These days, as the transfer of power from Ebrahim Raisi administration to the regime’s new president Massoud Pezeshkian administration is underway, shocking truths about the country’s “devastated economy” are coming to light amidst the infighting within the regime.
On August 7, referring to the internal conflicts within the regime over these very realities during a gathering of the “media professionals,” Pezeshkian said: “In the messages for both the endorsement and inauguration ceremonies, we were told to criticize. I could have mentioned many of these problems, but I did not allow myself to stand up and talk about our flaws in front of foreign observers.”
While the so-called hardliner faction and Raisi’s government officials, such as Khamenei’s representative in the Kayhan newspaper, claim that a “saddled horse” with a full treasury is being handed over to Pezeshkian, and his supporters on the contrary wrote: “The government’s media team should transparently and candidly report to the people what exactly this ‘saddled horse’ being handed over to the new administration is…” (Source: the state-run Setareh Sobh newspaper – August 4).
Despite Pezeshkian and his associates’ silence, the trend of exposing the ruins left by Raisi’s government in less than three years is intensifying. On July 29, in an article titled “A Shut-Down Country with an Emptied Treasury,” the state-run Asr-e Iran website provides a small yet telling glimpse of the treasury’s status, stating: “The treasury’s cash balance is 105 trillion rials, which is about $170 million. To understand how this figure is virtually ‘nothing’ for a country like Iran, one should know… the current treasury balance handed over by the thirteenth government to the fourteenth is only enough to pay the salaries of government employees for two to three days.”
On July 30, pointing to this reality, Khabar Online highlights the massive plundering that occurred during Raisi’s time: “The thirteenth government always claimed to have increased oil sales, revenues from it, and other exports and domestic income several times over compared to the previous administration. Yet, despite all these claims, it has been handed over to a treasury with just $170 million. This raises the question: where is the result and evidence of all that income and the claims of tremendous economic success? It’s not on people’s tables! And it’s not in the treasury! So where is it?”
The empty treasury is just one indicator, or as the regime’s economists say, just a “thermometer” of the country’s economic situation. In a conference titled “The Fourteenth Government, Challenges, and the Road Ahead,” regime expert Masoud Nili, pointed to the “horrific imbalances in the country’s financial and environmental sectors,” and said: “The budget, banking system, and pension funds, with large-scale imbalances, have doubled the average inflation rate compared to its long-term historical level, and the imbalances in energy, water, and soil have put Iran’s territorial balance in serious jeopardy. The dire state of these imbalances shows that the strategies employed in the governance of natural and financial resources have failed” (Source: The state-run Ham-Mihan newspaper – July 23).
Ham-Mihan quoted Economist Ahmad Meidari, as saying: “Energy imbalance in one of the world’s wealthiest countries in terms of valuable resources is a clear indicator of how we have managed to create a crisis out of abundance.”
The victims of the destruction of economic foundations are the people, especially the underprivileged and working-class sectors. For instance, workers’ wages do not even reach a quarter of the poverty line.
Ham-Mihan added, “Farmers have delivered 1.5 quadrillion rials worth of wheat to the government, but so far they have only received 500 trillion rials of their dues.”
The pension fund, Social Security Fund, and others have been looted, and “this year there is a deficit of over 4 quadrillion rials, and it could even be more than that. Last year, the deficit in the military and national pension funds was about 3.5 quadrillion rials.” (Source: Hamdeli News website – July 14)
Meanwhile, across the country, especially in southern and hot regions, people are suffering from the lack of water and electricity in the unbearable heat, and many of the country’s major industries have been shut down or are operating at half capacity due to electricity shortages. Regime analyst Mohammad Mohajeri said, “The recent repeated power outages are a complete reflection of the three-year record of the thirteenth government. Large and small industrial workshops are practically shut down due to power cuts. The only thing not shut down is the government’s propaganda machine, which continues to produce unrealistic statistics. In many ways, the Pezeshkian government is inheriting scorched earth.”