Iran Once Again Denies Supplying Killer Drones To Russia

At least five Iranian patrol officers died on Saturday in a clash with what the regime calls “terrorists” on the Pakistani border.

In his remarks at the funeral in Zahedan, Deputy Police Chief Qassem Rezaei warned the culprits that they would face a decisive and firm response.

However, Rezaei stressed that the longstanding relations between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan should not be strained by the attack.

Iranian media reported that the border guards spotted a group of armed men near the border in Saravan, in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan.

The five officers were killed in the ensuing confrontation with the “terrorist group” on Saturday night.

Two other guards were left seriously injured and are in a critical condition.

In addition, the Iranian border police commander urged neighboring countries not to allow destabilizing activities on their soil.

Brigadier General Ahmad Ali Goudarzi said, "Our patience has limits."

There is no information about the affiliation of the armed group, but several Baluch groups from the area are fighting an insurgency against the Islamic Republic.

The most prominent is Jaish al-Adl, which has often targeted Iran's military, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In recent months, the situation in Sistan-Baluchistan has dramatically worsened. The area’s cities have become very tense, especially on Fridays, when residents come out to protest against the regime.

There have been reports of numerous attacks on military and government forces in the province in the months since the death in custody of Mahsa Amini last year sparked nationwide protests.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced the decision, adding that more members of the Revolutionary Guard will be sanctioned.

In response to Iran's human rights violations, Baerbock told journalists, "We won't accept this."

On Friday, the European Union condemned Iran's execution of three men linked to protests sparked by Mahsa Amini's death last year.

“The EU urges the Iranian authorities to refrain from applying the death penalty and carrying out future executions,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s office said in a statement.

According to the EU statement, Iranian officials must respect the "due process rights" of detained individuals and prevent them from being mistreated.

Additionally, it called on Iran to respect "the freedom of expression and peaceful assembly rights," which are enshrined in international law.

The Islamic Republic executed Majid Kazemi, Saeed Yaghoubi and Saleh Mirhashemi on Friday morning over trumped up charges after extracting forced confessions, in a case described as a travesty of justice. Human rights campaigners say they were tortured into confessions, and there was no reliable evidence against them.

Friday's executions brought to at least seven the number of protesters hanged since the beginning of the nationwide protests last September, which turned into one of the boldest challenges to the clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution.

Iranian authorities brutally suppressed protests that erupted in Tehran after the death in custody of Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd arrested in Tehran for allegedly violating the country's strict dress code.

Rahim Mombeini, the deputy head of Iran’s Planning and Budget Organization, whose boss was recently sacked by President Ebrahim Raisi, said Saturday that Iran’s budget deficit for the previous Iranian year –which ended on March 20 – was about 8,000 trillion rials (about $16 billion in today’s exchange rates). 

The figure is twice as much as the budget deficit of previous years, despite claims by Raisi administration officials who kept reassuring the nation that the budget did not have a deficit. 

According to Mombeini, the amount of the Iranian government debts has increased about 900-fold over the past decade to 30 quadrillion rials, or $60 billion. This would be as much as 850 million barrels, or two years’ worth of oil exports at normal market prices.

 This amount of debt, which is equivalent to 31% of the GDP, includes government debts to banks, the Central Bank of Iran, pension and social security funds, public and private sector contractors, and bonds that have been issued in previous years. 

This colossal debt prompts the government to force the Central Bank to print money, leading to further inflation, which in turn forces the government to borrow more money, leading to a vicious circle.  

British-Iranian economist Mohammad Hashem Pesaran, a former professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge, has recently warned that the current unstoppable decline in the value of the national currency and haphazard policies of the government is very likely to trigger mass hyperinflation in Iran. 

The former head of the Planning and Budget Organization Masoud Mirkazemi, who was replaced in March, had reacted to reports about a deficit of 4,000 trillion rials, claiming that that those who say there is such a deficit are "wrong" and that "we do not have a deficit at all". Mirkazemi claimed that 93 percent of the budget was fulfilled in the previous Iranian year that ended on March 20. 

Iran’s currency rial has halved in value since early September and is now trading at more than 500,000 to the US dollar. This immediately translates into higher consumer prices, which have seen double digit annual increases since 2018 when the United States withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear deal and imposed sanctions. 

Last week, a news website in Iran quoted a central bank source as saying that inflation in the first Iranian month of the year (March 21-April 20) rose by 68.7 compared to the same period last year. 

If true, this would represent a nearly 20-percent jump compared to the inflation rate last reported by the government in early 2023. The Central Bank of Iran and the Statistical Center of Iran have not released figures on point-to-point inflation for the past two months, comparing prices to the same months in the past year. 

The period in question coincides with persisting low exchange rates for the rial. One year ago, the rial was trading at around 300,000 to the dollar, while in early May it dropped to as low as 550,000. 

Even though Iran has one of the world’s largest, and most untapped, sources of oil and gas, Iran would need oil priced at $351.7 a barrel to balance its budget next year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in its latest report released late last month. The current price of Brent Crude, which is way higher than the OPEC basket, is about $70 per barrel. Add to this the handsome discount the regime has to give to buyers who risk US and international penalties to trade with heavily-sanctioned Iran. 

Another Iranian website compared the Islamic Republic’s economic situation to that of the Roman empire just before its collapse. The alarming comparison with the Roman Empire is not too far-fetched, as Iran faces a more immediate danger of rebellion by ever-impoverished masses. 

Although large-scale anti-regime protests in the fall of 2022 were driven by social and political oppression, but the current economic crisis was also making hopeless young people restive. Also, labor unrest began to rise in 2023, as workers’ real incomes declined. 

Fars province's Chief Justice, Kazem Mousavi, confirmed the public executions would take place "soon" in a show of force by the regime which has stepped up the rate of its public executions in recent months.

Public executions are becoming a tool of deterrence as the regime loses control under the continuing revolutionary tide.

After being convicted for aiding in "corruption on earth, armed rebellion, and acts against national security", the two men were sentenced to death in March.

On October 26, Mousavi said they played a direct role in the "arming, procurement, logistics, and guidance of the main perpetrator" of the terrorist attack at the Shah Cheragh mausoleum.

Over a dozen were killed and 30 injured in the attack on the shrine in October while it was claimed by the militant group Islamic State.

CCTV footage broadcast on state TV showed the attacker entering the popular Shah Cheragh shrine in the southern city of Shiraz after hiding an assault rifle in a bag and shooting as worshippers tried to flee and hide in corridors.

The gunman, identified as a citizen of Tajikistan, later died in a hospital from injuries sustained during the attack.

Three other men received jail sentences ranging from five to 25 years in the trial, Mousavi said, adding that several other "Daesh (Islamic State) suspects linked to this case" were awaiting trial.

In terms of the number of executions conducted annually, Iran ranks second only to China. IHR, a Norwegian group that advocates human rights in Iran, reports that at least 270 people have been executed since 2023

According to the Iranian Statistical Center, university graduate unemployment rates stood at 12.8% in the fourth quarter of last Iranian year (Dec. 22, 2022-March 20), and 37.2% of the total unemployed population, which was down 0.9% from last year.

In the midst of the women-led revolutionary movement, the unemployment rate for men with higher education qualifications stood at 9.2%, while the rate for women remained around 20.9%.

A total of 2.52 million Iranians were unemployed in Q4, according to the Statistical Center. Men’s unemployment stood at 8.5% while the rate for women hovered around 15.7%.

Male and female graduates' unemployment shares from the total unemployed population were 25.3% and 70.3%, respectively.

There are numerous figures about Iran’s unemployment rate, ranging from the IMF which puts it at about 11 percent to other sources who report it to be over 20 percent.

Part of the huge difference in numbers might be due to the government’s definition of employment. The Islamic Republic considers anyone who works for one hour a week as employed, which means that the government greatly overestimated the number of those in full or even part-time employment.