on social media.
However, after months of incidents at schools, police have not arrested anyone, although they have made vague claims of detaining 100 suspects.
The statement accused “foreign enemies” and media outside Iran, particularly those broadcasting in Persian, of using school poisoning incidents to ignite unrest because the Mahsa protests that started in mid-September had begun to subside.
In some cases, the statement claimed, the incidents were perpetrated with “anti-security goals against the people” by those who wanted to make footage of these incidents and send them to “hostile Persian-language media” outside Iran. “Perpetrators of such cases were arrested in most cases and handed over to judicial authorities,” the ministry said.
Again, the government has produced no proof of any such arrests, as they blame any negative incident or news to foreign enemies.
These “individuals with hostile motivations”, the ministry’s statement said, were under investigation to reveal their possible connection with terrorist organizations such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK).
In March, the local channel of the state television in Fars province aired the so-called ‘confessions’ of a man and his daughter arrested and accused of attacking schools with N2 gas canisters.
The police chief alleged that the accused had also made recordings of the school attacks and sent it to “hostile media including Iran International TV”. He claimed that the accused girls confessed they wanted to create an atmosphere of insecurity in schools and defame the Islamic Republic.